Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

Dear Ms. Collins,

I have no doubt that many people will compare this book to the Japanese novel, Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. How can they not? Both books take place in dystopian futures and feature oppressive governments that require children to compete in a last man standing survival game. And while it’s true there are similarities in premise and plot, I think your book brings enough new to the table that it’s easily one of the must read young adult novels of the year.

Set in the future, The Hunger Games takes place long after natural disasters, war, disease, and famine destroyed society as we know it. From the ruins of North America rose the nation of Panem, which consisted of a powerful Capitol ruling over thirteen surrounding Districts. The Districts didn’t like the Capitol’s oppressive rule very much and soon rose up together in a rebellion.

The results were disastrous. The Capitol quelled the uprising in twelve Districts and completely annihilated the thirteenth. As punishment, the Capitol created the Hunger Games. Each year, every District must send one boy and one girl …

Dear Ms. Brooks,

I had initially become interested in reading this book after seeing it listed at Fictionwise as a pre-sale item. Right after that it dropped off their site and the possibility of an ebook seemed to vanish into thin air. Don’t know what happened with that but when I spotted it in my local Waldenbooks - and on sale! - I clutched it to my bosoms and headed for the cashier. It turns out to have been an excellent purchase.

On page 195 of my copy, you have a character neatly summarize what I think is the main theme of the book. The fact that I’m about to hand type half a page of text shows how meaningful I think it is.

“You’re right, I said. “It would be something, to be back there, when the haggadah was till just some family’s book, a thing to be used, before it became an exhibit, locked up in a vitrine…”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Raz said. He was poking at the vindaloo suspiciously. He served himself a scant spoonful and loaded the rest of his plate with dal. “It’s still doing …

Dear Ms. Pfeffer,

Your previous novel, Life As We Knew It, completely blew me away. Your vision of earth overcome by a disrupted climate affected me in a way that hasn’t happened in a very long time. And since I can’t get enough of apocalyptic settings, no matter the genre, I was beside myself when excitement when I heard you were writing a companion novel.

The premise of both Life As We Knew It and the dead and the gone is deceptively simple. An asteroid crashes into the moon but instead of being the simple astronomical event previously predicted, the larger-than-expected asteroid knocks the moon out of its orbit. It doesn’t crash into earth or anything so dramatic; it just shifts the orbit closer. But sometimes the simplest things can have the most disastrous results. A closer lunar orbit means a stronger gravitational pull, which leads to tsunamis and volcanic eruptions in places where tsunamis and volcanic eruptions typically don’t occur, in addition to those places where they do.

And those are just the natural disasters. Humankind is very good at creating its own brand of disaster, and this comes in the form of widespread panic. Gas, …

Dear Ms. Vaughn:

This was a top seller at Samhain’s My Bookstore and More a few weeks ago. I’m always curious about what other people are reading and so I bought the book blindly (no cover, no blurb) and I had never read you before.

India Powers is a woman who has spent her whole life pleasing her impossible parents only to be overlooked for her less successful older brother. She even went so far as to get engaged to a man she doesn’t love because it was the one thing that really pleased her parents. When India finds her fiance in bed with another woman, she decides that no amount of parental approval is worth a lifetime of unhappiness. She breaks off the engagement to the fury of her parents and heads off to take a vacation on a remote island.

Rafe Santiago and Grant Thompson have been best friends from childhood. Now adults and business partners, Rafe and Grant are weathering Rafe’s nasty divorce. During the marriage, Rafe’s wife constantly made plays for Grant, sometimes attempting to pit the two friends against each other. One …

Dear Ms. Cross:

I read this one against my will. I had started your last book, One More Time but then stopped after the first three chapters which featured a lawyer basically throwing a case because he believed his client was guilty. When I received All or Nothing, I was sure I didn’t want to read it but I read the back blurb
Jen Maitland never had any use for handsome guys with easy charm until she met Zach. He’s the perfect fake date to end her mother’s matchmaking scheme before it starts. The only problem is that Zach isn’t as predictable as he appears…

Zach Coxwell hates commitment, but loves a challenge. Like the pretty bar waitress who turned him down flat for a date-only to invite him to her family’s Thanksgiving dinner. Zach knows he can make Jen smile, and he’s betting that he can unravel her mysteries.
I thought I would give it a try and read just the first chapter. The first chapter turned into three or more and I found myself lugging the book around the house and reading it covertly in my office.

Jen Maitland is a young …

Dear Ms. Rosoff,

When a book has won a slew of awards including ALA Best Books for Young Adults 2005 and Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book of the Year, and has even been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, it hardly needs more accolades from me.

Here I am regardless, writing this open letter mainly to say that I think the folks who hand out these prizes were on to something, and readers with a taste for young adult fiction with a touch of romance, or who like their dystopias served up with a scoop of wry humor on the side, might enjoy this book as much as I did.

Whether How I Live Now takes place in an alternate present or in the very near future isn’t clear, but it doesn’t matter, because the world it is set in feels so familiar that when things start to go wrong they’re disturbingly convincing. The book begins when Daisy, its fifteen year old American narrator, arrives in England. Daisy tells her story in long sentences and a wry tone.

Anyway, I'm looking and looking and everyone's leaving and there's no signal on my …