It's Monday night at 9pm, which means I could be doing any number of things: watching the Jets vs. Dolphins game on ESPN, reading art history, reading Deb Caletti's latest novel, or catching up on the Pam/Jim wedding, which I may just have to Hulu. Unfortunately, I'm a Giants fan, and grew up with a front row seat to the Giants vs. Jets debate at my grandma's house on various family occasions, in which my father and uncle fought over the TV in my grandma's basement. So for me, while I believe in the Jets more than the Dolphins, there are better games to watch. The art history PDF file won't download, so that's my excuse for that. And I figure I should actually read some of the Deb Caletti novel before I comment about it. As for Pam and Jim, my Hulu experience thus far is nonexistant, and my internet is failing me so that might wait a while. I heard it was both hilarious and sentimental, and I'm sure it's well worth the wait. To be honest, I've never watched a TV show religiously, so you can't blame me now for not watching The Office. I'll warn you that I'm a sucker for American Idol and it only took one episode (top 7) last season to get me hooked again.

The real reason for this post, though, is the novel. If someone's investing time in the blog, they might as well want to read the novel. So what's it about? This, any writer will tell you, is a hard task. You want to go on and on about all your fantastic subplots and how they came to you while you were debating over which brand of frozen pizza to buy. What we want you to do, though, is buy the book. So here's my attempt. It's only the thousandth time I've tried to explain it.

Keep In Touch is a young adult coming-of-age story set in a small town outside Charleston, SC. When 18-year-old Alex Madison is uprooted from her suburban home in Ohio against her will, forced to move in with her father who walked out on the family sans explanation three years ago, she's more than bitter. While not entirely content in Ohio, it's just two months from graduation and Alex won't be participating in any senior activities. Now in South Carolina, she's forced to confront what brought her there--the death of her mother and younger sister--as well as what made her father leave. It's a story about the awkward, struggling father-daughter relationship on the surface, but there's more than that. There's Casey, a 19-year-old boy working with her father whose persistence annoys Alex. And there's Alex's past, which she's tried to ignore, but with Casey, it's just too hard. Can she finish out the summer and go to school with no strings attached, or will she be forced to reconcile with her father, uncover the missing pieces, and let Casey into her life?