Author Interview: Melissa Walker

Last week I had a review of Melissa Walker's new YA book Unbreak My Heart  - out May 22nd from Bloomsbury - today I'm lucky enough to have an interview with the author!

Melissa Walker's latest novel newest novel is Unbreak My Heart, out later this month. She's also the author of The Violet Greenfield series: Violet on the Runway, Violet by Design, and Violet in Design about a small-town girl who becomes a model; Lovestruck Summer about a girl who goes to Austin to have her perfect music summer and finds unexpected love (I heart this book so much), and Small Town Sinners about a girl and her involvement in her Evangelical church's Hell House production.

Melissa has also written for ELLEgirl and Seventeen magazines. She co-founded I Heart Daily, a daily newsletter or things you should heart/know about/be aware of/will make your life better (and if you're not signed up yet clickity click and do it!).

Enjoy - and be sure to pre-order your copy if you somehow haven't already :)

Have you ever - or would you ever - take a trip with your family like the one Clem, her sister, and their parents take?
I have! And it was just as hard (and great) as the one Clem took. Though I never stayed with my parents for the whole summer--just for a weekend here or there as they sailed along.
The progression of Clem's relationship with Ethan feels so real and natural - it doesn't come across as fictional or judgmental - have you ever been, in any way, in a similar situation? (Or is your writerly brain just that amazing?) 

Hmm. I do have some experience in this matter, yes.

Is there any advice you have for someone in a situation similar to Clem's?

Oh man. Apologize? Like a clear and straightforward and heartfelt apology with no defenses up. It sounds so simple, but people manage to dance around apologies so often. I believe I flubbed my chance to deliver an apology like this for a friend once, and I wish I could go back and do it right.

Which of the characters that you've created (in Unbreak My Heart or any of your previous novels) would you most like to have met on a trip like Clem's?

I love James a lot in this book, but I have to say that Russ, from Lovestruck Summer, remains one of my very favorite YA creations. There's just something about those Texas guys.

You have 'Cover Stories' on your blog where authors explain how the cover of their novel came about  - is there one book that you're just dying to find out the 'Cover Story' behind? 

I'd love to go back in time and talk to someone like Jane Austen about the original covers for her books. I mean, what were the trends and marketing ideas back THEN? It would be fascinating.

[I LOVE the Cover Stories feature - definitely check it out if you don't know about it, here's the one for Unbreak My Heart.]

What YA novel do you think would be Unbreak My Heart's book BFF - or which character would be Clem's?

Clem would love to hang out with Ruby Oliver from E. Lockhart's Boyfriend List series. They could work out a few things together, I think.

What would be the name of your sailboat? My parents had a boat called Innisfree, so I'd probably tip my hat to them and go with Innisfree II. Although they also had Night Wind II (after my grandfather's Night Wind), so maybe I'd do Night Wind III. I'm a legacy girl.

Huge thank you to Melissa and to Bridget at Bloomsbury!

Unbreak My Heart ~ Melissa Walker (eARC) review

Unbreak My Heart
Bloomsbury USA
May 22, 2012
240 pages
add to Goodreads/buy from Book Depository/or Amazon

After breaking that near unbreakable rule and falling for her best friend's boyfriend, Clementine Williams' is ready to get away. Her sophomore year did not end at all the way she wanted it to - her best friend (and possibly all their other friends) have shunned her and forgiven him.

A summer on her family's boat, away from internet access, away from everyone else she knows, away from her hometown, away from cell phone reception, suddenly doesn't seem like the worst idea in the world. Three months in a confined space with her parents and ten-year-old little sister might not be a picnic, but Clem doesn't really care. In fact, Clem doesn't really care about anything.

Maybe James - who, with his dad is sailing the same route as Clem and her family - the boy she meets at their first stop, will be just the thing she needs. Maybe he'll finally get her mind off last spring. And unbreak her heart.


Unbreak My Heart is Melissa Walker's fabulous new contemporary YA novel. With a fantastically original setting and her (always) fresh characters, this one is a perfect summer read.

A summer trip that Clem normally would have seen as being exiled and avoided at any and all possible costs, she now sees as a bit of a refuge instead. At home she's the bad guy and quite literally sailing away from her problems doesn't seem like such a bad idea at the moment. We don't know just exactly what happens when the story starts, at least not the details. It's better, though, that those unfold as the story does. To learn more of the past details as Clem's present also develops works very nicely.

Through little flashbacks - things happening in the present or things she thinks about bring up memories - readers see how things developed between Clem and her best friend's boyfriend, Ethan. The way things happen feels very realistic and true to life. It doesn't feel sensationalized for fiction or to make the story better - in fact, it's much better because it's not. The way things develop feels almost logical. Of course, there are times you want to kind of shake Clem a bit, but that's an outside perspective.

