And the fact that they're all the same.

Let's talk YA, guys. And some of the tropes so prevalent in these modern releases--and how to do them better.

Wicked Saints: Russia

Girls of Paper and Fire: sorta Asian

We Hunt the Flame: Kinda Middle East

Children of Blood and Bone: Nigeria

Look, there is absolutely no problem with setting your book somewhere non-European. Goodness knows we have a lot of those books. I don't have a problem with setting your book in medieval European-esque world either (that's more similar to mine, gosh) but the MANNER of doing it is what we need to talk about.

Throwing in a few words from either the real language of the region or the fictional language you based on the real language doesn't count as worldbuilding. 

Making your characters non-white just for the sake of not being white doesn't count as worldbuilding, much though I know we all wish it did.

Having vaguely Asian sounding food doesn't count as worldbuilding.

Making character's names unpronounceable for the sake of "authenticity" doesn't count as worldbuilding.

If you're going to base your book's culture off a real place, be it Europe or somewhere else, do research. Make it genuinely important. Slip in aspects of the culture that people might not know about. The food, the fabric, the customs, the day-to-day life, the marriage ceremonies, the evening activities, the holidays, the courtship, the rituals, the RELIGIONS, the cursing, the dialect--ALL of it. Give me a world that feels so real I could imagine going there. Don't just put in a couple of things that make it feel DIFFERENT but in a weird way. 

No matter what sort of world you have, let me go into it deeply.

We all know this one like the back of our hands, right? The villain of the book is the king who rules his country with an iron fist, sitting on a throne he usurped from the true ruler. The ruler was probably a magic user, and the king hates magic for some undisclosed reason. He tortures his people for no reason whatsoever--because who wants to read about politics, right?!--and has an evil second-in-command who does his bidding. (This person will probably die at some point in the first book, just FYI.) 

Most importantly, though, he has a son. A son who he has groomed to submit to his every will, especially killing people. But that's okay, because we all know the son has a CONSCIENCE. Which becomes very important when he meets the snarky female protagonist and falls for her beauty...

I have to be careful around this trope and making fun of it tooooo heavily, because I actually have my own version of this in my novel (heh). But I think there are a few things that we need to observe here in our writing, and the main one is this:

GIVE THE VILLAIN A REASON.

He can be the evil murder king--I have no problem with that! One of my favorite villains ever is Capricorn from the Inkheart series. And oh my word, he is such a deliciously evil murder king. He kills people for fun. He has a mother he cares about--who's just as evil as he is, if not more. He does things just for the heck of it and laughs while he kills people. YA KNOW WHAT? I LOVE IT. He doesn't need a reason. But that's okay--because he is never, ever presented as human in any way.

If someone is a father--even if they're the worst father ever--they have to be at least a little bit human.

Give them a backstory. The king almost always has had magic eradicated--if that's the case, WHY? He hates women--WHY? He's cruel to his son--WHY? What does he have against the protagonist? Her family? Her people? Straight-up racism and sexism do not work, folks. You have to give them something personal. No one is just systematically anything. There is ALWAYS a reason.

Don't caricature your villains. Make them human.

And then in terms of the sons: Making someone good and morally grey takes WORK, people. A lot of work. I wrote my entire first book revolving around the arc of a morally grey villain boy. It can be done. BUT, please, I beg you, do not redeem your villain boy by having him fall in love with your protagonist. (I'll get to that next.) Love doesn't change people like that. At least not that kind of love. Put work into it. Put your back into it.

Give him a real, human, lasting, good reason. Basically, that's my point here: Don't just take the cheap, normal way out. Don't just have your villain hate magic because he does. Don't just give him an angsty son. (Also, remember this: if you're writing a guy like this, he is going to be cruel to his son. And that is abuse. So you're going to have to deal with psychological repercussions on that front. Don't discount that aspect. It can be a lot to add--even if the father isn't on the scene at the moment, the boy can't just act like a normal human. He's gonna be messed up, folks. He's gonna be broken. FIGURE THAT IN. Emotional abuse is a horrible and real thing.)

That was a really, really long rant xD But basically: You CAN do this well. But don't do it the way it's normally done. Don't take the cheap way out. Turn it on its head. GIVE REASONS AND MOTIVATION.

