What is C. K. Kelly Martin reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: C. K. Kelly Martin, author of My Beating Teenage Heart.

Her entry begins:

I’m very happy to have the chance to talk about what I’ve been reading lately because for the last several months I’ve been weaving in and out of Australian author John Marsden’s outstanding young adult series that began with Tomorrow When the War Began. Since the seven books that compose the series were all released between 1993 and 1999 I’m not sure if they’re too recent to be regarded as classics but they certainly feel that way. They have a timeless quality that, I think, will make them still feel relevant in another forty years. I also believe adult readers would enjoy the series just as much as teen ones because Marsden doesn’t pull his punches. There’s some really tough stuff in these books. They’re not graphic but they’re extremely realistic and suspenseful yet emotionally nuanced too. That’s a...[read on]

About My Beating Teenage Heart, from the publisher:

Ashlyn Baptiste is falling. One moment she was nothing—no memories, no self—and then suddenly, she's plummeting through a sea of stars. Is she in a coma? She doesn't remember dying, and she has no memories of the life she left behind. All she knows is that she's trapped in a consciousness without a body and she's spending every moment watching a stranger.

Breckon Cody's on the edge. He's being ripped apart by grief so intense it literally hurts to breathe. On the surface, Breckon is trying to hold it together for his family and his girlfriend, but underneath he's barely hanging on.

Even though she didn't know him in life, Ashlyn sees Breckon's pain, and she's determined to find a way help him. As her own distressing memories emerge from the darkness, she struggles to communicate with the boy who can't see her, but whose life is suddenly intertwined with hers. In alternating voices of the main characters, My Beating Teenage Heart paints a devastatingly vivid picture of both the heartbreak and the promise of teenage life—a life Ashlyn would do anything to recover and Breckon seems desperate to destroy—and will appeal to fans of Sarah Dessen, John Green, and David Levithan.

Learn more about the book and author at C. K. Kelly Martin's website and blog.

C. K. Kelly Martin's books include I Know It's Over, One Lonely Degree, and The Lighter Side of Life and Death.

My Book, The Movie: The Lighter Side of Life and Death.

My Book, The Movie: My Beating Teenage Heart.

Writers Read: C. K. Kelly Martin.

--Marshal Zeringue