Guest Post: YA Author's Appreciation featuring Anna of Books To Brighten Your Mood and Simone Elkeles

❝YA AUTHOR'S APPRECIATION FEATURING❞

SIMONE ELKESE

©ANNA @ BOOKS TO BRIGHTEN YOUR MOOD

Hello and Happy Holidays first of all! Before saying anything else I just have to thank Suz for her amazing idea and for creating this feauture! I'm really flattered that you considered me to participate!

So, my name is Anna and I'm the blogger behind Books to Brighten your Mood and this is my first ever guest post, so forgive any awkwardness I'm sure will be visible by the end of it! I'm 26 years old and I live in Athens, Greece. Reading is essentially a second nature to me, so blogging just came along my being introduced to different genres and finding amazing recommendations through other blogs, so I thought of creating my own place and maybe introduce in turn to other people some of the books I love!

For the YA Author's Appreciation Event I could speak for noone else but one of my favorite ever YA authors: Simone Elkeles!!!

I mean this author is trully so amazing that anything she has written goes automatically in my TBR list! I just love everything about the way she delivers her stories, the characters she creates just stick to my mind and in overall, picking a book of hers means that I won't be able to put it down as soon as I pick it.

I'll never forget the day I received my copy of Perfect Chemistry! A good friend of mine had just read it and insisted that I should immediatelly go grab my own. And for that, I am forever grateful to her!

What made Perfect Chemistry so special to me wasn't the fact that it was my first YA contemporary book that I enjoyed. Granted, it was among the first but what made it so special was the sensitivity with which Simone Elkeles handled delicate issues in this book that along with a riveting story had me glued to the pages of the book.

Elkeles just has the undeniable ability to create well developed and memorable characters and I'm not talking about the main ones only...I remember that I just wanted to learn more about Alex's brothers and I didn't even knew back then that this book would be part of a trilogy. I just picked it solely on my friend's recommendation without knowing anything about the author or having read any reviews. And that way I was completely lost in the magic of this book. And not only that, but by the end of it, it was like Alex and Brittany were my own friends.

Apart from that, what makes Simone Elkeles so special an author to me is the fact that she knows how to stir the feelings she intends on her readers. Not many authors can claim they can achieve that. She just takes her readers along her characters' journey and while reading her books you can actually feel and understand her characters and their motives. Either you like her story or not,noone can say that her characters act in a non consistent way.

For all that, Simone Elkeles is among my favorite YA authors and one whose work I trully admire. She was the reason I started frantically searching for any similar stories out there as soon as I finished Perfect Chemistry and the reason I was stupidly grinning for almost an hour after I finished reading her story. So, even if she didn't introduce me to the YA contemporary genre she managed to make me obsessed over the genre!

Thanks Suz for having me over at your place! I had a really great time!