Carly Reads: Alumni Edition with Robin Brande

Hello Readers!

Remember on Monday when I said I had a really exciting announcement to make up for my absence last week? Well today is the big day! Today I am introducing a brand new Carly Reads feature. I’ve been thinking a lot about our TBF alumni lately. Over the past six years, we’ve had so many AMAZING authors attend TBF and although they are not all returning for TBF 2012, they’ll forever be part of the TBF family. As I was scrolling through my Goodreads list last week, I realized that almost half the books I’ve read in the last year are written by authors who’ve attended TBF in the past.  Therefore, today I introdice Carly Reads: Alumni Edition. Once I week, I will review a book written by a TBF alum who isn’t attending TBF 2012, but will always be a part of the TBF legacy.

I couldn’t think of anyone better to kick of Carly Reads: Alumni Edition than Robin Brande. Robin is one of my all-time favorite authors. All of her books are incredible and she is totally awesome.  Recently, I read “Into the Parallel,” the first book in Robin’s in-progress “The Parallel” series, and I LOVED it. REALLY, REALLY, REALLY loved it. I gushed about it on Goodreads … and Amazon … and Barnes & Noble.com, but it’s definitely a book deserving of more gushing.

So here I go (I hope you’re making a ‘drum roll’ noise right now) … Carly Reads: Alumni Edition presents a review of “Into the Parallel” by Robin Brande.

Description: Science has become the new magic . . . High school senior and amateur physicist Audie Masters has discovered what no other physicist has been able to prove: that parallel universes do exist, and there is a way to journey into them. She also discovers something else: a parallel version of herself, living the kind of life Audie never could have imagined for herself. Now Audie is living that life, too, full of adventure, romance, and reality-bending science. It’s all more than she could have hoped for – until something goes wrong.

I don't even know where to begin reviewing Robin Brande's latest book, so let me start with this: it was, like everything she has written, excellent. "Into the Parallel" had the same spot-on characterization, emotion, and dialogue that I have come to expect from Brande, but it also added aspects of reality that read like fantasy to mix. "Into the Parallel" will undoubtedly satisfy both fantasy fans and the contemporary realistic fiction crowd with its mix of quantum physics that seems too crazy to be true and a smart, adventurous narrator who couldn't be more true-to-life.

Brande effectively brings some of the most complex theories of quantum physics down to a level that the average reader can understand, and, as she's done in "Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature" and "Fat Cat," shown that science is way more cool than the every-day high school chemistry teacher may lead you to believe. With a cliffhanger ending that has me counting down the days until book two is released, "Into the Parallel" has me shouting off the rooftops that everyone should read this novel.

"Into the Parallel" is available as an ebook on Barnes&Noble.com, Amazon, or Smashwords, or as a paperback through Barnes&Noble.com and Amazon.