There’s just something about Emma Mills’s writing. I don’t read a lot of contemporary YA because it doesn’t do much for me, but her stuff does. It’s just so lovely and well-written and full of characters that seem very real, and her writing is always funny and addictive.
This one also has a fun premise that really called to me. Our main character, Nina, lives with her mom and two sisters in a small Indianapolis apartment. Her dad is a rather famous morning radio host who now lives in L.A. (The book opens with her mom being proposed to by her longtime boyfriend who all the sisters like, a dentist they call the Dantist, because his name is Dan.) She is a senior in HS and is now taking a radio broadcasting class. She also happens to live in the same building as her longtime childhood friend, Jamie, who she had a falling out with the year before. And now they are in the same group in the radio class, and with two other students, have to produce a semester long radio show.
I’m not making it sound very exciting, and maybe it won’t be to some people, but all the little details about their radio show were so good, and Mills go into just the right amount of detail. I also loved the other two members of their show, and the show itself, which evolves in a fun way across the book.
Hilariously, there is a fake childhood game in this book called Kingdom, where Jamie would pretend to be a prince called Hapless who was always getting into trouble and having to be saved by the three girls, who were witches and adventurers and bakers, and Emma Mills’s new book (which I found out about while I was reading this) is going to be taking place as if those characters were real and living in another world. The main character is Nina’s alter ego, and Hapless is her love interest. Honestly can’t wait.
[4.5 stars]