The heroine of your story is a too-big-for-her-britches little Miss who is the Chosen One (TM) who has to save her (ambiguously defined, mostly irrelevant to the story) land/people/tribe/race/ whatever. She probably has a sibling who she LoVeS mOrE tHaN aNyThInG eLsE. One of her parents died tragically. She's snarky and a Powerful Magic Wielder (whether she knows it or not) and she will probably go to head to head with authority and walk away with her best friend or sibling or somebody DEAD because of her impertinence.

And in the course of her quest, she'll find a different sort of magic--the magic of LOVE!!!!!!! 

Are you rolling your eyes yet?

Don't start yet--we haven't talked about the object of her affections! She'll meet the horribly mean but devastatingly handsome son of the villain, who will probably fall in love with her at first sight. She's a bit stronger than he is and so she lasts a whole day hating him before, suddenly, she's caving and they're making out passionately in the middle of a dangerous situation. And then--he'll betray her. But then be forgiven. BUT THEN BETRAY HER AGAIN. DUN DUN DUN, the book ends! Cliffhangers! Stay tuned for the next installment!!!!!!!!!

*groans loudly* Please tell me I'm not the only person rolling my eyes right now.

Please, please, please don't force your bad boy and good girl to fall in love.

It's more powerful when they don't! I'm just gonna come right out and say it! And if they have to, if they're going to, make it a slow burn. You've got a trilogy--you don't have to let them start kissing and declaring their undying love on page 275 of the first book. Because we all know what that means--the dreaded angst and sobbing of the second book, complete with the crucial fake breakup and all that jazz. No one wants that. That was over back in 2007 (was that when New Moon came out? Maybe? We'll just say it was xD) 

Let them become friends first. No one seems to understand how rare that is. Nobody actually likes or ships insta-love. Your girl and boy can LIKE each other without LIKING each other, if you know what I mean. They can get to know each other. They can spend time together. They can talk (gasp what is this travesty). They can hug each other and fight for each other and grow closer and become extremely important to each other--because that's how real life relationships, the healthy sort, work.

You don't even have to have one single kiss in book one.

Obviously if you're writing a standalone things work differently--but in standalones your timeline is different. You can even just hint at the romance and leave the ending open. It'll drive your readers crazy but it WORKS. xD 

Like everything else, make the romance real. It helps, I promise.

Once, there was a land full of good, perfect, beautiful magic users. But then--the wicked king came and eradicated it. And it's gone. And we must go on a quest to find it and return it through some cryptic ceremony where it's revealed that our main girl is the only surviving magic user. 

I have one thing to say about this, basically: Please stop. 

If you're gonna have magic (which at this point, is not just a given) then please don't do this. No quests for magic. No people groups that will die without it. Just stop this. Please. I beg thee. I can't tell you how to flip this one--just STOP *sobs*

If you can't do magic creatively, then consider not putting it in your book. DO YOU NEED IT? Will your story die without it?

Decide that and then figure out how to use it. And if you're gonna use it, for Pete's sake, let it be clearly defined. This is obviously something you're gonna have to work out in edits--I'm still not happy with the explanations of my book's magic system--but you can do it! Make sure all the rules are clear. Make sure they're in English (please. I beg thee. I don't care if you understand your fictional language--I do not. You have to explain the system to me in a way I understand, not through your fake fantasy language. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.)

Dual POVs are cool if you do them right, but I would recommend, at this point, either have lots of POVs or have one. Obviously you need to make sure they're all necessary. 

But the biggest thing I want to say is this: switching POVs to the villain's POV to give us a piece of information we already knew or to do something angsty from a side characters POV or something like that doesn't create a cliffhanger, darlin'. 

Cliffhangers are hard to pull off. You can do it by switching to your villain's POV--but ONLY if that leads into the next book with an actual plot line. It's tough. But it's doable.

My dear readers, I know you're great writers, and I have more faith in your stories than I do in the current bestsellers, if I'm being quite honest. You can write amazing books. Much of this was a roast/rant, but I know for a fact that y'all can do better than this and I just needed to get this off my chest xD 

Write the story of your heart. Write it REAL.

Make it beautiful.

