Mary Porter-Malcolm’s Top 10 Life Lessons from Classic Lit... By the Book by Amanda Sellet (Guest Post & #Giveaway) @the_ffbc


I'm super excited about this book that seems made for classic book lovers! The author is sharing
some of her heroine's tips today with us. Check out her post and enter the tour giveaway below...

By the Book
By Amanda Sellet
YA Contemporary Romance
Paperback & ebook, ? Pages
May 12th 2020 by HMH Books for Young Readers

Summary

Mary Porter-Malcolm has prepared for high school in the one way she knows how: an extensive review of classic literature to help navigate the friendships, romantic liaisons, and overall drama she has come to expect from such an “esteemed” institution. Her love of literature even inspires her to imagine herself the heroine of a nineteenth-century novel. Not the sort who makes poor life choices and ends up dying of consumption while still in her teens, but the noble, virtuous, quick-witted type.

When some new friends seem in danger of falling for the same tricks employed since the days of Austen and Tolstoy, Mary swoops in to create the Scoundrel Survival Guide, using archetypes of literature’s debonair bad boys to signal red flags. But despite her best efforts, she soon finds herself unable to listen to her own good advice and falling for a supposed cad—the same one she warned her friends away from. Without a convenient rain-swept moor to flee to, Mary is forced to admit that real life doesn’t follow the same rules as fiction and that if she wants a happy ending, she’s going to have to write it herself.

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Guest Post:
Mary Porter-Malcolm’s Top 10 Life Lessons from Classic Lit

My middle brother went through a phase where he was watching a ton of Food Network shows. As a result, he picked up plenty of theoretical knowledge about cooking which he was not afraid to share.

“That’s not how you make a mirepoix,” he might say, peering over my shoulder as I chopped onions, though he’d never cooked anything more complicated than bacon. Fortunately, he made it through that stage of life without getting stabbed.

The main character of my book, Mary Porter-Malcolm, has a similar belief in her own hypothetical expertise, acquired via classic novels instead of cable TV. Over the course of BY THE BOOK, some of her theories will be tested by real life experience, but here are a few tried and true pieces of advice:

📚 Tea always helps in a crisis.

📚 If he seems too charming to be true, you may be dealing with a scoundrel.

📚 Family can be annoying, but they’ll have your back when it counts.

📚 Try not to have a breakdown in the middle of a rainstorm.

📚 Make sure the person dispensing “helpful” advice has your best interests at heart.

📚 Anything can happen in a ballroom.

📚 Don’t go into debt for fripperies like bonnets; you can’t eat ribbons.

📚 Nothing beats a romantic letter.

📚 If you can’t carry a tune, leave the piano ballads to the musically inclined.

📚 Learning to apologize is a valuable skill set.

About the Author


Debut author Amanda Sellet had a previous career in journalism, during which she wrote book reviews for The Washington Post, personal essays for NPR, and music and movie coverage for VH1. These days she lives in Kansas with her archaeologist husband and their daughter.


Tour Schedule
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Ends May 20th 2020

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Which piece of advice did you like from the author's guest post?

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