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Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Teaser Tuesday! Corded by Alyssa Rose Ivy




Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by The Purple Booker
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share  doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
My teaser this week is from Corded by Alyssa Rose Ivy.





My heart sunk. “You really are selling me to the Reine.”

“They always pay the most.” He patted me on the back. “But you seem strong. Maybe you’ll survive.”


In a world where women are commodities, the only thing more rare than finding true love is a happy ending.

Kayla is in hiding—her only crime being born a girl in a society of 99 percent men. When her sister and niece are kidnapped, she is willing to do anything to save them. Kayla ventures into the dangerous streets of the city, a place where a woman can be claimed by anyone unless she has been marked by a club.

Desperate, she turns to Mason, a powerful club leader whose help comes at a cost—her freedom.

Do you have a blog? Post a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in the comments. 

No blog? Post a Teaser in the comments anyway!

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Playing Catch Up! Starling by Lesley Livingston




Playing Catch Up has really been helping me through my ever growing TBR list. I'd like to welcome all other blogs to participate too! If you do, be sure to post your links in the comments section. I'd love to see your Playing Catch Up Reviews, and I'm sure others would too!! *wink*

Want to know more about Playing Catch Up? I'll tell you all about it here!

Starling (Starling #1) by Lesley Livingston
Genre: Young Adult (Mythology/Fantasy/Romance)
Date Published: August 28, 2012
Publisher: Harper Teen

Mason Starling is a champion fencer on the Gosforth Academy team, but she's never had to fight for her life. Not until the night a ferocious, otherworldly storm rips through Manhattan, trapping Mason and her teammates inside the school. Mason is besieged by nightmarish creatures more terrifying than the thunder and lightning as the raging tempest also brings a dangerous stranger into her life: a young man who remembers nothing but his name—the Fennrys Wolf. His arrival tears Mason's world apart, even as she feels an undeniable connection to him. Together, they seek to unravel the secrets of Fenn's identity as strange and supernatural forces gather around them. When they discover Mason's family—with its dark allegiance to ancient Norse gods—is at the heart of the mystery, Fennrys and Mason are suddenly faced with a terrifying future.

Set against the gritty, shadowed back-drop of New York City, this first novel in award-winning author Lesley Livingston's epic Starling Saga is an intoxicating blend of sweeping romance and pulse-pounding action.

Starling is the first book in the Starling series by Lesley Livingston. The world has just turned upside down for Mason and her friends. I listened to the audio version, which was narrated by the author, and she did a wonderful job. I love when an author is comfortable and really knows how to read their story, and you're able to hear them say the lines how they are meant to be said. I think the mythology through this book is Norse or at least mostly Norse. I'm not as familiar with Norse mythology as I am Greek, so I found it to be interesting in that regard. The plot was intriguing with action and the tease of a romance. I'm very interested in the Fennrys Wolf.  He's still a mystery to me in many ways. Many of the characters are, including Mason herself. I feel like we have much to learn about this world. Then, you have that crazy cliffhanger ending, and well... I'm just going to have to hunt down the next book in this series pretty darn quick.


Mason shrugged angrily out of her brother’s punishing grip as Toby dragged him back a few steps.

“Back off, Rory,” the fencing master said as calmly as he could.

“Mason, what happened?”

“I . . .” Now that she was safely on her feet, the horrible image flooded back into her mind. “I saw something. Out inthe storm. It was hideous—a face—all eyes and teeth and itwas screaming. . . .”

“Bullshit,” Rory scoffed. “First you freak out and now you’re making things up. You’re always making stupid shit up—”

“Toby said back off, Rory.” Calum stepped in front of him and put a hand on his chest. “You can’t talk to Mason like that.”

“Screw you! She’s my sister and I’ll talk to her however I damn well want!”

“Stow it, both of you!” Toby finally shouted.In the silence that followed, a sudden frenzy of sound came from overhead, like scrabbling animal claws and ear-splitting keening, somewhere high up on the roof. Mason flinched and looked up, even though she couldn’t see any-thing in the darkness. The unearthly howling floated over the rattle of the rain.

