Wednesday, May 7, 2014

"Catch a Falling Star"

Sourcebooks Fire published Kim Culbertson’s award winning first YA novel Songs for a Teenage Nomad (2010, originally Hip Pocket Press, 2007) and her second YA novel Instructions for a Broken Heart (2011) which was named a Booklist 2011 Top Ten Romance Title for Youth and won the 2012 Northern California Book Award for YA Fiction.

Culbertson applied the Page 69 Test to Catch a Falling Star, her latest novel, and reported the following:
Nothing ever happens in Little, CA. Which is just the way 17 year old Carter Moon likes it. She likes her life working in her parents’ café, stargazing with her friends, and not thinking about the big world of her future. When Hollywood arrives in the form of a different sort of star – teenage superstar turned PR mess Adam Jakes – to film a Christmas movie (in June), Carter wants nothing to do with his glittery life. But when Hollywood makes her an offer she can’t refuse (as Adam’s fake girlfriend to improve his PR), Carter has to finally contemplate a life beyond Little. On page 69, Carter has introduced Adam to her Hollywood-obsessed friend, Chloe, who freaks out in the middle of Little Eats, Carter’s café, at the sight of this famous boy. Mortified, Carter asks Adam if this happens a lot to which he responds, “Yes. Yes, that happens quite a lot.” She’s shocked at how he can just keep eating his sandwich, even as the café goes into red alert around him. Watching him, Carter starts to have her first taste of the darker side of fame. As their three weeks together unfold, Carter begins to realize that sometimes life goes off script. Perhaps, she also finds, this might actually be the point of living.
Visit Kim Culbertson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue