This IMM was originally going to be small. I got only two books from the library and I thought that would be it. Then I got approved for a bunch of NetGalley requests, reminding me of the NetGalley books I, for some reason, never seem to put in here. So in addition to the ones I received last week I’ll be showing you basically the ones I got in the last three.

From the Library:

• The Twin’s Daughter by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Do me a favor and look this book up. Can’t be bothered? BOO-HOO. Suffice it to say it sounds KICK-ASS and leave it at that.

• Everything You Need To Survive the Apocalypse by Lucas Klauss

My affliction of never reading Galley Grab books continues with this book, but then I found out it had a Hannah-Moskowitz-blurb and gurl, I snatched this up faster than the Bed Intruder.

For Review:

I’ll be honest with you guys, I’m really tired–I cried today and I’m an ugly crier. And I both started and finished a science project tonight. SNOW LEOPARDS FOR THE WIN! So I can’t really remember which books I’ve told you I’ve gotten for review or not. So I’ll just kind of like, list my whole ADE NetGalley holdings now.

• Welcome Caller, This Is Chloe by Shelley Coriell
• New Girl by Paige Harbison
• Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
• Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown
• Jersey Angel by Beth Ann Bauman
• Don’t You Wish by Roxanne St. Claire
• Goddess Interrupted by Aimee Carter
• Hollyweird by Terri Clark
• The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman
• This Is Not A Test by Courtney Summers

Thanks to NetGalley, Abrams, Harlequin Teen, Delacorte BFYR, Random House, Flux, and St. Martin’s Press. Virtual babka for you.

As always, have a great week! Leave links to your IMM’s in the comments! 

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So.  Lucy opens the door one day to find her mom all skinny and bedraggled, only it’s not her mom, it’s her mom’s long-lost twin sister Helen who has been raised orphan-style while Lucy’s mom married rich.  With so little deliberation that you think something sinister is going to come of it (it doesn’t), they accept Aunt Helen into their home and try to ‘My Fair Lady’ her.

And there’s a certain writing style that just makes me stabby, where you’re trying to sound all period-piece so you say ‘sought’ a lot and refer to people being ‘in their seventeenth year,’ but it’s SO DISTRACTING and kind of awful and then I can’t even tell if your writing is good because I’m hung up on how much I hate this.

I begin to suspect your writing is not, in fact, good when you say things like ‘sleep finally came and awake thoughts ceased’ what?  You mean ‘waking thoughts,’ right?

Also, too many words to say a thing.  And not like Ugh, descriptions!  Because I like descriptions.  And I’m all for sacrificing a racing plot in the service of luxurious writing.  But literally TOO MANY WORDS.  Like, ‘”I want to come with you.” I spoke to my father without thinking first.’  Why not just ‘”I want to come with you,’ I said without thinking.’  Quibbles, I know, but a mountain of quibbles will crush you just the same.

Or, after Lucy has been caught eavesdropping on the stairs and been sent to her room she spends a whole paragraph telling you that she goes right upstairs without eavesdropping again because she has already tried that trick tonight (you may recall) and she is more likely to be caught at it now.

And the author’s fingerprints are everywhere on this.  They get a new tutor to train Aunt Helen (and, ostensibly, Lucy, but we know who the real ignoramus is here) and halfway through the lesson he says something solicitously to Helen and Lucy is all, ‘In the short time he had been with us, he had already been changed much by her presence’ even though FIRSTLY they only just met the guy, and SECONDLY she is very illustrative of how the tutor doesn’t treat Helen like a hobo from the moment he gets there, so I don’t get how he is ‘changed much.’  And I get where she is trying to go but you have to go there, you can’t just tell us you’ve gone there. 

A page later she refers to Aunt Helen’s hilarity as ‘such a rare thing’ when Aunt Helen has been laughing her ass off since page one.

And then FINALLY halfway through the book one of the twins is gruesomely murdered and I am like, Sweet and the not-murdered twin is like, I am the twin that is your mother, and I’m like, Clearly that means you are not.  But then some few pages later Lucy is all, Oh!  This is not my mother at all but in fact Aunt Helen and also I am ok with this because I can see why she’d try to steal my mother’s life, and I’m all, Right so now I’m fairly sure it is your mother since whatever you think with <150 pages to go is probably wrong, but also what?  How is this all ok?

Also, there is a romance with a boy and it is the usual He Is A Legitimate Asshole And Then They Fall In Love And She Forgets About The ACTUAL ASSHOLEY THINGS HE DID etc and the only good thing about that bit is that he gets typhoid.

Fun, right?  But at no point do they caulk the wagons and float across the river.  Missed opportunity, that.

Ho hum.  I read it all because I wanted to find out if it was or was not Aunt Helen, but I was tearing my hair out the whole time.

Having just returned from a trip to the East Coast last night, I’m still a bit addled jet-lagged this morning.  But never fear: I’ve asked the fabulous Lauren Baratz-Logsted to help carry the conversation. On July 12, her newest YA novel, THE EDUCATION OF BET hits the shelves, followed closely by THE TWIN’S DAUGHTER, which is scheduled for an August 31 release. So as you might expect, she’s got lots to talk about. And rightly so.

I first met Lauren at the Backspace Writers’ Forum, where I was immediately impressed by her genuine—and generous—contributions to other members, as well as the writing community at large. An accomplished author in her own right (19 published books and counting!), she’s gained a lot of wisdom through experience. This is perhaps my favorite interview with Lauren, mainly for the way she approaches her own struggles and triumphs. If you’re short on courage or confidence, I’m willing to bet it’ll inspire you!

Since Lauren’s visit to the Authors’ Tent is near the end of a lengthy blog tour, I decided to ask her one question. Yeah, so maybe it’s not all that creative, but enquiring minds wanted to know: What’s one question no one has asked that you wish they had?

Here’s Lauren’s response:

Hmm…let’s see… I know! "Lauren, in addition to your many published books, I understand you’ve written several other books. Which one, if any, would you most like to have see the light of day?"

Wow, me, what a terrific question! I hear writers often say that they hope their earlier efforts would never be published, but I would want mine to be – I’m nutty that way. And the one I’d most like to see make it to bookstores everywhere is a quirky adult novel called Z. It’s a contemporary re-visioning of The Great Gatsby featuring a writer who returns home to Danbury after 15 years out in L.A. only to meet and fall in love with a window washer who may or may not be Zorro. Z has everything: comedy, romance, drama, swordplay, and no one dies in a swimming pool. All of that said, I’ve been thinking as I’m writing this that Z might work better if I revised it as a young adult novel. I’ve done that three times before – written a book for one age group only to realize later that it would work much better for a different market. Sometimes I have to break lots of eggs before making an omelet.

Thanks, Lauren, for joining us in the Authors’ Tent! I know I’m not alone in expressing my appreciation for your many contributions–to writers and readers alike.

To catch more of Lauren’s blog tour, just follow these links:

July 1: http://www.clatteringkeys.blogspot.com/  and July 5^th: http://books-movies-chinesefood.blogspot.com/  And to read more author interviews, please visit the Authors’ Tent archives.