Check out my review of another book by this author!


author
LESLEY LIVINGSTON is a writer living in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of twelve books to date. Her first novel, WONDROUS STRANGE, was winner of the CLA Young Adult Book of the Year 2010, a White Pine Honour Book, shortlisted for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Speculative Fiction, and in 2015 was named one of CBC’s “100 YA Books That Make You Proud To Be Canadian”. DARKLIGHT, the second book in this series was a finalist for the Indigo Teen Read Awards. The concluding volume in the trilogy, TEMPESTUOUS, was a finalist for the Monica Hughes Award. These books have sold to more than ten countries to date, and WONDROUS STRANGE has been optioned for film/TV by Shaftesbury Films. Her other trilogies have both won the Copper Cylinder award for Young Adult fiction.

In addition to her books for teen readers, Lesley is also co-author of a Middle Grade series with Jonathan Llyr called THE WIGGINS WEIRD. The first book, HOW TO CURSE IN HIEROGLYPHICS was shortlisted for the CLA Book of the Year for Children Award and was longlisted for the Canadian Booksellers Association’s Young Readers Book of the Year award. It was also chosen as one of the selections for the 2016 First Book Canada All-Star Reading Challenge.

Lesley’s newest novel is a YA historical epic, THE VALIANT, which will be published in February 2017 by Penguin Razorbill (US) and HarperCollins (CAN) and tells the story of a 17-year-old girl’s journey from fierce Celtic princess to female gladiator and the darling of the Roman Empire.

For almost three years, Lesley hosted weekly late-night movie marathons on the nationally broadcast television show, SPACEBAR, as the Waitron-9000, a sparkly holographic waitress with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure B-movie trivia. For almost two decades, she was a principal performer with Tempest Theatre Group, a Toronto-based Shakespearean theatre company.

To learn more about Lesley Livingston and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Goodreads and Twitter.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Book Review of Mistakes of My Past: Escape is Just the Beginning by Emily James




Mistakes of My Past: Escape is Just the Beginning by Emily James 
Genre: Adult Fiction(Contemporary Romance)
Date Published: December 8, 2016
Publisher: Self

What do you do when your relationship destroys everything good in your life? 
It’s simple, right? You escape - by any means necessary. 

Amber knew that leaving Tommy was going to be hard and quite possibly deadly. After all, she has things that he will stop at nothing to get. 
When Amber flees England to start fresh with her estranged father in Ohio she starts the process of rebuilding her life. 

Will is recovering from his own disastrous relationship, which has left him mistrusting of high maintenance women. And when he meets Amber, she seems just that. 

Getting off to a rocky start, Amber and Will soon realise they have more in common than they thought. 

Can Amber ever really free herself from the mistakes of her past? 
Or are they only ever one short step behind her? 


The Mistakes of my Past is a stand-alone novel. 
It is only recommended for readers aged over 18 due to dark, abusive and sexual themes. 



Mistakes of My Past: Escape is Just the Beginning was an extremely gripping debut novel by Emily James. Tommy showed all the classic abuse signs, and poor Amber was sucked right into the pattern. After the death of her mother, she leaves England for the US with her father. Yes, she's running away from Tommy, but in her state of mind she really had to. I don't think she could have saved herself at that point, in fact she tried to do just the opposite. In the US she gets the help she needs, and makes friends. I loved watching her character transform, even though I yelled at her quite a bit for not fixing the 'loose ends' with Tommy. They really needed to be tied up, and she kept letting them go. I loved Will, Cody was completely adorable, and Roxy was a total hoot. These were some of the best (and most amusing)supporting characters. I loved Roxy's lipstick messages. Amber needed these people, and they really needed her too. I was pulled right into their lives while I read. There was some humor, romance, and even suspense.. a lil bit of everything.

Mistakes of My Past: Escape is Just the Beginning by Emily James was kindly provided to me by Bloggers From Down Under for review. The opinions are my own.


