Celebrating BOOMERANG

As Donna mentioned yesterday, we're celebrating last week's publication of BOOMERANG by Noelle August. 

Had I come across Boomerang as just another NA on the shelf at my local indie, I would have loved it.  It’s smart, fresh, has a full cast of three-dimensional characters, great dialogue, fabulous sexual tension and revolves around a line of work so unlike my own, it makes the perfect escape.

But of course, my introduction to Boomerang was through our very own Veronica Rossi, one half of the two-woman team that makes up Noelle August, author of Boomerang.  August’s other half, Lorin Oberwerger, is also a friend.  So I got a completely different perspective on both the novel and the writers when I read this fabulously fun tale.

I fell in love with Mia’s outlook, her family, and her friends.  And because I know Lorin a little, I knew where some of Mia’s personality quirks came from.  Her favorite book?  The Phantom Tollbooth.  Lorin and I bonded over this a long time ago, and I cheered when Mia mentioned it.

Ethan is kind and thoughtful, athletic and driven.  Veronica writes a stellar boy voice, so though I didn’t hear any of V in Ethan, I did feel her presence.  Ethan is a good guy—just the kind of person V would want her sons to be.  Just the kind of person I wish I’d met when I was Mia’s age.

I loved that I could follow Mia and Ethan on some of their adventures in Los Angeles, even though I’ve only been there four times in my life—three to the annual SCBWI conference.  I could follow them, because the fictional Boomerang offices were located very near to the conference hotel, and some of the blind “dates” that Mia and Ethan go on are in local restaurants—places where the Muses have had birthday parties, agent-y dinners and just plain fun.  Reading about them was like being there again, my friends around the table with me, drinking cosmos, spinning tales, and laughing until our stomachs were weak and our heads were light.

I know that the book is not the author.  I know that we all write entirely new people into being, but we imbue them with pieces of ourselves.  I love that the contemporary setting can showcase these little gems in ways that history or science fiction can’t. 

I would love this book as a summer read because it’s sharp, fun and sexy and feels pitch-perfect to the age and situation.  I love it even more because it gives me a chance to get to know my friends better—through their characters.