Word Count: COMPLETE at 25,988 words

Page count: 100 (exactly! Wahoo!)

Chapter count: 16

Worst Dad Ever Awards: 23

References to actual in-the-Pentegreen-series stuff: 185

Sibling favoritism: too much

My sons telling me things about their powers WAAAAAY too late: 1

Number of times I've made myself cry over this book: 4
Number of assassins who inserted themselves into this story when they have no right to be present within it: 2 (and a half)

The Winter's Chill (now known as The Soldier's Gamble) (Pentegreen Series book 3)

Stats: 

Sleeping in the clothes you loved//it's such a shame we had to see them burn//and every minute of every hour, I miss you I miss you I miss you more//Bastille

THE KING'S DAUGHTER: DRAFT 6/7 (Pentegreen Series book 1)

Stats

Word count: as of right now, about 110k on the finished draft (although draft 7 is about 60k thus far)

Page count: 227 in draft 7, closer to 400 in draft 6 lol

Chapter count: 60ish I think

Angsty bois and murder girls: too many

Number of ships my readers have at this point: 9 and a half

Number of people who get stabbed in this book: 3

Occurrences of the phrase "bUt I tRuStEd YoU!": about 43291

Villains who can go die in a hole alone in the Sahara Desert: 2

Rishatta fumbled with the rope for a moment longer where her cheeks burned in stark contrast to the freezing cold of her arm. Finally he let go and jumped back like dropping a hot coal, his dark cheeks flushed almost pink beneath the scruff growing there from a lack of shaving. “That had better be enough,” he said. “And believe me when I say I’m never getting that close to you again, princess.” 

She sat down on the bed and drew her knees up to her chest. “That sounds fine with me.” If he never touched her again, it would be too soon.

That's what you get for playing with fire//I wish I was a little bit wiser//never knew my heart would be marked with an "x"//Welshly Arms

“Does it ever get easier, El? Being at war, I mean.”

“Not really.” She simpered and took another sip of the bottle. “You just have to find something that overwhelms the knowledge that you’ve killed people. Drown your conscience, and eventually, it doesn’t prick as much. It’s a nasty little thing anyway. You’ll be better off without it once you reach that point.” She giggled; a bit of the booze trickled down her chin and she wiped it off with a grimace. “I recommend the drink, myself. It’s quite helpful. I’ve used it since I was fourteen.” 

No wonder you’re such a heavyweight, Rish thought but didn’t say. She could drink every man he knew under the table.

“Your offer is tempting, I admit. But I’ll pass.” He smirked and stood up. “I’m going for a walk. That’s my vice.”

Elensha hooted. “And what a vice it is! I wouldn’t want to be stuck in your head with no distractions for hours on end. Have fun, lovie.”

Hold on and take a breath//I'll be here every step walking between the raindrops with you//Lifehouse

Esma's stomach felt like she’d forced it across a washboard. Her palms were sweaty and shaky from holding his hand for so long. But she felt lighter, happier, than she had in days. Days that had gone on for an eternity.

It was odd how the misery of being in a sickroom stretched time out to its limits, while being out and laughing with the boy she loved was always too short.

The timeline of friendship and this new, different relationship blurred together, and both of them combined into something precious. Something valuable that no one else she knew had.

Kindness//so many people passed me by, but you warmed me to my core and you left me wanting more//Bastille

NOT THE CHOSEN ONE

Stats

Word count: Still in progress at 31,140 words

Page count: 117

Currently on chapter 15

Number of dragons: 17

Only acceptable ship: 1

Gangstah bois who defy the stereotypes: 3

Cups of coffee consumed: too many to count

Favorite fashion statement of this book: hoodies

“It’s true, Cassie. You know it’s true. The Dark will destroy this entire city if it comes back, and it won’t even stop at that. It’ll take over everything. Imagine everything. Destroyed. This world a howling wasteland of black nothingness. A black pit where the Empire State Building now stands. I like power. I want to hold on to my power and my money and my influence, and my hands aren’t particularly clean. But if I want to maintain power…well, I need a world in which to do so, don’t I?” 

Cass snorted. “That’s the worst reason for saving the world I’ve ever heard.”