Check out my review of another book by this author.

author
Emily James is a British author from the south coast of England. She enjoys exploring new destinations, adores animals, particularly dogs, and advocates kindness to all animals and humans.

Before turning her hand to writing, Emily worked as a social worker. This enabled her to gain insight into both the human psych and also the injustices facing everyday people.

Emily enjoys complex romance novels since she believes nothing good ever comes easily. She's also fond of the saying that patience is a virtue. Having said this, Emily is not what you might call patient or virtuous! Stubborn and tenacious is perhaps more fitting.

Mistakes of My Past is Emily's debut novel. Her blood, sweat and tears went into this story and she sincerely hopes that you lovely readers out there enjoy reading it!

Emily loves chewing the fat with readers.

To learn more about Emily James and her books, visit her on Goodreads & Facebook.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Book Review of When Ash Rains Down by Cecelia Earl





When Ash Rains Down (Kingdom Come #1) by Cecelia Earl
Genre: Young Adult (Paranormal/Fantasy)
Date Published: January 4, 2017
Publisher: Self

Being crowned homecoming queen and enduring a week at the center of her classmates' attention is eighteen-year-old Julia White’s worst nightmare—even with Cole, her long-time crush, as her date. But when Julia is attacked by a green-blooded demon that vanishes in a plume of smoke, she comes face to face with what real nightmares look like—in the flesh, and all of the homecoming stuff hardly matters anymore.

As a frightening wave of crime infiltrates her small Wisconsin town, Julia tries to avoid Nicholas, a brooding, infuriating relative of Cole’s, who insists she’s the reason behind the corruption. He claims the culprits are demons who are after powers that only she—a human-angel hybrid—possesses. It’s unbelievable, of course, until he takes her to a hidden battlefield where warrior angels train to fight soul-siphoning demons—and her own angelic wings unfold.

When angels and demons draw battle lines, endangering everyone in their way, Julia has to find a way to protect them all, including herself. Because as it turns out, she’s the devil's most powerful weapon against the angels, and he’ll stop at nothing to claim her. 

The final battle between Heaven and Hell has begun.

When Ash Rains Down is the first book in debut author Cecelia Earl’s Kingdom Come series. 


Check out my review of the next book in this series!

When Ash Rains Down is the first book in the Kingdom Come series by Cecelia Earl. Julia is a fun character. I found her to be easy to relate to, and I loved how she took in new information and when it came down to it she really grabbed the bull by the horns and got things done...once she realized what she was supposed to be doing. She took initiative, I guess you could say. She still has a lot to learn. I think we all do. I think there's more going one here. Cole and Nicholas, for example. I'm not sure how I feel about them yet. I'm more drawn to Nicholas, but Cole intrigues me as well. Something happens towards the end that makes me wonder if he's officially picked a side, or maybe he was always on that side. I feel like he's on the fence. On the other hand, I feel like Nicholas knows what he stands for. I wonder if he's not a little misguided too though. Hmmmm... lots to think about.

The ARC of When Ash Rains Down by Cecelia Earl was kindly provided to me by YA Bound Book Tours for review. The opinions are my own.




author
Cecelia Earl graduated with a degree in education and has been teaching ever since. She’s a wife, a mom of three boys, and an owner of a magical laundry pile that never stops growing. She lives near enough to Green Bay, WI that her refrigerator is always stocked with cheese, and the first colors her children learned were green and gold. She’s a teacher by day, a mom always, and a writer in her sleep, but that’s okay because being an author is a dream come true. She writes angel books for young and youngish adults. If you feel young, she writes for you—whether ornot you feel particularly angelic.

To learn more about Cecelia Earl and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Goodreads, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.


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Teaser Tuesday! Until Friday Night by Abbi Glines




Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by The Purple Booker
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share  doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
My teaser this week is from Until Friday Night by Abbi Glines.



“Now, could you maybe get some clothes on? That’s uh . . . distracting.”
“You do know you came into my room uninvited, right? If I had known you were coming, I’d have been dressed.”
He smirked. “I texted you.”
“I was in the shower.”
“Minor detail.”


