One Day, I'll Tweet This

There was a writing symposium at UVU this past weekend. I was only able to go to some of the workshops on Thursday, but I loved every minute of it. I took one of my YA books, The Princess and the Hound, to get signed by the author, Mette Harrison. Since it was the actual book signing time, I only took that one instead of all three that I own by her. I went up to her after the Vampires are NOT Your Boyfriend panel, and with sweaty hands and a racing heart, I asked her to sign my book. She was very nice and wrote a cute little message. Day made.

But there's more! The next day, my beautiful roommate went to more When she went to get them signed Mette asked what name to put. My roommate explained that she was actually getting them signed for her roommate who had asked Mette to sign a book the day before. Well then Mette smiled and said something along the lines of, "Oh, I remember her. I Tweeted about her yesterday." So my fantastic roommate came home with my two other books signed, and found Mette's Tweet. She showed me when I got home and I was on cloud nine! I WAS TWEETED ABOUT BY AN AUTHOR! So incredibly cool. And, look! I have the proof! I am the woman mentioned in the first full Tweet on her feed.

Yeah, that's what's up. :D

Book Review: The Princess and The Bear by Mette Ivie Harrison

This is the sequel to The Princess and The Hound. It was fantastic. The story of the animal magic continues with the hound and the bear from the first book. They are sent - now in human form - back in time to fight the unmagic. The unmagic is basically death and destruction. It sucks out not only the magic, but the life of any living thing that it touches. The hound takes on the name Chala and the bear becomes King Richon again - a life he has not enjoyed for 200 years. Together they travel through his kingdom, seeing all the sorrow his lack of appropriate ruling has brought. And King Richon resolves to be a better person - a king his people can look up to.

Once again, Harrison succeeded in writing a beautiful novel. The magic is still a bit tricky to understand and sometimes I felt like she rushed through parts of the story and it made the scene hard to take in. It was 100% clean. I really enjoyed this novel and I highly recommend it.

Book Review: The Princess and The Hound by Mette Ivie Harrison

I got this novel for Christmas. I had sort of heard about it before, but I really didn't know anything about it. But it was fantastic!

The story is told from Prince George's point of view. It starts out in his childhood, and we basically watch him grow up. George, like his mother, is blessed/cursed with the animal magic. He can talk to animals by learning their language. But animal magic is frowned on in their country, so George has to learn to keep it hidden at a very young age. Growing up with a secret like that is not easy, and it is one of the things that causes George to be insecure about himself. When George is 17, he is betrothed to Princess Beatrice, from the neighboring country. He has heard rumors about her, the strangest of which is that she keeps a hound with her at all times - they even sleep in the same bed. Many people of her kingdom think she is odd. George doesn't expect to love his queen, this marriage is simply for political reasons, but when he meets Beatrice, he realizes they may have more in common than either one expected.

I really loved this book. The tone was beautiful throughout the whole thing. Some ideas of the animal magic were a bit hard to take, but I guess that could be the case with any sort of magic. I also found two very obvious typos, which always bugs me. But, it was wonderfully written and I devoured all 410 pages in about 24 hours. It was completely clean and I highly recommend it.

Happy Reading!