Smiling Book Reviews: Blog Hop & Giveaway: True Colors by Krysten Lindsay Hager

~Don't forget to enter the GIVEAWAY below!~

Series: Landry's True Colors

Genre: Younger YA/Middle Grade, Contemporary
Publisher: Clean Reads

Publication date: June 17, 2014

Number of pages: 222

Landry Albright just wants to be one of the interesting girls at school who always have exciting things going on in their lives. She wants to stand out, but also wants to fit in, so she gives in when her two best friends, Ericka and Tori, push her into trying out for a teen reality show modeling competition with them. Landry goes in nervous, but impresses the judges enough to make it to the next round. However, Ericka and Tori get cut and basically "unfriend" her on Monday at school. Landry tries to make new friends, but gets caught up between wanting to be herself and conforming to who her new friends want her to be. Along the way she learns that modeling is nowhere as glamorous as it seems, how to deal with frenemies, a new crush, and that true friends see you for who you really are and like you because of it.

Books in the Series

Krysten Lindsay Hager writes about friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, frenemies, crushes, fame, first loves, and values. She is the author of True Colors, Best Friends...Forever?, Next Door to a Star, Landry in Like, and Competing with the Star (The Star Series: Book 2). Her work has been featured in USA Today, The Flint Journal, the Grand Haven Tribune, the Bellbrook Times, and on Living Dayton.

1. How did you get started as an author? What or whom inspired you?
I’ve been writing stories when I was a kid and began attending writing conferences in college. I was particularly inspired by some of my favorite young adult and middle grade writers like: Judy Blume and Ann M. Martin.

2. How many novels have you written and in what genres?
I have published five so far: True Colors, Best Friends…Forever?, Landry in Like, Next Door to a Star, and Competing with the Star. I write for several genres: young adult, middle grade, new adult, and women’s fiction.

3. How do you choose the names for the characters in your stories?
Landry was the name of one of my mom’s students and she thought it was cute. What’s funny was she told me Landry’s best friend was named Krysten. The last name, Albright, was because of Madeline Albright and the middle name, Lilyanne, is a combo of my grandma’s name (Lillian) and my mother’s middle name (Anne). Some of the names came from looking at the baby announcements in the Flint Journal newspaper like India, Ashanti, Devon and I picked the name Peyton because it is a friend’s daughter’s name. I also hold contests where I use names of winners or their kids in the stories. You can find me putting in family names and friend names as brands, stores, or restaurants.

4. What is your current WIP (Work in Progress)?
I’m working on the 4th book in the Landry’s True Colors Series as well as a YA novel called, Dating the It Boy about a girl dating a senator’s very popular son.

5. If you could choose someone famous to star in one of your books made to a movie, who would you choose and for which character? (Possibly share a link to an image of this famous star).
If any of the Landry’s True Colors Series books was made into a movie then I would want Ross Lynch to play Vladi Yagudin. China Anne McClain could play Ashanti, I picture Victoria Justice as Yasmin McCarty, Ciara Bravo as Thalia, and I go back and forth on who I’d have play Landry.

6. What inspired the idea for True Colors?
The idea came back when I was in the 6th grade and wanted to write a book about a group of best friends. However, when I got older I realized the story would be more interesting if one of the friends (Landry) also felt like she was on the outside looking in and questioning if she had to conform to be in the group versus being herself. I think a lot of us go through that in our teen years.

7. What other hobbies do you enjoy when you are not writing?
I love to read, explore new areas, watch movies and documentaries, and go shopping! I can spend hours wandering in a bookstore, too.

Favorite quote: “That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Favorite book: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Favorite soda: Pepsi with real sugar. Very addictive!
Favorite ice cream: Chocolate coconut milk ice cream
Favorite flower: Double delight tea roses, which I only know because I looked up, “What are those yellow roses with the hot pink edges called.”
Favorite season: It’s a tie between spring and fall. Spring is beautiful, but Autumn has pretty sweaters and Detroit Lions football
Favorite T.V. series: American Dad. Roger the Alien is my spirit animal
Favorite country you want to visit: Poland
Favorite Restaurant: Does my kitchen count?
Favorite author: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Judy Blume, and Ann M. Martin

1. I started watching the show “Austin and Ally” when I came on it by accident and I thought that Austin is how I imagined Vladi Yagudin to look.

2. I participated in modeling and fashion shows at Landry’s age and wanted to show the real side of being backstage which was not as glamourous as I thought it would be. I got maced in the face with hair spray all the time.

3. I was into soap operas at Landry’s age and so I have her and Ashanti reading Soap Hotties magazine the way I would read the soap magazines for info on my soap star crushes. I remember feeling devastated every time I found one of them had a girlfriend or, worse, was married. Broke my heart. Sigh. My favorite soap was One Life to Live. I cried when it went off the air.

4. I had to wear a school uniform like Landry and even though Landry and I have very different coloring, the school colors also made me look like a dead goldfish.

5. I had best friend bracelets when I was in middle school and what’s funny is just this week my best friend sent me a BFF necklace. You can see a picture of it on my Instagram page HERE.

6. I have Landry attending a retro roller skating party for Thalia’s birthday just as she’s trying to fit in with a new group because I had the same thing happen when I was in school. I remember going to a skating party and praying I’d have someone to hang out with and sit with. I even remember what I wore to that party!

7. As a teen I internalized a lot and went to books to help me cope with stuff at school, so I put in advice on handling friend issues and frenemies (etc.) in the books for readers who are like I was at that age.

8. When coming up with the cover, I sent the cover artist, Cora Graphics, my Pinterest board of pictures I had been collecting of who I thought Landry looked like as well as her parents and friends. One of the photos of the cover models looked like she could have been the child of the “parents” I had picked out. It was crazy and that’s how I knew I found my Landry. You can find my Pinterest boards HERE.

9. Landry has a picture of her favorite soap actor on her door and the soap actor I was thinking of is…the same guy I pictured as being her dad. I know, so weird. But I wrote the soap crush scenes well before I came up with the father scenes. Still…weird, I know. It’s Ty Treadway I picture in case you’re wondering.

10. Both Landry’s friend Peyton in the book and my real life best friend have red hair which I was always wishing I had, too. Devon’s hair is based on a friend who I thought had the most amazing curly hair.