To everyone who knows him, West Ashby has always been that guy: the cocky, popular, way-too-handsome-for-his-own-good football god who led Lawton High to the state championships. But while West may be Big Man on Campus on the outside, on the inside he’s battling the grief that comes with watching his father slowly die of cancer.

Two years ago, Maggie Carleton’s life fell apart when her father murdered her mother. And after she told the police what happened, she stopped speaking and hasn’t spoken since. Even the move to Lawton, Alabama, couldn’t draw Maggie back out. So she stayed quiet, keeping her sorrow and her fractured heart hidden away.

As West’s pain becomes too much to handle, he knows he needs to talk to someone about his father—so in the dark shadows of a post-game party, he opens up to the one girl who he knows won’t tell anyone else.

West expected that talking about his dad would bring some relief, or at least a flood of emotions he couldn’t control. But he never expected the quiet new girl to reply, to reveal a pain even deeper than his own—or for them to form a connection so strong that he couldn’t ever let her go…

Do you have a blog? Post a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in the comments. 

No blog? Post a Teaser in the comments anyway!

Monday, January 23, 2017

Book Review: Princess Dracula by John Patrick Kennedy




Princess Dracula (Princess Dracula #1) by John Patrick Kennedy
Genre: Adult (Dark Paranormal/Horror)
Date Published: January 17, 2017
Publisher: Kindle Press

All power comes at a price…

Ruxandra learned everything she knows while growing up in a convent. Training to be the perfect nobleman’s wife, she relishes the prospect of a simple life. But everything changes when her father, Vlad Dracula, retrieves her on her eighteenth birthday. Securing her a marriage is the last thing he has in mind…

After he performs a mysterious ritual over her, Ruxandra gains uncontrollable supernatural powers. Alone, terrified, and faced with an unknown future, she is left to forge a new life for herself. There’s only one thing she knows: if she doesn’t learn to control her unnatural instincts, she’ll destroy every last shred of her humanity.

Princess Dracula is the first book in a dark fantasy horror series. If you like crisp writing, emotional gravitas, and intriguing retellings of classic tales, then you’ll love John Patrick Kennedy’s new twist on vampire lore.

Princess Dracula is the first book in the Princess Dracula series by John Patrick Kennedy. This wasn't the book I expected to read. It was everything the blurb said, but my head interpreted and assumed different things from that description. That made it quite interesting though. I went through many levels of like and dislike as I read this story.

The story itself was well told and made this a hard book to put down. Ruxandra was thrust into an impossible situation, and she has nothing to guide her. She doesn't want to become a monster, but the more she tries to control it, the less control she has.. or so it seemed to me. It was a vicious cycle. Her struggle was real, folks.

My gripe would have to be the sexual scenes. With a Dracula story, you need to have some sexual themes going on, but in this case, it seemed like they were more for shock value rather than value towards the plot, and that really disengaged me from the story. I would have enjoyed it more, had some of those moments been left out.

Princess Dracula was dark, horrible, sexual, and tragic- everything you'd expect from a Dracula story plus a few things you might not. The ending could be called a cliffhanger I suppose, but it was more like a teaser for the next book, and that worked on me, because I'm curious to see what will unfold next.

The ARC of Princess Dracula by John Patrick Kennedy was kindly provided to me by the Kindle Scout program for review. The opinions are my own.


author
John Patrick Kennedy has been writing stories ever since he could write.  At first, his imagination was his escape from a difficult childhood, where he never seemed to "fit in."  Other kids taunted him for being different and John began to create worlds in his stories where he could feel safe and secure; stronger and more confident.

When John grew older, he discovered a taste for wanderlust and adventure.  As a young man, he travelled the world with little but what he could carry on his back.  He has climbed Denali, hiked the Amazon, and even spent a year in Japan, teaching English and feeding deer in the famous Nara Park.  His love of Asian history and philosophy has led him to become a master at Jeet Kune Do and a practicing Taoist.

