DJ Jazzy Pho
I’m usually not to good at this internet networking stuff, but I got a GoodReads message from soon-to-be debuting author Kirsten Hubbard about a review I wrote awhile back and was so glad I did. And not just because I later ran into her on metafilter (gotta love those mefites). She just released the cover image for her first book, Like Mandarin, and it’s just as exciting as the blurb/premise:
I want to be beautiful like you, I thought, as if Mandarin were listening.
I want apricot skin and Pocahontas hair and eyes the color of tea. I want to be confident and detached and effortlessly sensual, and if promiscuity is part of the package, I will gladly follow your lead. All I know is I’m so tired of being inside my body.
I would give anything to be like Mandarin.
It’s hard to find beauty in the badlands of Washokey, Wyoming. Fourteen-year-old Grace Carpenter knows it’s not her mother’s pageant obsessions, or the cowboy dances and pickup trucks adored by her small-town classmates. True beauty is wild girl Mandarin Ramey: seventeen, shameless and utterly carefree.
Grace would give ANYTHING to be like Mandarin.
When the misfits are united for a project, they embark on an unlikely, explosive friendship, packed with nights spent skinny-dipping in the canal, liberating the town’s animal-head trophies, and constantly searching for someplace magic. Grace even plays along when Mandarin suggests they make a pact to run away together. Blame it on the crazy-making wildwinds that plague their badlands town.
But all too soon, Grace discovers Mandarin’s unique beauty hides a girl who’s troubled, broken and even dangerous. And no matter how hard Grace fights to keep the magic, even the best friendships can’t withstand betrayal.
I love books about complicated female friendships, and I don’t think there are nearly enough of them. So, in short, I’m jazzed about this book and this author. Keep an eye out for her, okay?