“What does it matter, if the world is saved?” Keo tossed back the last of his coffee like he was taking a shot and stared her dead in the eye.

You were by design a victor//know in your heart, you're alive//destiny is on your side//UNSECRET and Fleurie

Cass counted to fifteen to give him time to get situated and then clicked to Jeremy. “Ready?”

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, we’ll just say that. Goodness, this beast is hot.”

“You gonna let him talk to you like that?” Cass patted Jeremy’s neck again. “Hang on, Keo. He’ll be mad now.”

Jeremy shook himself and launched off the edge of the building. Cass hung on for dear life as the wind whistled in her ears. 

The wind, and Keo’s hysterical, girlish screaming. 

“Oh, stop,” Cass grumbled. “You’ll get used to it. It’s fun.” She banked Jeremy right, hard, so that his wing tilted downward and took her stomach with it. “Just hang on back there.”

“I admit that I am not a fan of this!” yelled Keo, but he stopped screaming.

I coulda gave up then but//then again I couldn't have 'cuz//I've traveled all this way for somethin'//Imagine Dragons

“Please?” Myles’s voice took on a plaintive, whining tone. There was no way this boy was eighteen. He had to be five. She’d have to tell Keo to sign him up for kindergarten. “If you don’t do it, Keo will kill me!”

“You sound like you want me to think this is a bad thing.”

Myles whistled, shredding her eardrum. She winced. 

“That was low, Cassie. I tried to save your life, remember?”

“Yeah, I do, and you failed worse than I could have even imagined possible. You want anything else?”

“I’m actually, uh, at your school right now.” 

“What?!” Cass looked around on instinct before remembering that she was in the ladies’ room and even Myles wasn’t crazy enough to come in here. “If you’re here to make trouble and you get caught, I swear…”

“No, no, it’s all great, I promise!” He coughed into the phone. “Everyone thinks I’m a student now and no one cares enough to check. I’m having a great time.”

“I’m going to end you,” she hissed.

Some legends are told//some turn to dust or to gold//but you will remember me for centuries//Fall Out Boy

Hope y'all enjoyed this post! :D 

The United States has fallen. Three years after the 2024 presidential election and the declaration of martial law, the nation is at war against itself. Gangs battle, civilians struggle for survival, and officials of the United Nations  thrive. West Johnston, heir to the most powerful ganglord in the country, refuses to continue the family legacy. But, in order to defeat his father, he must become him: bloodthirsty and willing to do whatever it takes for control.

West gains control by helping fellow gangsters, Nate and Simon, when they form an alliance with one of the last remaining townships in America. After years of surviving and winter fast approaching, Springtown is in desperate need of supplies from the two teenagers. When the town leader’s daughter, Rene’, is kidnapped by an unknown rival, Nate and Simon risk their reputations to save her and the town they now love. But without help from West, their rescue mission will fail.

Told in multiple bold, abrasive narratives, THE DIVIDED NATION steps into a future where brotherhood bonds must be stronger than iron to survive a broken world, and faith without courage is dust in the wind.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45150828-the-divided-nation

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07WCPBZ6Z?pf_rd_p=183f5289-9dc0-416f-942e-e8f213ef368b&pf_rd_r=Y3XA08RV18PH6APMXV8F

Honestly, I can't say enough good things about this book. It's so good and I kinda desperately need the sequel. And of course, you need it too ;) 

AUTHOR BIO

Angela R. Watts is a Christian fiction author who strives to glorify the Lord in all she does. She’s a homeschooled highschooler living at Step By Step Sanctuary, Tennessee, though with Gypsy and Norwegian in her blood, she tends to travel. She’s been writing stories since she was little, but also enjoys chores, painting, and watching sunsets.

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Author website

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1st place: hardback copy of The Divided Nation. A custom mug with a quote from the book, bookmark, and an exclusive snippet from The Infidel Books.

2nd place: paperback copy of The Divided Nation, bookmark.

3rd place: ebook copy of The Divided Nation.

