glamour inn

meltzer:

fuckyeahsassymagazine:

I just ordered this book and I’m so stoked to read it. I knew nothing of it until I read How Sassy Changed My Life and discovered  it was excerpted in Sassy and became so popular among readers that it was published shortly after. (What can’t they do?)

The author is Blake Nelson, not to be confused with the actor Tim Blake Nelson. I only mention this because I was buggin out for a hot second thinking Tim Blake Nelson was writing young adult novels without my knowledge.

Anyway, I’m sad I didn’t know about this book in Jr. High. I have a feeling Blake Nelson may have rivaled Paula Danziger for my main author jam. I think we should start a youth outreach program that involves sending copies of this to any girl with a copy of Twilight.

This book came out the summer between my senior year of high school and going off to college. And because it was about a teen girl who discovered herself via bands and outrage and vintage clothes, I felt a deep and probably somewhat narcissistic connection to the book. I was just rereading favorite parts of it earlier this summer and Blake gets the girl voice so perfect and nails this certain kind of teenage transformation—one that I know isn’t universal but was very true to my own adolescence—where you start dressing a certain way and spending all your time at shows and your crushes are guys in bands instead of actors and you genuinely stop wanting to go to high school parties. Plus, Blake Nelson was one of Kara’s and my favorite interviews. When he said he felt the nineties were all about girls and it was all about Christina Kelly, Kim Gordon, and Kathleen Hanna, we were basically putty in his hands. 

There’s a copy of this book sitting about four feet from me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read it. Possibly thousands.

Just the other day I was thinking about how bunk it is that Nelson never wrote the sequel where Andrea goes off to Wellington.