Still hard to sell this one...

When I say "sell" I mean convince folks to check out of the library.  Flock is the final book in the Stork trilogy by Wendy Delsol.  I love these books.  I loved this final book.  I love all of the characters.  But I just can't seem to find a good way to book-talk it.
"This book is awesome!  Full of magic and romance, too.  See there's this girl Kat, and she moves from LA to a little town in Minnesota and learns that she is a stork..."
"No thanks."
"What?  Wait it is awesome!  I mean she isn't a real bird, she doesn't turn into one.  I mean, she could but...anyway, she is part of a gang of storks who place the unborn souls with women."
"Um.  Weird."
But I just wish SOMEONE would let me sell this book to them, because I know they will love it.  I love Delsol's characters.  Kat is funny and smart and just charming.  Jack, her boyfriend, a descendant of Jack Frost, he is so, well, cool!
I am sad to see the series end.  But looking forward to anything written by Delsol.  Read these books!  Seriously!  You'll love them!
Also, this is my first in my Reading Road Trip Challenge!   Minnesota, of course!

Frosty the Snow Shovel

There was this game show, a new evolution of it may still be on today, but I remember seeing it when I was a little kid, it was called Tic-Tac-Dough. The questions were unreal easy. Unreal. But the people on the show....they always seemed to have trouble with the answers. I remember my dad and I commenting once that we were sure the next question would be:

"This fictional character, made of snow, came to life one day due to the magic in an old top hat. He was Frosty the Snow..."

To which the contestant would reply, "Ball" or "Shovel" or "Storm."

Frost is the sequel to Stork, which I really loved and I loved Frost, too, even though not all of it takes place in the USA. Some of it takes place in Iceland, some in Greenland and some in a mythical land that I can't spell or pronounce. Also a lot of the names of places and people in Frost make the book read a bit like the beginning of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. You know, the part that everyone says just to skip over to get to the good part. Even though seven or eight different people have told me to do that, I never have. I just gave up on the book.

But there was no way I could have nor any reason to give up on Frost. Kat and Jack are having some relationship troubles, but it goes way beyond the typical high school drama. Jack is being wooed by a truly evil, icy broad and our favorite Stork has to help him wake up and see the danger.

Great stuff, good adventure, great characters, a lot of fun. I wonder if there will be more in the series, I hope so!

The Birds

A little while ago my dear friend Kara posted on FB that she wished that authors would focus on one book, instead of a new trilogy, series, etc. At first,I found that to be true as I read Stork. Don't get me wrong, I really loved Stork! I recommend it completely to people who liked Nancy Werlin's Impossible and Extraordinary. I thought it was a fast read, even though it is over 300 pages. I thought it was different and cool. And it takes place in the most awesome of the 50- Minnesota!
Kat is originally from LA but her parents are divorcing and she and her mom have moved to Norse Fall, Minnesota, her mom's home town, to start life over. Kat is having a bit of a hard time adjusting to Norse Falls, as you can imagine, it is WAY different from LA. The thing that sets Kat apart from other YA characters who have been through similar situations, Kat is not a jerk about it. Her dad cheated on her mom. She's mad at him, but doesn't hate him. Her mom moved her off to the hinterlands to a tiny little where she works in her grandpa's general store and goes to school with dudes who all wear flannel and girls who don't know Michael Kors from Michael Jackson, and she could be a huge, spoiled brat about this. She's normal, not perfect, but she's a decent, decent kid. A real kid. A normal kid. Well, kinda. She's also a stork.
Yeah.
It sounds really weird, doesn't it? Okay. It IS really weird. But it just fits, it just seems to make sense!
When I was almost finished with Stork I realized that it has a sequel, Frost, which I ordered from the library. At first I was really sad and I thought right away about Kara's FB status. But once I finished Stork I realized that while Stork will continue, the book was good enough on it's own. It didn't end with one of those cliff-hanger deals like The Line. It was a solid solo book. So maybe, if authors are going to write a series, that's great- as long as the books can also stand alone, like Stork. Great characters. Great book and now that I'm all done with it, I'm glad that I'll have the opportunity to read more about Kat and her Minnesota adventures.