Precious
Things
Release
Date: May 2013
Summary
from Goodreads:
Isabelle Andrews isn’t supposed to be here. She isn’t
supposed to be a freshman at Hartford Community College, she isn't supposed to
be living at home and working at her dad’s failing bakery, and she definitely
isn’t supposed to be taking Intro to Electronic Music Production, a class that
will get her nowhere toward her goal of an English Ph.D. by age twenty-five.
But when her dad’s latest business fiasco eats up her college fund, Hartford
Community College is exactly where Isabelle finds herself—and thanks to her
late enrollment, she doesn’t even get to choose her classes. Stuck with
Electronic Music and way-too-easy English courses, Isabelle is determined to
wallow in all the misery she feels entitled to.
But community college brings some unexpected benefits…like the fact that a
certain overworked, over-scheduled Electronic Music professor hands over most
of his duties to his teaching assistant. His tall, green-eyed, absolutely
gorgeous teaching assistant. When TA Evan Strauss discovers Isabelle’s apathy
toward electronic music—and, well, all music—he makes it his mission to convert
her. The music Evan composes stirs something inside Isabelle, but she can’t get
involved—after all, she’ll be transferring out as soon as possible.
Still, no matter how tightly Isabelle holds on to her misery, she finds it
slipping away in the wake of all Hartford Community offers: new friendships, a
surprisingly cool poetry professor, and most of all, Evan. But Evan’s dream of
owning his own music studio is as impractical as Isabelle’s dad’s bakery, and
when Evan makes a terrible decision, everything Isabelle has gained threatens
to unravel. Soon Isabelle discovers that some of the most important lessons
take place outside the classroom…and that in life, as in Evan’s favorite
Depeche Mode song, the most precious things can be the hardest to hold on to.
About
the Author
Stephanie Parent is a graduate of the Master of Professional Writing program at
USC and attended the Baltimore School for the Arts as a piano major. She moved
to Los Angeles because of Francesca Lia Block's WEETZIE BAT books, which might
give you some idea of how much books mean to her. She also loves dogs, books
about dogs, and sugary coffee drinks both hot and cold.