Summary: Future scientist Madeline Little is dreading the start of middle school. Nothing has been right since her grandfather died and her best friend changed schools. Maddie would rather help her father in his research lab or write Standard Operating Procedures in her lab notebook than hang out with a bunch of kids who aren’t even her friends. Despite Maddie’s reluctance, some new friends start coming her way—until they discover what she’s written in that secret notebook. And that’s just part of the trouble. Can this future scientific genius find the formula for straightening out her life?

Madeline Little believes that every problem, from a scientific experiment to navigating friendships, can be addressed with a standard operating procedure. As a scientist, it’s how she imposes order on her world. But her expectations are upended when she has to face middle school without her best friend and without her beloved grandfather. Her family’s life has always been shaped by Von Willebrand disease, the bleeding disorder that she and her sister share, and which her father and grandfather made their life’s work. But now her sister Brooke is displaying worse and worse symptoms, and Maddie’s determination to become a world-famous microbiologist is tempered by the setbacks she faces when she tries to help out in her father’s lab. Teagan paints a painfully accurate picture of a logical, fact-loving girl thrown into the emotional whirl of middle school. I loved the way that the story gives no easy answers, and when Madeline tries to repair her relationships, not everyone comes around. With the help of her family and a few good friends, she is able to find her way back to what matters to her, but it comes with a painful lesson: there is no standard operating procedure for life.

THE FRIENDSHIP EXPERIMENT is out now.

Scenes from the #YARoadTrip Tour!

October 21, 2016Newsjan gangsei, karen fortunati, karen hattrup, lindsey roth culli, lisa maxwell, melissa Gorzelanczyk, rahul kanakia, teen read week, tobie easton, ya roadtrip 2016kathymacmillan

I was honored to participate in the YA RoadTrip tour October 6-16 with a fantastic group of authors in honor of Teen Read Week! Thank you to the many librarians and booksellers who made the tour possible, and to everyone who came out to see us!

Missed the tour? We left signed copies of our books behind at the following stores:

Barnes and Noble, Bethesda and Bel Air locations
Books with a Past, Glenwood, MD
Curious Iguana, Frederick, MD
One More Page, Arlington, VA

Kicking off Teen Read Week at the Glenwood Branch in Howard County, MD.

Visiting with the book club at Howard High School in Ellicott City, MD.

And scenes from the epic program arranged by Enoch Pratt Free Library for 250 visiting students and teachers:

Deborah Taylor, EPFL's Coordinator of School & Student Services, welcomes the crowd. — Deborah Taylor, EPFL’s Coordinator of School & Student Services, welcomes the crowd.

Dramatizing Melissa's description of ARROWS with a little help from some audience volunteers. — Dramatizing Melissa’s description of ARROWS with a little help from some audience volunteers.

Rahul Kanakia assures everyone that authors' cars are all made of solid gold. — Rahul Kanakia assures everyone that authors’ cars are all made of solid gold.

A New SWORD AND VERSE Extra

September 30, 2016Extras, Sword and Verse, Young Adult Fantasykathymacmillan

It’s a grey and rainy day here in the Midatlantic, so it seems like a good day to share an extra! This one is from Mati’s point of view, and it takes place just before, during, and after the very first scene in Sword and Verse. (Warning: this story has MAJOR spoilers for Sword and Verse, so don’t read it if you haven’t read the book yet.) In this scene, we get to meet Tyasha ke Demit before her execution.

Without further ado, I give you…

Eyes Open: A Story from the World of Sword and Verse

Read This!: ZERO DAY by Jan Gangsei

September 21, 2016Read This, Reviewsjan gangsei, zero daykathymacmillan

Zero Day by Jan Gangsei

Summary: Eight years ago Addie Webster was the victim of the most notorious kidnapping of the decade. She vanished-and her high-profile parents were forced to move on. Mark Webster is now president of the United States and fighting to keep the Oval Office after a tumultuous first term. Then the unthinkable happens: the president’s daughter resurfaces. Addie is brought back into the family fold, but who is this sixteen-year-old girl with a quiet, burning intelligence now living in the White House? There are those in the president’s political circle who find her timely return suspicious.When a national security advisor approaches Darrow Fergusson, Addie’s childhood best friend and the son of the president’s chief of staff, he doesn’t know what to think. How could the girl he’s missed for all these years be a threat to national security? Still, at the risk of having his own secrets exposed, Darrow agrees to spy on Addie and soon realizes that his old friend is much more than the traumatized victim of a sick political fringe group. Addie has come with a mission … but will she choose to complete it?

This breathless thriller grabbed me from the first chapter, and the heart-pounding pace doesn’t let up. Gangsei combines the multiple perspectives typical of the political thriller genre with an unerring focus on the two teen protagonists, Addie Webster, the First Daughter who has returned home after being abducted at age eight, and Darrow Fergusson, the best friend she left behind. Addie is at once smart and ruthless and relatable and vulnerable, and the details of both plot and setting make Gangsei’s knowledge of life inside the DC Beltway clear. Reader, prepare to be sucked in. You have been warned.

ZERO DAY is out now.

View all my reviews

Read This!: RIPPLE by Heather Smith Meloche

September 20, 2016Read This, Reviewsheather smith meloche, ripplekathymacmillan

Ripple by Heather Smith Meloche

Summary: With her impossible-to-please grandmother on her back about college and her disapproving step-dad watching her every move, Tessa would do anything to escape the pressure-cooker she calls home. So she finds a shot of much-needed power and confidence by hooking up with boys, even though it means cheating on her boyfriend. But when she’s finally caught red-handed, she’ll do anything she can to cover up what she’s done. Jack is a prankster who bucks the system every chance he gets—each transgression getting riskier and riskier. He loves the thrill, and each adventure allows a little release because his smug smile and suave demeanor in the face of authority doesn’t make life at home with his mom any less tough. He tries to take care of her, but the truth is he’s powerless in the face of her fragile mental health. So he copes in his own way, by defacing public property and pulling elaborate pranks, though he knows in the end this’ll only screw up his life even more. As they both try not to let their self-destructive patterns get the best of them, Tessa and Jack gravitate toward one another, discovering the best parts of themselves in the process. An honest portrayal of the urges that drive us and finding the strength to overcome them.

Tessa and Jack, two teenagers whose lives are spinning out of control, become one another’s unlikely confidants – and maybe more – in this gripping coming-of-age story. Paralyzed by her stepfather’s drunken verbal abuse and her wealthy grandmother’s well-meaning yet myopic plans for her future, Tessa seeks comfort in a series of meaningless hook-ups that she will do anything to hide from her popular boyfriend. Jack is flip and cocky, but also hard working, earnest, and fiercely protective of his brilliant mother even as her mental illness makes her more and more dangerous to herself and others, and his only outlet is the elaborate pranks he pulls to buck the system. When Tessa and Jack meet, the electricity of their connection is more than just romantic – each recognizes the desperation of the other and is able to see through the layers of hurt and artifice to the goodness underneath. Both of their roads to redemption are paved with hard truths and painful confrontations, but in finding the good in each other, they are finally able to see the good in themselves. In alternating first-person narratives, Meloche takes us into the imperfect lives of these imperfect, entirely relatable characters, and shows how good as well as bad can ripple out of human connections.

RIPPLE is out now.