True story: can’t wait for Truest!

Truest is an AMAZING YA book that I had the pleasure of reading an ARC of by my AMAZING friend, Jackie Lea Sommers.

I don’t want to give too much of the book away,
but if you like stories with:

Poets,
Boys with snarky t-shirts,
twins,
summer,
car detailing,
Dumbledore-like mentors,
feeling lost and then the journey to being found,
a love that grows slowly and with lots of dramatic moments,
fast friendships that change lives,
Alaska,
lifeguard towers,
smart characters who leap off the page,
secret places,
and lots and lots of hope,

You are going to LOVE this book.
It is written SO WELL.
I finished reading it and was changed. And inspired.

I met Jackie at the ABLA Big Sur conference I went to in 2013.

I remember sitting down next to her at the start of it and saying, “Hi, I’m Kathy Ellen, what do you write?” and meeting her friends that were there with her, also YA authors.

I remember having lunch or was it dinner? after the conference was over, hearing how it went for her, and how excited she was about my conference experience (I had some agents interested, and an editor. Fun fact:I got my agent a few weeks later, and that editor is the editor of my first picture book, due out in 2017!)

But most of all I remember singing the One Direction Song: What Makes You Beautiful in the hallway and Jackie turning the corner and laughing, admitting that she had never been sung to at a conference.

Here it is, in case you have to listen to it (I had to!)

Jackie amazes me with her writing skill and planning.
I mean, she sets goals and then REACHES them!
She’s an amazingly consistent blogger,
and she even finds time to keep up with my little blog over here.

She has ROCKED the marketing side of Truest so far,
and I know she will ROCK the book launch too!
I cannot wait to get my hands on the book!

Because I knew this would be a special book,
I read it one chapter at a time,
stopping after each chapter to write down my thoughts: things that I loved, things that I wondered about, and things I was excited about or looking forward to in the upcoming chapters.

Let me tell you, this was REALLY hard, especially near the end.
I just wanted to read and find out what happened!

But I wanted to give a special gift to my friend for her first book birthday.

This resulted in a 150ish page love letter to the book.
And I found the best notebook for it!

If you want to find Jackie, look here and here
And more about Truest here.
The book is out TOMORROW!!!

I am going to have to bring back my podcast to talk to her you guys!
She’s amazing.
Now if I can only get her to come out to Hicklebee’s in San Jose….

Bye for now,
KE