Me on Waiting on Wednesday (1)

Waiting On Wednesday is hosted every week by Jill at Breaking the Spine. The purpose of this is to spotlight a soon-to-be-released book that you really want to read but haven't yet. "Waiting On" Wednesday will also give bloggers an opportunity to share ideas for our TBR lists.

 

And it's my first time doing this, too. :D

Title: Matched

Author: Ally Condie

Publisher: Dutton Juvenille

Release Date: November 30, 2010

Pages: 366 (Hardcover)

From Goodreads:

In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s barely any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one . . . until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow—between perfection and passion.

Matched is a story for right now and storytelling with the resonance of a classic.

This book sounds amazing. The synopsis somehow reminds me of a semester when I read a lot of utopian/dystopian speculative fiction, like Brave New World. Add the romantic element, the torn between what's expected and what Cassia wants to do, and I'm hooked. There's been a lot of positive buzz for this book and I'm anxious to read it. I'm wondering if I should just buy it instead of waiting for Christmas. ;)

Title: Anna and the French Kiss

Author: Stephanie Perkins

Publisher: Dutton

Release Date: December 2, 2010

Pages: 384 (Hardcover)

From Goodreads:

Anna was looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. So she's less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris — until she meets Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all . . . including a serious girlfriend.

But in the City of Light, wishes have a way of coming true. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with their long-awaited French kiss? Stephanie Perkins keeps the romantic tension crackling and the attraction high in a debut guaranteed to make toes tingle and hearts melt.

Again, I don't read a lot of contemporary YA, but something about this just drew me in. Maybe it's the mix of romance and (hopefully) humour and Paris. Not long ago I read Rachel Hawthorne's A Year in Europe: Three Novels about 3 friends who go off to different countries for a year abroad and it seemed to rekindle my love of sweet funny YA romance with no paranormal stuff.