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Gert Garibaldi looks at her world with its catastrophes and calls it like it is. this bright, unabashed teen picks through the mine field of high school, boys and home while making uncensored commentaries about the people in her life. Her first boyfriend is the poster child for "What you don't want in a boyfriend." If you like gutsy, Gert is your girl! The first book about her: One Butt Cheek at a Time.


ENDERS' Rating: *****
Amber's Website

Pass the Tums! D.J. is attempting to re-enter high school after the disasters with Brian and Win. Her mother is still with Win during his rehab and she is wrought with self-doubt that drips off the page of the third in the D.J. saga. D.J. tries to balance a truckload of homework, the coach’s insistence that she be the leader of the team, college visits to find a future team for herself, Win nagging, and Beaner’s emergence as “the boy friend.” Add to that: Brian is not treating her like a leper. The angst of the first third of the book is agonizing, but D.J. is such a compelling young woman that I cheered for her as she took on....herself!

ENDERS Rating: A great book about a fabulous young woman!

Catherine Gilbert Murdock's Website

“We do stupid things when we’re hurt. But let me save you some grief. When you feel bad, it’s often best to do nothing at all.” Couldn’t we all have used that a time or two? Along with Molly’s widower, advice-giving dad, live her three bachelor uncles. The chorus of advice and platitudes from the uncle-crowded back seat of her dad’s truck zipping to Aunt Tip’s Bangee’s Wake Irish pub is hysterical. Molly wants to do what is right for herself..if only others would let her! Molly O’Keefe has a slimy boyfriend that everyone knows that he only wants to “ravish and toss” her. Molly is prone to giving in to her self-centered, carpe diem buddy Vanessa. She ends up in The Girl Corps, red cape and all, to discover some strength to deal with the Trevor situation and even more.

ENDERS' Rating: Fun read that keeps you turning the pages!

Stacey Goldblatt's Website and Blog

Holy Halloween Cupcakes!

Talk about throwing away your prejudices about cheerleaders being all fluff and no brains. Tessa , a junior who is the Smitten Kittens squad leader, is also the leader of SOS, the clandestine "Kitty Bond" agents who search for evidences of straying boyfriends and deliver their findings to suspicious girlfriend clients.

I loved the SOS communications to clients and contributors, only a page each, interspersed throughout the novel. Tessa's laugh-out-loud "Rocky the Squirrel" expletives are G-rated. SOS has served cheated girlfriends for two years and Tessa is worried about the amazing amount of boyfriends that cheat. Is her wonderful Aiden the only faithful one left? Holy sizzling frying pan! A new, hunky guy is paying too much attention to her! What will our perky heroine do?

If you want a fun, inventive read revealing the masterminds in cheerleading squads, this is your book. My major concern about the novel is the not so much the lurid details (there are none), but the casual acceptance of teenage sex, which will cause some high school librarians will pass. Teenage girls will adore it! The Naughty List is available in February 2010.

ENDERS Rating: A fun read!

Suzanne Young's Blog

In which I don't sweat the small stuff.

1. Squirrels. Yup, the terrifying attic monsters turned out to be really fat squirrels whose doom now awaits them in the form of a peanut butter trail to a big silver trap. They'd built a huge nest right on the attic door, so when Animal Control Man* opened the door to the attic, he got showered with half-chewed walnut bits. I have to be honest: I had gotten myself so worked up about the monster that when I heard the attic open, a very small part of me was disappointed not to hear "HOLY COW! RUN!!!!" followed by a velociraptor shriek. But squirrels it is. And here is a fact: squirrels are pigeons that can't even fly and I hate them now.


2. I went shopping at lunch time with my sister** and we stopped to play at the make-up counter and to pretend we know what to do with foundation and other mysterious things. They had an eye product called "Well Rested" and the saleslady stopped snorking at us long enough to recommend it.

"What does it do?" I asked.

To which my sister replied, "You take it home and it blows up your children."


