Terri Klaes Harper Blog Tour Book Release for Memoirs of an Ordinary Girl: Fresh-meat Year

12:26 PM

Terri Klaes Harper Blog Tour Book Release for Memoirs of an Ordinary Girl: Fresh-meat Year

My Book review:

Author Terri Klaes Harper

Memoirs of an Ordinary Girl: Fresh Meat Year is book two in Terri Klaes Harper book series. This book I believe, as a read, that many will enjoy. I love the world and characters that Terri has developed in this book. It's filled with wittiness and drama of a fourteen year old girl who leans that life isn't easy and never goes the way we hope or thought.

There is a line in the first chapter that is “This was the second funeral during this class period within the first two weeks of school.” That one line pulled me in and made me want to read more, find out more; the reader in me wanted to know what happen. There's many lines like that in the first chapter that just caught my attention; not only in the first chapter but throughout the story. One of my favorite parts of the story is “A spoon fight broke out between us while trying to get every last bit of dough scraped out of the bowl. My mom entered the room, shaking her head. “Did you leave any dough to actually bake?”” Terri's writing style is one I quite like. Her ability to bring Drew and Drew's world to life is a read that readers who are fans of teen stories, wit and so much more will like Memoirs of an Ordinary Girl: Fresh Meat Year.

Book Excerpt:

That day the topic was creepy Chip and Mr. Bunson’s threats. Adrienne was making some crack on Mr. Bunson’s lab coat (she had him first period) when I suddenly found myself distracted. I could hear Adrienne, but her words weren’t registering, and I focused my eyes just past her towards the doorway to the photography room. Just as the bell rang for class to start, in walked one of the most beautiful male specimens I had seen face to face. My guess was he was just a bit taller than I was, and his dark brown hair hung in his face, covering one of his eyes. He wore a black Metallica t-shirt, so I knew he had good taste in music. We would be a perfect match. My stomach suddenly felt like it was doing flips, but in hindsight, I’m sure that had less to do with true love and more to do with the a la carte nachos I’d eaten during lunch. The cheese had been spicier than I was used to, but I loved that we had more options in the cafeteria in high school. Adrienne waved a hand in front of my face, but my eyes followed the gorgeous boy as he carried a green slip of paper to Mrs. Ansel, who then directed him to the only empty seat in the room, right next to me. As he sauntered down the aisle to this lucky seat, we made eye contact- both of mine to the one of his I could see. In that heavenly moment, a ray of light coming in the bank of windows to my right caught his eye and I could see that it was a deep brown color with what appeared to be flecks of hunter green. Contacts? No. Just natural perfection. But I must have stared a little too obviously and long because he gave me a weird look as he planted himself into the seat next to me. I managed an awkward smile, but he gave no response, seeming to be the moody, pouty type. Great. My ogling had freaked him out.

We were instructed to form groups of three in order to label the pictures on a worksheet of various photography tools. Adrienne, being in tune with my pathetic need to meet our new mystery classmate, immediately asked him to join us and we formed a circle with our desks.

“So, you’re not new. I’ve seen you around campus already. What brings you to photography two weeks into school?” She was always so blunt.

“Found out I didn’t need a second science this year, so I had to pick an elective. Thought it’d be easy.”

“Well, I’m Adrienne, this is my best friend Drew,” she said showing me off Vanna White style, “and you are?”

“Dustin.”

When he made no effort to speak further, Adrienne filled in the silence. “Nice to meet you, Dusty.”

“No. Dustin, not Dusty.” Great. He was irritated.

“Oh, sorry. I get it. Sometimes people try to call me Addy, and I hate it. Won’t happen again.”

“So you two are fresh meat?”

“Excuse me?”

“Freshmen.”

“Oh, I guess so. I didn’t know that’s what we were called behind our backs.”

“It’s what the guys call the freshmen girls,” I chimed in, oh so awkwardly. “So, you’re an upper-classman, then?” I caught myself twirling the streak of hair I had colored with green food coloring that morning. I was not usually a hair-twirler, so I was annoyed with myself and had turned my fingers green in the process. I quickly stopped my perturbing action and sat on my left hand.

“Not quite. Just a sophomore.”

“Then maybe you haven’t earned the right to call us fresh meat,” I added, surprisingly sassy. To my relief, Dustin laughed, something I couldn’t picture him doing before, and in the process, he jerked his head so that his hair revealed his hidden right eye just for a moment. I nearly sighed aloud. His entire face was even more exquisitely sigh-worthy than the three quarters I could see before, especially with his smile revealing the perfectly straight rows of his teeth.