Now Jessica on the musical theater in her novel:
Thank you so much for the opportunity to write a guest post for your blog! I’m superpsyched to get to talk a little bit about my new book My Life After Now.
To say I love musical theater is an understatement. I blast show tunes at all hours of
the day and night, singing along at the top of my lungs—my neighbors must hate me. The bulk of my pre-writing years were spent on stage (and in NYC audition rooms). I’d always been into music (I sang and danced and played the violin from a pretty young age), but the moment I joined my high school drama club, I don’t know, something just clicked for me. Musical theater isn’t just about singing and dancing. It’s about emotion. It’s about telling a story that’s so big, so real, that words alone can’t contain it. No matter if it’s a drama or a comedy, the songs, belted out by a thirty-person chorus or a single actor under a spotlight, bring it all to another level.
When I set out to write My Life After Now, I knew I didn’t want my main character, Lucy, to be just a walking statistic. Like, she has HIV so that’s all we need to know about her. No, she needed to be a real person, with a very full life. And I also wanted to make sure I balanced out the darker moments of the story with lightness and joy. What better way to do that than to submerge Lucy in the world of theater? Throughout the book, Lucy is on stage, at auditions, studying her script, listening to show tunes, quoting plays, and so much more. The chapter titles are all titles of songs from musicals (“What I Did for Love, “It’s a Hard-Knock Life,” and so on) because I felt like if Lucy were describing the chapters in her life, well, that’s how she would do it.
Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy Lucy’s story!
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My Review:
Synopsis: Lucy just had the worst
week ever. Seriously, mega bad. And suddenly, it's all too much—she
wants out. Out of her house, out of her head, out of her life. She wants
to be a whole new Lucy. So she does something the old Lucy would never
dream of.
And now her life will never be the same. Now, how will she be able to have a boyfriend? What will she tell her friends? How will she face her family?
Now her life is completely different...every moment is a gift. Because now she might not have many moments left. (From Goodreads)
And now her life will never be the same. Now, how will she be able to have a boyfriend? What will she tell her friends? How will she face her family?
Now her life is completely different...every moment is a gift. Because now she might not have many moments left. (From Goodreads)
I started reading this book when I really didn't have time to read a book. I was about 50 pages in before I knew everything would take a back seat until I'd finished reading this. I read straight through and finished at about 12:30 in the morning and had to actually restrain myself from texting all my thoughts to my poor friend in the middle of the night. This book is absolutely amazing and consuming. I don't know the last time I ever cried so much in a book, but put it down feeling so happy and uplifted.
Lucy is a strong, beautiful heroine. I know embarrassingly little about HIV, but I do know that Lucy handles it with grace. She has her moments of freaking out and she does make some poor judgement calls, but ultimately she's so inspiring. As amazing as she is, she'd be so much worse with out the people in her life who care for her. Her dads were the source of 90% of the tears I shed in this novel. Their reactions, their rise to action, their love and support just make them the best characters ever. They are flawed, but exactly the kind of parents any child would be lucky to have.
There's no doubt that this book has a heavy subject matter, but Verdi does such a wonderful job of balancing the HIV part with the happier parts of life. Lucy has a life before and after she's infected and that life is wonderful. I love the theater parts and I love how something like that is there for her to come back to even after she has such a hard time. I also appreciated the authenticity in the conclusion where not everything is wrapped up and not everyone ends up happily ever after. I just strongly recommend this book because I know I walked away understanding more about people who have HIV and I felt a little bit like I made a new friend in Lucy.