The parts of the story on the boat are not at all cramped feeling. There is the containment and isolation at times, but there's also the sense of the open water, the  freedom. They characters also stop in different towns, Clem and her family have James and his father - and their boat - to visit with.

Unbreak My Heart is a fun (early) summertime read that also has some depth to it as we see Clem's struggle to maybe forgive herself.


Rating: 8/10

Part of the Bloomsbury Blog Tours

Thank you to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for my egalley of this title :)

Small Town Sinners ~ Melissa Walker (ARC) review

Small Town Sinners
Bloomsbury USA Children's
July 19, 2011
288 pages
Goodreads/Amazon

Lacey Anne Byer has spent her whole life as a member of the House of Enlightenment, an Evangelical church in her small Southern hometown. She's always been the good girl; wanting to please God, her father and mother and do what's right.

And now it's Lacey's junior year: she'll have her driver's license and the chance to try out for her church's annual Hell House (a haunted house of sin with scenes like Abortion Girl, Gay Marriage & Suicide).

With the appearance of a new boy, Ty Davis, will Lacey want to test some limits - for the first time ever? Will she start to question things, including her faith and just what will that mean?


Small Town Sinners isn't the kind of book where you fall in love with a relationship or a character, necessarily - not like Melissa Walker's previous book Lovestruck Summer, at least. It's one where you witness a character's growth and her acknowledgement and acceptance of that growth and her change.You can respect her as she grows and matures.

It can be hard to read at times - but that's a good thing. Walker doesn't take what could be the easy way out and make Lacey and her friends less intense in their beliefs or Hell House less intense in its practice. Nor does she mock them or belittle them. They are who they are and they do what hey do - and that's some of what makes certain parts hard to read, but also what makes Lacey's development and growth real and the story something you certainly won't be sorry you read.

This is a book with  religion but I dare to say it's not a book about religion - at least not only about religion., also, if not more so, about finding and accepting who you are as you grow up and distinguish yourself as an individual.

There are not a lot of YA novels written that involve religion (few in a non-mocking way, fewer still that treat the characters with understanding) much less to this extent and it was nice to see here because it really is a large part of a lot of teens' lives. Maybe not the kind of religion that the House of Enlightenment practices . . . but maybe that, too. (Small Town Sinners stemmed from/was inspired by a piece, "Hell House," Melissa wrote for ELLEgirl which is linked HERE on her website.)

The characters were each very enjoyable in the novel, bringing something unique and different to the story. I loved Starla Joy, Dean and Ty as her friends. It was also nice to see her parents. The glimpses we saw or her mother (we saw more of her father) were small, but fantastic.

Melissa Walker's novels seem to be quite different from each other, but always leave me eagerly awaiting whatever is coming next.

8/10



huge thank you to Kate at Bloomsbury for my review copy of this book

Lovestruck Summer ~ Melissa Walker review

More than likely you're one of the lucky ones living somewhere full of snow and wishing it were summer now, if you are there's a perfect book to read: Lovestruck Summer.

Priscilla (see, right there, how can a book with main character named Priscilla-she goes by her middle name Quinn-not be worth reading for that reason alone?) has her perfect summer all set-up. As an intern at indie Amalgam records in Austin, Quinn's going to stay with her cousin Penny and meet the perfect indie guy in music loving Austin. He'll love the perfect music, have the perfect hair and the perfect indie guy glasses. It's okay, Quinn has a type--but Austin's just the place for her.

Or is it?

Studious Penny that she remembers spending all her time isn't quite the same and her summer (from the internship all the way down to the boys she meets) isn't at all what she expected it to be. But somehow, it's still just might be perfect.

The idea of what you think you want not really being what you want, might not exactly be original, but it's a fun summer (or wishing-it-were-summer) romance so it doesn't need to be. And the characters are well developed, the actual events of the story are unique and are what make it so much fun to read. Austin is actually a part of the story and not just somewhere that the story happens to be set instead of Georgia or New York or Tennessee... And the two leads actually make a lot of sense as a couple in a romance.

And the ending was true to both the characters and the story--and the readers, I think.

If anything, the only problem would be that the cover makes the whole story seem a lot fluffier than it is....Quinn does really like music and she does have the internship so music and concerts are a part of the story, not just hanging out at the beach. While Lovestruck Summer is still a fun, easy read, it is less fluff with the characters than the other $5.99 YA romances if that matters to anyone.

9/10 (and I hope sometime Melissa Walker will write more of these types of books)