THE GIVEAWAY :D

A huge congrats to Ang on her new book, and I hope you'll check it out!!!! It's so good. <33333 

Gun violence

Gun control

We need to do something

Thoughts and prayers

Statistics

March for our lives

Arm yourselves

Ban all the guns

Background checks

Mental health

End it end it end it

Enough with arbitrary "thoughts and prayers". Enough with using every shooting as an excuse to scream hysterically about gun control. Enough with political slogans and bashing the president and bashing the presidential candidates and screaming and mass hysteria that encompasses this entire nation and filling up my social media feeds with things that can't help and

ENOUGH. 

NO MORE.

It's time to stop this.

Our video games drip violence. It's not just the bad guys, either--the good guys shoot people down and the characters we play as commit murder and it's cool and the objective is to see how many people you can kill sometimes.

Our movies are full of blood and gore and it's okay that the superhero punched his best friend in the face because at least they're fighting over a cause, right? He was brainwashed...he doesn't know what he's doing. We cheer for both of them. Which one is the hero? Does it matter? The fight is amazing, that's all I care about, Mom.

We see displays of true violence--movies featuring children forced to kill each other to survive, mothers doing whatever it takes to feed their families, soldiers at war and the brutality of it--and we've become so desensitized to the violence that it's just another movie. "What about the love triangle?" we ask as we watch the little girl die on screen. "Oh, I wonder what her boyfriend is thinking right now." 

Shock value. Let's have our women strip down and submit to horrific displays of perversity on television! It's okay, they stopped being quite that bad after the first season. They realized it was too much. It's all good now. Besides, the storytelling! I bet you couldn't tell a story that compelling.

The lines of good and evil blur together in our storytelling and in our lives. Everyone could be a villain. Everyone could be a threat. And we arm ourselves and we scream about removing their arms and in the end W E   S O L V E     N O T H I N G

Because we've forgotten God.

We have embraced violence and perversity. Watch our movies. Read our books. And wonder where the gun violence and the #MeToo movement and the numbers and the statistics come from.

We kill our smallest and throw our elderly to the wolves. We don't punish crimes, we're too busy watching them happen on the news. We wail about the fact that the government doesn't help people, but we don't help them. THE PRESIDENT DOES NOTHING BUT SEND THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS!!!!!! we cry.

What are you doing?

Are you even praying?

Why aren't our churches organizing massive prayer efforts?

Why aren't our communities banding together to help the families of those who have been killed?

What about the survivors of the shootings and the PTSD that they surely grapple with? Where's the help?

What if we forgot the guns for a minute--stopped the "narrative", stopped our need to M A K E    A     S T A T E M E NT and just helped people?

The people being shot ARE PEOPLE.

The people doing the shooting ARE PEOPLE.

The issue is not the guns.

The issue is that we have forgotten the God we claim to have built our nation on.

Don't delete the past. Stop doing that. Don't villify our founders--do that and we risk forgetting everything we came from.

If you don't remember where you've come from, you repeat the past. And that's the problem here.

We have forgotten God.

Over and over and over this world forgets God and who even cares anymore???? The bywords don't include God. He's not trending on Twitter. He's not an issue that can help you win at the polls. You'll lose followers if you're unapologetic about your faith. 

Stop the violence. Stop zoning it out, buying tickets to every action movie and making excuses for why it's okay. We romanticize the violence--let's have fun and chop off people's limbs because, hey, they can grow back painlessly! "Heroism"? What's that? Everyone knows that I'm a fan of antiheroes...but what do we do when antiheroes turn into villains and that becomes the new standard for the protagonist? Someone who doesn't care about doing the right thing--someone who does whatever it takes and feels no remorse?

We forget our children. We expose them to greater and greater levels of evil, but we don't let them read the Old Testament, because "that God is too violent for my taste". The evil displayed by men in the Bible is bad for our children. It's too much to deal with. Instead of letting my kid read Judges and talking to him about how it's important that people don't do what's right in their own eyes, I'll plug him into a screen and let him watch WHATEVER THE HECK HE WANTS. After all, that's what all the other parents are doing, right?

This is how we breed violence. Make it less and less and less shocking. Make it the byword. Make it everyday life. And soon, we'll all become zombies, and the shootings won't even register as shock anymore. Irritation, maybe? But what more? Do we even care anymore? Or is there just a vague fear that we'll be next?

Wake up

Wake up 

WAKE UP

Tell me you can sit still through all of this. Tell me the guns are the issue and we should leave this to the politicians--because we all know how much they genuinely care. They want your vote. They do not care about YOU. 

