Video Veneris meets Waiting On Wednesday

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Is there a more
memorable, more known first line than that of Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca? I like to think not.

Working as a lady's companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers.

Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman

Rebecca is one of my absolute favorite, favorite books ever (I have a top three -maybe, maybe four books, not a favorite, favorite because I really can't pick just one). I read it for the first time at least ten years ago and I've adored it ever since.

It opens with some foreboding and then moves into what seems like an

innocent tale but soon becomes something darker (after all Hitchcock did the film based on the book and DuMaurier also wrote The Birds). If you haven't read Rebecca you really do need to . . . and then see the Hitchcock movie it's also fantastic (and where my Video Veneris comes into play:

Rebecca on Goodreads & Amazon

and my Waiting On Wednesday (which I did not do Wednesday because I forgot I had a doctor's appointment):

New Girl by Paige Harbison

WHY DID A SPOT OPEN UP AT MANDERLEY ACADEMY?

I hadn't wanted to go, but my parents were so excited…. So here I am, the new girl at Manderley, a true fish out of water. But mine's not the name on everyone's lips. Oh, no.

It's Becca Normandy they can't stop talking about. Perfect, beautiful Becca. She went missing at the end of last year, leaving a spot open at Manderley-the spot that I got. And everyone acts like it's my fault that infallible, beloved Becca is gone and has been replaced by not perfect, completely fallible, unknown Me.

Then, there's the name on my lips-Max Holloway. Becca's ex. The one boy I should avoid, but can't. Thing is, it seems like he wants me, too. But the memory of Becca is always between us. And as much I'm starting to like it at Manderley, I can't help but think she's out there, somewhere, watching me take her place.

Waiting to take it back

New Girl on Goodreads & Amazon (it's out January 31, 2012)

a modern take on Rebecca . . .

I have wanted for so long for them to remake the movie...it never even crossed my mind that someone could do a book that was a modern version!! I need to have a wall calendar or something just so I can circle the date. Oh, how I hope this is seventeen kinds of amazing!!!

Can I somehow compel HarlequinTeen into giving me an advance copy of this? Please?!

(synopses from Goodreads)