All tagged Entangled Publishing

Review: The Reece Malcolm List by Amy Spalding

Review: The Reece Malcolm List by Amy Spalding

Sarah Moon
Books
We walk outside to the parking lot. Sunshine and blue skies. Again. I open my mouth to let her know about the name mistake, except that I really like the thought of being Devan Malcolm. And if I tell her, she’ll call up New City, get it fixed, and I’ll have to go back to being Devan Mitchell. And suddenly she’s the last person I want to be.

When just the right book comes along at just the right time, it's a real treat. Such is the case of Amy Spalding's debut, The Reece Malcolm List, which ticked so very many of my want-to-read boxes. 

Devan Mitchell finds herself suddenly thrust into an unfamiliar world when she's shipped to Los Angeles from a small town near St. Louis to live with the mother she never knew following the death of her father. Devan knew very little about her mother, aside from that she's a best-selling novelist who seemingly never had an interest in a relationship with her daughter.

When she arrives in L.A., Devan's world transforms. Always an accomplished singing and hardcore musical theater fan, she's enrolled in a private performing arts high school where rather than being the weird musical girl, she's kind of, well,normal. 

Devan chronicles the little bits of information she learns about her unusual mother in a notebook, while navigating her new, vibrant world. There's a bit of romance and a lot of unusual and realistic family issues explored in this memorable debut with a knock-out authentic teen voice. 

If I were to make a Devan-style list about The Reece Malcolm List, my review would look something like this...

Things I Love About The Reece Malcolm List

The "New Adult" Category: Thoughts + Questions

The "New Adult" Category: Thoughts + Questions

Sarah Moon
In the News, Opinion

Portrait of St Mary's College tennis team, Charters Towers, Queensland

Nearly every week this summer we saw news of a self-published author’s “new adult” novel’s acquisition and reissue by a mainstream publisher, setting off a flurry of speculation that “new adult” is the next big thing. This was further bolstered by three digital-first imprints or publishers putting out the call for submissions in this category.

Significant publishing deals and emerging publishers seeking out “new adult” titles aside, I’m not entirely sure that it really is the next big thing—or that an entirely new category is even necessary.

The term “new adult” first emerged in 2009 when St. Martin’s Press hosted a contest searching for manuscripts featuring protagonists in the 18 to mid-twenties age range. It was touted as, 

…fiction similar to YA that can be published and marketed as adult—a sort of an “older YA” or “new adult.”

In essence, it was a response to the phenomenon of adults reading teen fiction and a search for a method to best capitalize on that audience that discovered young adult fiction. Ultimately, St. Martin’s declined to acquire any of the manuscripts they received as part of the contest; two finalists were later acquired by other publishers in the young adult category (Girl of Fire and Thorns and The Treachery of Beautiful Things).

Fast-forward three years (and I think this timing is significant), ebooks have gained meaningful marketshare—14 percent of units sold in 2011 versus four percent in 2010 (with genre fiction, notably romance, often exceeding the average) and self-publishing has become more normalized. Books like Easy (which I recommend), Slammed, Beautiful Disaster and Flat-Out Love are self-publishing “new adult” success stories, and are all now published by traditional publishers. Each of these books tells a story of an older teen and are considered “edgier” that typical YA fare (I do not agree with this assessment, however—there’s a wide range of edginess in the teen market). 

All signs point to “new adult” becoming a full-fledged fiction category, right? 

Well, I don’t know. But, I have some questions.