John now divides his time between two homes, one in New York City, the other in London.  He is married with a beautiful little girl who inspires and captivates him.  They share their homes with a loyal, loving, German Shepherd. A man of many interests and talents, John has been a world-ranked tennis pro, even defeating a former Wimbledon champion in a sanctioned ITF tournament...and of course, he remains, and always will be a writer.  All of John's many interests and adventures have inspired his writing.  In addition, his imagination is so vivid and dear, it is almost as if he lives part-time within a third home in his mind, an inner world his readers glimpse when they read his novels.

John writes on a Macbook Pro and finds himself hardly able to go a day without creating something, be it an idea in infancy, or one of the many novels he has going at any time.  He is prolific and some friends say, even manic in the pursuit and perfection of his craft.  He loves to rip wide open his readers' minds, showing them something—a world, a character—they have never read or experienced before.

To learn more about John Patrick Kennedy and his books, visit him website.You can also find him on Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Playing Catch Up! Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham




Playing Catch Up has really been helping me through my ever growing TBR list. I'd like to welcome all other blogs to participate too! If you do, be sure to post your links in the comments section. I'd love to see your Playing Catch Up Reviews, and I'm sure others would too!! *wink*

Want to know more about Playing Catch Up? I'll tell you all about it here!

Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham
Genre: Adult Fiction (Contemporary Romance)
Date Published: April 30, 2013
Publisher: Ballantine Books

A charming and laugh-out-loud novel by Lauren Graham, beloved star of Parenthood and Gilmore Girls, about an aspiring actress trying to make it in mid-nineties New York City.

Franny Banks is a struggling actress in New York City, with just six months left of the three-year deadline she gave herself to succeed. But so far, all she has to show for her efforts is a single line in an ad for ugly Christmas sweaters and a degrading waitressing job. She lives in Brooklyn with two roommates - Jane, her best friend from college, and Dan, a sci-fi writer, who is very definitely not boyfriend material - and is struggling with her feelings for a suspiciously charming guy in her acting class, all while trying to find a hair-product cocktail that actually works. 

Meanwhile, she dreams of doing "important" work, but only ever seems to get auditions for dishwashing liquid and peanut butter commercials. It's hard to tell if she'll run out of time or money first, but either way, failure would mean facing the fact that she has absolutely no skills to make it in the real world. Her father wants her to come home and teach, her agent won't call her back, and her classmate Penelope, who seems supportive, might just turn out to be her toughest competition yet. 

Someday, Someday, Maybe is a funny and charming debut about finding yourself, finding love, and, most difficult of all, finding an acting job. 


Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham is a book I've been wanting to read since it came out, and look! I finally read it! I'm a big fan of the Gilmore Girls, and I love Lauren Graham's humor. Maybe I still have Gilmore Girls heavy on the brain, but this book almost felt like I was reading what would have happened to Lorelai had she never gotten pregnant with Rory and instead moved to New York with dreams of being an actress. Franny's character was full of the fun and quirkiness that I love about Lorelai. Her whit along with her humorous ramblings when she's embarrassed or just feeling awkward will keep you giggling.

I keep saying "read". I actually listened to the audio version of this book. It's read by Lauren Graham herself, and I highly recommend it, as only she could properly tell her story with all the right inflections. It adds all the more to the humor and feel of the story. This was such an enjoyable book. I hated to see it end. Speaking of which, what's up with that ending? I need to know more! What happens next? I know what I'm hoping happens, but I like to have something concrete. On the other hand, it is kind of fitting. Still, I'm going to keep my fingers crossed for a sequel.


Chapter 1

“Begin whenever you’re ready,” comes the voice from the back of the house.

Oh, I’m ready.
After all, I’ve prepared for this day for years: The Day of the Most Important Audition of a Lifetime Day. Now that it’s finally here, I’m going to make a good impression, I’m sure of it. I might even book the job. The thought makes me smile, and I take a deep breath, head high, body alert, but relaxed. I’m ready, alright. I’m ready to speak my first line.

After all, I’ve prepared for this day for years: The Day of the Most Important Audition of a Lifetime Day. Now that it’s finally here, I’m going to make a good impression, I’m sure of it. I might even book the job. The thought makes me smile, and I take a deep breath, head high, body alert, but relaxed. I’m ready, alright. I’m ready to speak my first line.

