The Fortunes of Indigo Skye by Deb Caletti

Back in late 2004 I had the lovely privilege to be an attendee at the National Book Awards Ceremony.  Deb Caletti's Honey, Baby, Sweetheart was one of the finalists in the Young People's Literature category.  From a sales perspective, I totally wanted Caletti to win.  I knew her book had the most commercial appeal, and 2004 had been a bit of a softer year for YA after the 2003 release of Eragon (hard to comp those sort of sales). Of course, the National Book Award judges don't choose the winners based on commercial appeal, and Pete Hautman's Godless won.  Now that I've read The Fortunes of Indigo Skye, I think I might have been doing Caletti a bit of a disservice.  Yes, it's true that Honey, Baby, Sweetheart had the most commercial appeal, but Caletti is an amazingly detailed and colorful writer.  How did I miss that with Honey, Baby, Sweetheart?  I'm reading Queen of Everything right now, and those perfectly skilled descriptions are there too, and it was her first novel. I should totally have been ranking her at the top of my list with Sarah Dessen, Ellen Hopkins and Julie Anne Peters.  I must have been reading the finalists too quickly, or maybe I just didn't read with the right eye.  Certainly how I read is starting to change with the creation of this site.  When you're a buyer for a category as trend driven as YA, your sales cap must be on 100% of the time.  Not that my job at Borders didn't allow me to step out on various titles, but even then I think I was probably choosing titles with sales in mind.  After all, I wanted my category to perform well.  Now, I'm truly reading for me.   I'm in this place where I can re-read a passage several times and not worry about the other books sitting on the nightstand.  If I don't post for a week, no one's going to yell at me.  There's no author lunch the next day for which I must have read the book.  It's totally freeing.  I'm like a kid in a candy store.  I finally have the time in my life to appreciate the great skill it takes to write a novel, as well as the skill it takes to read one.  Reviewing books isn't as easy as I thought it would be, but when you get to read colorful, mellifluous phrases written by great authors like Caletti, it certainly is rewarding.