The Secret Year, Ryan Chin, and Hooverphonic

My full week of doctor's appointments last week went as well as could be expected. I am now scheduled to have knee surgery on March 12th. Scarlett's ankle surgery went smoothly, and she went back to school today like normal.

This week is promising to be snow filled. We already have a thick coating of ice and snow on the ground here to the point that I'm stuck here. I can't get my van out of our very long and uphill sloping driveway. I had to cancel appointments for today and tomorrow since I can't get anywhere, and they are calling for more snow tonight, tomorrow, and Wednesday. I'm going to take a wild guess that the kids will have snow days at least tomorrow and Wednesday, possibly even on Thursday. I could be stuck for a week or longer! Well, I suppose I'll have to use that time to hunker down and work more on The Council. Maybe I'll even finish reading Dear John so I can go see the movie soon.

Speaking of reading books, today's topic of blogging is the newly released book The Secret Year by Jennifer R. Hubbard. I read this book last week and was thrilled with it. Scarlett is reading it now and is loving it too. It is a short book, only 192 pages, but worth the few hours it takes to read it.

The premise of the book is that two teenagers, one poor boy (Colt) and one rich girl (Julia), have this secret relationship for a year up until her sudden death in a car accident. After her death, he is distraught at his loss and looking for answers to his questions about what happened. Shortly after her death, her brother brings Colt a notebook she had kept with letters written to Colt that she never gave him, like a journal of their time together. The notebook gives him a deeper insight into how she felt about him and why she never broke up with her rich boyfriend the whole time that she and Colt were secretly together.

This book is engrossing and compelling, hooking you into Colt's world of pain and loss right from the beginning. I added it to my "I'm Reading" app on Facebook and gave it five stars. This book's author is represented by the awesome agent Nathan Bransford, whose blog is where I first heard of it. I have to say that he has excellent taste as this is a terrific book.

One other blog I'd like to mention today belongs to the amazingly talented Ryan Chin. He is a multimedia genius who brings life to his words and the short videos he does. Check it out here. Ryan is one of the great people I've met online who love to write, and I wanted to make a mention of him on my blog to help attract others to the work he does that I love.

The music of the moment today is on my iTunes library. The band is Hooverphonic, a New Age electronica group, and the CD is Blue Wonder Power Milk. The current song is "Magenta". I got the CD from the library just to see if I would like it and have found that their music is very soothing and interesting. I ripped it to iTunes so I could continue to listen to it.

Tomorrow will be Tidbit Tuesday, and I hope to find something of interest to share with you! See you then.