“Eeessssaaheeehaaa.” The sound that comes out of me is thin and high, a shrill wheezing whine, like a slowly draining balloon or a drowning cat with asthma.

Shake it off. Don’t get rattled. Try again.

I clear my throat.

“Haaaaaawwrrrblerp.” Now my tone is low and gravelly, the coarse horn of a barge coming into shore, with a weird burping sound at the end. “Hawrblerp?” That can’t be my line. I don’t think it’s even a word. Oh, God, I hope they don’t think I actually burped. It was really more of a gargle, I tell myself—although I don’t know which is worse. I can just picture the scene, post-audition: That actress? We brought her in and she positively belched all over the dialogue. Is she any good? Well, I suppose you could use her, if the part calls for lots of gargling. Sounds of cruel laughter, phones slamming into receivers, 8 × 10 glossies being folded into paper airplanes and aimed into waste paper baskets. Career over, the end.

“Franny?” I can’t see who’s speaking because the spotlight is so bright, but they’re getting impatient, I can tell. My heart is pounding and my palms are starting to sweat. I’ve got to find my voice, or they’ll ask me to leave. Or worse—they’ll drag me off stage with one of those giant hooks you see in old movies. In Elizabethan times the audience would throw rotten eggs at the actors if they didn’t like a performance. They don’t still do that, do they? This is Broadway, or at least, I think it is. They wouldn’t just throw—

The tomato bounces off my leg and onto the bare wood floor of the stage.

Splat.

“Franny? Franny?”

I open my eyes halfway. I can see from the window above my bed that it’s another gray and drizzly January day. I can see that because I took the curtains down right after Christmas in order to achieve one of my New ­Year’s resolutions, of becoming an earlier riser. Successful actresses are disciplined people who wake up early to focus on their craft, I told ­myself—­even ones who still make their living as ­waitresses—­like me. I started leaving the alarm clock on the landing between ­Jane’s room and mine so I’d have to actually get out of bed in order to turn it off, instead of hitting snooze over and over like I normally do. I also resolved to quit smoking again, to stop losing purses, wallets, and umbrellas, and to not eat any more cheese puffs, not even on special occasions. But I already had two cigarettes yesterday, and although the sun is obscured by the cloudy sky, I’m fairly certain it is far from my new ­self-­appointed rising time of eight a.m. My ­three-­day abstinence from cheese puffs and the umbrella still downstairs by the front door are my only accomplishments of the year so far.

“Franny?”

Only ­half-­awake, I roll over and squint down at the pitted wood floor by my bed, where I notice one black leather Reebok ­high-­top lying on its side. ­That’s strange. It’s ­mine—­one of my waitressing ­shoes—­but I thought I’d left them outside ­the—­thwack!—­a second Reebok whizzes by, hitting the dust ruffle and disappearing underneath.

“Franny? Sorry, you didn’t respond to my knocking?” Dan’s voice is muffled and anxious from behind my bedroom door. “I ­didn’t hit you with the shoe, did I?”

Ahhh, it was my shoe that hit me on the leg, not a tomato. What a relief.

“I dreamed it was a tomato!” I yell at the half-open door.

“You want me to come back later?” Dan calls back anxiously.

“Come in!” I should probably get out of bed and put Dan out of his misery, but it’s so cold. I just want one more minute in bed.

“What? Sorry, Franny, I can’t quite hear you. You asked me to make sure you were up, remember?”

I suppose I did, but I’m still too groggy to focus on the details. Normally I would’ve asked our other roommate, my best friend, Jane, but she’s been working nights as a P.A. on that new Russell Blakely movie. Since Dan moved into the bedroom downstairs a few months ago, I haven’t noticed much about him except how unnecessarily tall he is, how many hours he spends writing at the computer, and the intense fear he seems to have about coming upon either of us when we’re not decent.

“Dan! Come in!

“You’re decent?”

