The Reece Malcolm List

By Amy Spalding

Editions: ebook, paperback

Expected publication: February 5th 2013 by Entangled Teen

Genre: YA Contemporary / Romance

Source: NetGalley

Things I know about Reece Malcolm:

1. She graduated from New York University.
2. She lives in or near Los Angeles.
3. Since her first novel was released, she’s been on the New York Times bestseller list every week.
4. She likes strong coffee and bourbon.
5. She’s my mother.

Devan knows very little about Reece Malcolm, until the day her father dies and she’s shipped off to live with the mother she’s never met. All she has is a list of notebook entries that doesn’t add up to much.

L.A. offers a whole new world to Devan—a performing arts school allows her to pursue her passion for show choir and musicals, a new circle of friends helps to draw her out of her shell, and an intriguing boy opens up possibilities for her first love.

But then the Reece Malcolm list gets a surprising new entry. Now that Devan is so close to having it all, can she handle the possibility of losing everything?
~ Goodreads

Bomy's Flutter: touching and funny

I'll ruin the order of things by saying this is the kind of book I instantly buy. Aside the fact that the cover is gorgeous, that blurb just spoke to me instantly. I got enough of the character's voice to want more and just from that list I was hooked. I am however nerdily OCD about lists myself, so that might have precipitated things. But anyways, as far as curb appeal goes there's no doubt this is instant buy material and well worth it.

It was fun following Devan as she moved in with her famous mother Reece Malcolm and her mother's just as brilliant boyfriend Brad. L.A. felt welcoming and indeed sunny. I got this sense of settling in and belonging, like everything was fitting together for Devan and things clicked just the right way, even when things weren't actually the happiest. She was an adorable main character, an overachiever passionate about musicals that was just an all-around good girl. Sometimes too much of a good girl, allowing some people to get away with things they shouldn't have because she tended to bottle everything up inside and play nice to avoid confrontation. I got emotionally in tune with her often, but not always for some reason. When it happened it was more about the really dramatic moments then the rest of her day to day life.
The teen romance drama ran sort of rampant in the book, I got that sense of chaos and emotion that teenagers tend to come in tow with. You'll get what I mean when you read it, it's all so deliciously complicated. :D

The Reece Malcolm List starts off strong, an emotional beginning that did its magic and endeared Dev to me. Her story was pretty dramatic though she seemed to handle things quite well via avoiding to react pretty much; by the end I loved her mom as well just because she was so imperfect, I think I actually ended up more emotionally in tune with her then Devan. If there's anything about the novel that I wasn't entirely in love with it's just the fact that everything tidied up so prettily by the end, like a too happy ending or something. I'm an evil reader as you know, I like tortured characters and sort of imperfect endings. It's horrible of me to say so, but hey, it's how I feel... I would have liked something to not work out by the end, you know what I mean? But then again I am the evil reader, too much happy makes me suspicious, lol. At least other characters remained in drama land, so some of my evil desires were appeased.

I loved the writing, a first person narrative with a lot of sense of humor, Devan was very fun, clever and she paid attention to people. Sometimes too much attention maybe, but she had good instincts by large and I really liked that. Viewing the world through her eyes was charming and Amy Spalding did a wonderful job at portraying all the characters in the book and building emotion.

All in all I say this was a great read, I had fun, I got angry, I sighed a lot. And I want to read more by the same author. If you like Contemporary YA you should definitely give this a try.