3. Look at the cuteness. Tabitha awarded me this lovely butterfly and it made my day. I'm waiting to pass it on until I find something great I think you all haven't seen yet, but, well, really, I just wanted that pretty picture here.

* Who was totally dreamy and would have had every chance in the world to replace Steve as my new boyfriend, if only he had shown up within the two hour window promised.
** It is a bloggy crime that I haven't quoted my sister more to you as she is the funniest person I know.
-- squirrel photo (from Wikipedia Commons) by Aaron Logan --

My friend Natasha and I started a little project a while ago. We've been doing it purely for fun! Natasha draws pictures of girls and then I draw pictures of boys for them to date. Sometimes we switch it up and I draw girls and she draws boys. Here are a few of the characters I've come up with so far...

A bunch more can be found on our flickr account. We try to update every day!

philintheblanks.com

Hello LJ Friends, and Happy Valentine's Day! I'm going to get sappy here, because loads of other folks are getting sappy! I freely admit I love Valentine's Day and all the romantic hype. I'm completely and utterly into it. No apologies!

I'm waiting for the heart-shaped cake that I'm making for my children to finish baking before I go out and meet Ever-Supportive for a nice, adult, private, romantic, sans-kids lunch, so I thought I'd post in response to beberly  's question about teen crushes. I'm going to show my age here, but other than the Beatles (who transcend teen crushes), whom I fell totally in love with at age six, thanks to my brother's MEET THE BEATLES album (I still have it—on the original Capitol label), my first celeb crush was on David Cassidy when he played uber-cool Keith Partridge on "The Partridge Family," a megahit TV show in the late 1960s/early 1970s. I collected posters of him out of TigerBeat magazine and never, ever missed the show.

In honor of my first crush, and for any of you out there old enough to remember, here's a tribute to David Cassidy:
Thank you, David Cassidy, for being a perfect first crush. You could do no wrong in my world. Happy Valentine's Day!

I love thinking about love—and writing about love—both the teen kind and the adult kind. I have the fondest of memories of all my major boyfriends growing up, but I reserve all my lifelong love and passion and respect and laughs for Ever-Supportive, aka Carl, my husband of almost 15 years. Carl is the kind of husband every mother hopes their daughter ends up with for the long haul. He's handsome, smart, sweet and easygoing; he's a great father; and he makes me laugh every single day. He looks good in a tool belt and, better yet, he's VERY handy with wood, cars, technology and other things that sometimes need fixing. I can fix things, but I love knowing I don't HAVE to fix things. And did I mention that he makes me laugh every day? That's saying something. For Valentine's Day, so far, he has gifted me with a lovely card, a box of chocolates and a bag of Pepperidge Farm's Brussels cookies. 

[Ever-Supportive, being ever-supportive, is off buying milk and antifreeze for my car—milk for the kids, ha—so I'm editing to add that I also got JEWELRY this year, ha!  A gorgeous pair of yellow and white gold earrings with diamonds. He surprised me at lunch—the aforementioned quiet, sans-kids, romantic lunch. This is the first jewelry since Christmas '05, and it was worth waiting for, yes indeedy. He also got the kids boxes of candy, too. He's the bestest. If you're reading this, honey, I love me some Ever-Supportive!]



Thanks for being the best husband EVER! Happy Valentine's Day, Carl!


I also love my family and friends. I feel like one of the most fortunate gals in the world to have such a wealth of great friends and a nice family, too. We never, ever get trashy and fight on the holidays! A special Valentine's kiss to Susan, my same-age aunt, who has been with me from the cradle, through thick and thin! Here we are in (for me) thinner times:

 

Happy Valentine's Day, Susan!

And my children! Oldest Son, David, has called twice to wish me a Happy Valentine's Day. Jack and Chloe both gifted me with CARS Valentines that had lemon gummy-hearts in them. Those are the things that make life worthwhile!

So, the cake is out of the oven and cooling, and I want to throw on some lipstick and go meet my handsome Valentine for lunch, but I want to send big SMOOCHES out to all my LJ friends! I hope you have a wonderful day.

XXOO 
Candie