In fact, I went to sleep in an outfit that far exceeds decent, even by Dan’s prudish standards: heavy sweatpants and a down vest I grabbed last night after the radiator in my room sputtered and spat hot water on the floor, then completely died with a pathetic hiss. But that’s what you get in Park Slope Brooklyn for $500 a month each.

Jane and I had shared the top two floors of this crumbling brownstone with Bridget, our friend from college, until the day Bridget climbed on top of her desk at the investment banking firm where she worked and announced that she no longer cared about becoming a millionaire by the time she turned thirty. “Everyone here is dead inside!” she screamed. Then she fainted and they called an ambulance, and her mother flew in from Missoula to take her home.

“New York City,” Bridget’s mother clucked as she packed up the last of her daughter’s things. “It’s no place for young girls.”

Jane’s brother was friends with Dan at Princeton, and assured us that Dan was harmless: quiet and responsible and engaged to be married to his college girlfriend, Everett. “He was pre-med, but now he’s trying to be some sort of screenwriter,” Jane’s brother told us. And then, the ultimate roommate recommendation: “He comes from money.”

Neither Jane nor I had ever had a male roommate. “I think it would be very modern of us,” I told her.

“Modern?” she said, rolling her eyes. “Come one, it’s 1995. It’s retro of us. We’d be Three’s Company all over again.

“But with two Janets,” I pointed out. Jane and I are different in many ways, but we worked hard in school together, we’re both brunettes, and we’ve both read The House of Mirth more than once, just for fun.

“How true,” she sighed.

“Franny?” Dan calls out, his voice still muffled. “You didn’t go back to sleep did you? You told me you’d try if I let you. I promised I’d make sure—

I take a deep breath and I bellow, in my most diaphragmatically supported Shakespearean tone: “Daaaaaaan. Come iiiiiinnnnnnn.”

Miraculously, the left side of Dan’s face appears through a crack in the door, but it’s not until he’s confirmed my fully covered status and stepped all the way into the room, leaning his oversized frame awkwardly against the corner bookshelf, that I suddenly remember:

My hair.

I have no romantic feelings ­toward Dan, but I do have very strong feelings about my unruly, impossibly curly hair, which I piled into a green velvet scrunchie on top of my head last night while it was still wet from the shower, a technique that experience tells me has probably transformed it from regular hair into more of a scary, frizzy ­hair-­tower while I slept. In an attempt to assess just how bad it is, I pretend to yawn while simultaneously stretching one hand over my head, in the hopes of appearing nonchalant while also adjusting the matted pile of damage. For some reason this combination of moves causes me to choke on absolutely nothing.

“Is it . . . (cough, cough) . . . is it ­really late?” I sputter.

“Well, I went to the deli, so I don’t know exactly how long your alarm’s been going off,” Dan says. “But Frank’s been up for at least two hours already.”

Shit. I am late. Frank is the neighbor whose apartment we can see into from the windows in the back of our brownstone. Frank leads a mysterious, solitary life, but one you can set a clock by. He rises at eight, sits in front of a computer from nine to one, goes out and gets a sandwich, is back at the computer from two until six thirty, is gone from six thirty to eight, and then watches TV from eight until eleven p.m., after which he goes promptly to sleep. The schedule never changes. No one ever comes over. We worry about Frank in the way New Yorkers worry about strangers whose apartments they can see into. Which is to say, we made up a name for him and have theories about his life, and we’d call 911 if we saw something frightening happen while spying on him, but if I ran into him on the subway, I’d look the other way.

author
An American actress, producer, and debut novelist best known for playing Lorelai Gilmore on Gilmore Girls and Sarah Braverman on Parenthood.

Graham's debut novel, Someday, Someday, Maybe is a work based on a fictionalization of her experiences in the New York acting scene in the mid-1990s.In May 2013, the book entered the New York Times best seller list.

Graham signed a deal with Warner Bros. Television and Ellen DeGeneres' production company A Very Good Production to adapt it into a TV series. The script will be written by her.

To learn more about Lauren Graham and her books, visit her on Goodreads and Twitter.