Restrictions aren't the answer. Laws aren't the answer. Even retaining our guns and defending ourselves isn't the answer.

As long as we consume violence, we will let it out. 

Everyone knows Revelation 3:20 ("Behold, I stand at the door and knock...") The part that less people know is the context within this letter. It's written to the church of Laodicea. It's Jesus, talking directly to a church that once loved him and has now grown cold. Here's the context of that verse.

15 “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! 16 So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. 17 For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. 18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. 19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.'"

What if this is the state of the American church?

Neither hot nor cold???

Will we be spat out of Jesus' mouth? 

Wake up, friends. Wake up, church.

Stop sitting around crying. Stop leaving it to the politicians. Stop tweeting "thoughts and prayers". 

START PRAYING.

START DOING.

Don't let yourself be taken by the violence of this culture that is so blood-soaked. 

We are soaked in blood too--the blood of Jesus. And that is why we have to remember not to shed any more innocent blood. Without God, our culture cannot change.

We need to LIVE FOR GOD. 

Here's the rest of that letter to Laodicea:

The glass slippers might be her dreams come true...or her worst nightmare. 

High King Alexander rules the Seven Kingdoms of Tallahatchia—a divided nation on the brink of yet another war. When an invitation arrives from the king of Pohatomie, Alex knows it must be a trap, but could it also be his opportunity to unite the kingdoms?

Daemyn Rand has lived a hundred years, served an arrogant prince, fallen in love with a princess, and lost himself somewhere along the way. He has already died for his loyalty. Will standing at the high king’s side cost him his last chance to truly live?

Elara Ashen is a lowly, miserable servant. All she wants is to spend even one night in a fancy dress dancing with the high king. When she is offered a pair of glass slippers, it seems that all her dreams have come true.

But dreams have a price, and gifts can be curses in disguise. What will it cost to stop this curse from tearing Tallahatchia apart yet again?

Fairy tales meet the Appalachian Mountains in this adventurous fantasy retelling of the classic Cinderella story.

Amazon//Goodreads

Facebook party announcement!!!! There will be giveaways and other books available and lots of Cinderella themed stuff :D LINK HERE

Tricia Mingerink has always been one of my favorite authors of all time, and this latest book of hers does NOT disappoint. I still think I prefer the Blades of Acktar series to this one, but Dagger's Sleep and Midnight's Curse has such complex and beautiful characters, and the setting is BRILLIANT. So now I should probably write a proper review...

In terms of characters, Alex is one of the least likable and yet most likable characters I've ever read about. He's one of those deeply complex and wonderful people who has so many human flaws, and yet is amazingly beautiful. His battle with himself is so real and I love it. Even if he's kind of a pest, he's amazing.

And DAEMYN. Oh my word, the boy of my dreams. I adore this child. I can't say too much about him without spoiling the first book, if you haven't read it, but OH I love him more than I can say. <3 <3 <3 <3 Such a wonderful character.

Rosanna wasn't in this one as much and I missed her, but the scenes she was in were amazing.

And then there was Elara! And she was AWESOME. Another super-flawed, super-unlikable character, who really had to come to grips with the fact that maybe something was wrong in her heart. I loved this version of Cinderella, where the Cinderella character is the selfish, angry one, and the dancing and slippers are a curse rather than a blessing. Possibly one of the most unique Cinderella stories I've ever read. I LOVED IT.

I admit, every time Terrence the Buffalo Boy showed up, I had a mini heart attack, because I too have a character of that name (Terrance with an A, not an E, of course, but similar enough) and he's nowhere near as sweet as this Terrence. I adore Tricia's characters so much and Terrence is brilliant. BRILLIANT.

The setting of this book, too...I love the way the fairy tales and their traditional settings end up set in the Appalachian mountains. So unique and awesome and just AHHHHH.

Honestly, this whole book is amazing. You should DEFINITELY read it. 4 stars!!!!

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I loved this book! And I hope you enjoyed this post. Do you like Tricia's books? Let me know in the comments! (And Tricia, again, I'm SO sorry that I forgot to post yesterday...*winces* Hope you can forgive me...)