The Best Reader:
Miranda Kenneally

Interview with Miranda Kenneally

1. Was there any certain moment you had as a teen that you feel changed your life?
-- Yes. When I was 18, I made a decision to leave Tennessee and go to college in Washington, D.C. I would be leaving behind everything I knew and didn't have any money at all. I went in to see the school guidance counselor and she told me that I would probably fail if I went to DC, so I might as well stay at the local community college. That's when I made the decision that I was never going to let anyone tell me how to live my life or hold me back.
2. If you could give your 15 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be?

-- Eat better! I didn't know much about nutrition or healthy food choices until college.
3. Looking back, is there something you would have changed about your teen years?

-- I wouldn't have spent so much time pining over the wrong guys, especially the one that hooked up with me and then went and hooked up with a friend of mine. I should've been open to dating other people.

4. What do you feel are the biggest challenges teen face today, compared to what we experienced a few years ago?
I think teens today are under pressure to do a lot more homework than in the past. Teens are challenged to work harder than ever before. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I wish that teens had time to have lots of fun and make mistakes and do crazy things. You don't only learn from reading books. You learn from life experiences. I think that adults in America work crazy hours and feel stressed a lot, and if we continue down this path of Doing Way Too Much Stuff and Working Too Much, it will only get tougher on our kids.

Dear Teen Me
Published: Zest Books (October 30th, 2012
Reading Level: Young Adult
Paperback: 192 pages
Dear Teen Me includes advice from over 70 YA authors (including Lauren Oliver, Ellen Hopkins, and Nancy Holder, to name a few) to their teenage selves. The letters cover a wide range of topics, including physical abuse, body issues, bullying, friendship, love, and enough insecurities to fill an auditorium. So pick a page, and find out which of your favorite authors had a really bad first kiss? Who found true love at 18? Who wishes he’d had more fun in high school instead of studying so hard? Some authors write diary entries, some write letters, and a few graphic novelists turn their stories into visual art. And whether you hang out with the theater kids, the band geeks, the bad boys, the loners, the class presidents, the delinquents, the jocks, or the nerds, you’ll find friends--and a lot of familiar faces--in the course of Dear Teen Me.
Zest Books website: http://zestbooks.net/dear-teen-me-blog-tour/
Dear Teen Me website: http://dearteenme.com/?page_id=4031
Dear Teen Me events page: http://zestbooks.net/events/
Zest Books Dear Teen Me book page: http://zestbooks.net/dear-teen-me/

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Things I Can't Forget by Miranda Kenneally
Published: Sourcebooks Fire (March 1st, 2013)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Paperback: 320 pages
Series: Hundred Oaks, #3
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Summary:
Companion to Catching Jordan and Stealing Parker.

Kate has always been the good girl. Too good, according to some people at school—although they have no idea the guilty secret she carries. But this summer, everything is different…

This summer she’s a counselor at Cumberland Creek summer camp, and she wants to put the past behind her. This summer Matt is back as a counselor too. He’s the first guy she ever kissed, and he’s gone from a geeky songwriter who loved The Hardy Boys to a buff lifeguard who loves to flirt--with her.

Kate used to think the world was black and white, right and wrong. Turns out, life isn’t that easy…

Review:

In Things I Can't Forget we meet Kate. Kate is the ultimate good girl. She goes to church, doesn't drink, have sex, cuss, etc. But she does have one secret and it is eating her up inside. She goes to Cumberland Creek camp as a counselor and hopes to escape the thoughts tormenting her about her best friend back home and what she helped her do.

While at the camp we meet Matt. But Matt and Kate do have a bit of a past at the camp. It was nice to hear how they had met and what they were like as kids. Matt is a wonderful character. He was so kind and understanding. I felt that he accepted people no matter what.

Kate was difficult to like. She's very very judgmental. She's a pretty hardcore Christian and this makes her pretty much pick everything apart. She's always reminding people about what they are doing wrong. She's a bit of a prude too. I tried to understand that this was just how she was raised but this just made getting to know her a bit difficult. I wanted to slap her on a few occasions.

Over time, the people at camp really show her that not all things are cookie-cutter. Sometimes people don't have the best upbringing and they may have reasons for being snarky or angry. One of the best lessons in this comes from Parker, who we meet in Stealing Parker. She is a great reminder of how life can throw you a curveball and how you have to deal with what comes. It's so nice to see these connections throughout the series.

This is a wonderful continuation of the Hundred Oaks series. The religious themes were a bit more obvious in this book but it definitely didn't dominate it. After a while it was easier to see how Kate was changing and learning to accept people for who they were. I can't wait for the next story!

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Stealing Parker by Miranda Kenneally
Published: Sourcebooks Fire (October 1st, 2012)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Paperback: 242 pages
Series: Hundred Oaks, #2
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Red-hot author Miranda Kenneally hits one out of the park in this return to Catching Jordan's Hundred Oaks High.

Parker Shelton pretty much has the perfect life. She’s on her way to becoming valedictorian at Hundred Oaks High, she’s made the all-star softball team, and she has plenty of friends. Then her mother’s scandal rocks their small town and suddenly no one will talk to her.

Now Parker wants a new life.

So she quits softball. Drops twenty pounds. And she figures why kiss one guy when she can kiss three? Or four. Why limit herself to high school boys when the majorly cute new baseball coach seems especially flirty?

But how far is too far before she loses herself completely?

Review:

I will say that this book does deal with religion. I typically steer away from that topic because books can become really preachy. That wasn't the case with this story. Parker is dealing with her idea of being a good christian and, if anything, this book shows us how judgmental people can be and how you can't set yourself up for failure with certain ideas of religion.

Parker explores things by kissing a few boys, which gets her a bad reputation. But nothing prepares her for her feelings for Brian. The bad part is that Brian just happens to be her softball coach. Brian surprised me. Forbidden romances are nice to read about but Brian held a bit of a surprise. He wasn't always such a nice person. His real character soon comes out.

I really rooted for Parker in this story. I just wanted her to break free from it all and stand up to people. I didn't want her to depend on friends, family, or a guy to make her happy. She needed to get to the point where she could be a stronger person.

Miranda's books are so relatable. Especially since I live in the same state and understand that whole"small town vibe" we see with this series. I love seeing what happens in these stories because it's normally something I've seen in my own high school experiences.

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