Sarah Pekkanen
Today’s post by Sarah Pekkanen | @sarahpekkanen
My Dad. He wrote grown up books (he’s the author of seven non-fiction books) but I watched the passion he brought to his job – the muttering at the typewriter, and the pulling at his hair, and the wearing of sweatpants for three days in a row, before joy and satisfaction spread across his face as he worked out the knotty sections in his book – and I knew I wanted to be just like him when I grew up.
Carolyn Keene. I know it’s a pen name, but I adore anyone who helped write the Nancy Drew series. I still have every single volume in my attic, and just looking at them conjures long days spent in my backyard treehouse, feeling the breeze filter through the big old oak that cradled me, and devouring the tales of the titan-haired girl detective and her loveable sidekicks George and Bess.
Judy Blume. She must be at the top of the love list of every woman out there – she’s like the George Clooney of authors! I felt electrified when I first read her books. I still remember how a friend handed me one in school – it was Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret – and how I literally could not put it down.
An unnamed editor in New York. She sent me a personal letter telling me that her publishing house couldn’t buy my manuscript entitled “The Lost Gold” but that she thought I had talent and should keep writing. I lost the letter long ago, but I never lost her words. I wish she know how much they meant to a young girl who dreamed of becoming an author.
In her third novel, THESE GIRLS, internationally bestselling author Sarah Pekkanen examines the lives of three women working and living together in New York City and shows that family secrets may shape us all, but it’s the rich, complicated layers of friendship that can save us.Cate, Renee, and Abby have come to New York for very different reasons, and in a bustling city of millions, they are linked together through circumstance and chance.
Cate has just been named the features editor of Gloss, a high-end lifestyle magazine. It’s a professional coup, but her new job comes with more complications than Cate ever anticipated.
Cate’s roommate Renee will do anything to nab the plum job of beauty editor at Gloss. But snide comments about Renee’s weight send her into an emotional tailspin. Soon she is taking black market diet pills—despite the racing heartbeat and trembling hands that signal she’s heading for real danger.
Then there’s Abby, whom they take in as a third roommate. Once a joyful graduate student working as a nanny part time, she abruptly fled a seemingly happy life in the D.C. suburbs. No one knows what shattered Abby—or why she left everything she once loved behind.
Pekkanen’s most compelling, true-to-life novel yet tells the story of three very different women as they navigate the complications of careers and love—and find the lifeline they need in each other.
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About Ariel Lawhon
Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.
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