Mel's Shelves: Blog Hop: True Colors by Krysten Lindsay Hager

Monday, August 22, 2016

Blog Hop: True Colors by Krysten Lindsay Hager

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.

The 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. 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.