Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Campaign Widows
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://aimeeagresti.com
CITY: Washington
STATE: DC
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married; children: two sons.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Northwestern University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist. Us Weekly, New York City, former staff writer; freelance writer. Guest on television and radio programs dedicated to celebrity and entertainment news.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Boston, Capitol File, People, Premiere, Washington City Paper, Washington Post, Women’s Health, and Writer’s Digest.
SIDELIGHTS
Aimee Agresti graduated from Northwestern University with a journalism degree and became a staff writer for Us Weekly. She covered entertainment news and interviewed celebrities. Eventually she expanded her portfolio to include articles for other periodicals like People, Women’s Health, and the Washington Post. Agresti became a familiar guest on television and radio broadcasts from Access Hollywood to the Fox News Channel. She also found time to create a trilogy of young adult novels, the “Gilded Wings” series, about an unusual group of angels in training.
Illuminate
Illuminate introduces teenager Haven Terra and her best friends, Dante and Lance. The trio is thrilled to learn that they have been selected for a special internship at a newly renovated luxury hotel in Chicago, where they will be able to interface with powerful celebrities. Haven’s suspicions surface early, when the nightmares begin. Hotel owner Aurelia and her associate Lucian take on spooky airs in this restored historical hotel, and Haven discovers a nefarious plot in a mysterious anonymous notebook. On the surface, the teens are angels in training, but Aurelia and Lucian are working undercover as minions of Satan. Haven and friends are being groomed not to save souls but to steal them. Their high-school prom looms just around the corner, and hundreds of young souls will be ripe for the taking.
Reviewers offered mixed reviews of this angelic debut. They seemed intrigued by the historical backstory of the Lexington Hotel, its architectural secrets, and its connection to the heyday of mobster Al Capone. They offered less praise for Haven’s unfolding adventures as she stumbles from one implausible incident to another with no apparent internal brake on her impulsive decisions. Jennifer Prince reported in School Library Journal: “Agresti creates a vivid environment,” but Haven’s “lack of common sense is unbelievable.” Overall, however, a Publishers Weekly contributor noted that the suspense “accelerates to an exciting climax, and the blossoming romance is sweet.” Is the object of Haven’s romantic interest her friend Lance, or could it be the seductive Lucian?
Infatuate and Initiate
In Infatuate, readers learn that the angel team has managed to save the high-school prom and moved on to the second level of their training. Haven and her friends join another group of budding angels in New Orleans, ostensibly to work on assorted volunteer projects. At night, however, they are expected to strengthen their paranormal powers for challenges as yet unnamed. Along the way they are tempted to abandon their angelic status and join the dark side, and Haven faces a special dilemma. In a nearby haunted mansion, she is reunited with Lucian, who is desperate to escape the underworld in which he is trapped. He almost stole Haven’s heart in Illuminate, and she is not sure he can be trusted now. The legend and lore of the Crescent City permeate this volume, which is set around the excitement of Mardi Gras. School Library Journal contributor Jennifer Prince reported that “Agresti pumps adrenaline into nearly every scene.”
Although Haven managed to save Lucian in New Orleans, her love interest Lance was seized and dragged into hell. Initiate reveals the new trio—Haven, Dante, and Lucian—in Paris, where the demons of hell are plotting an uprising of unimaginable proportions. Haven might have to choose between rescuing Lance or saving the world. If she succeeds, the gilded wings will finally be hers, but will Lance be there to share her victory?
Campaign Widows
While Agresti was freelancing as an entertainment journalist and creating the adventures of Haven Terra, her then-boyfriend was in New Orleans, deeply immersed in the reelection campaign of a Louisiana legislator. She found herself relegated to the legions of so-called campaign widows, left behind in the nation’s capital while their domestic partners work around the clock to ensure their candidates’ victory at the polls. Her experiences and observations percolated in her imagination until 2016, when she finally began to mold them into her first adult novel.
The central character of Campaign Widows is Cady Davenport, a young television producer who moves to Washington, DC, to be near her fiancé, Jackson, only to learn that he is packing his bags for the campaign trail, and she cannot go along. Agresti insists that Cady is no thinly disguised version of herself, and that none of her characters is modeled after a living political figure. In fact, she explained in a guest column posted at Writer’s Digest Online: “I toiled … to keep my book as far-removed from reality as possible.” She did, however, meet a lot of interesting people in the “widows” club, and she was able to blend elements of their personalities into the characters that would best reflect the story she wanted to tell.
Reagan is a mother of twins and a parenting blogger with a background in speechwriting. Birdie Brandywine, fundraiser extraordinaire, is married to an equally renowned campaign strategist. Madison Goodfellow is married to a narcissist presidential frontrunner, unless she can sabotage his victory and return to life as usual. Jay, the only male among the “widows,” managed to land his boyfriend a job with rap starlet Rocky Haze, who becomes an unlikely favorite for the nation’s top job. Their partners are revealed through text messages and news clips scattered throughout the narrative.
Campaign Widows is a story of friendships forged during a contentious campaign season. Jami Deise wrote at Chick Lit Central that the drama escalates “when players are more concerned with the game they’re playing than with the people whose lives are affected” by it. She pointed out that the plot is somewhat complicated by Agresti’s refusal to identify the candidates’ party affiliations by name, but she recommended the story to “readers who like all the romance and drama of the race.” She called Campaign Widows “a funny book … with events occurring at a fast clip—some predictable, some inspired.” Agresti told interviewer Ruth Kinane at Entertainment Weekly Online that the novel is not about the race, but about the unlikely friendships that can grow among “people thrown together by circumstance.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2018, Susan Maguire, review of Campaign Widows, p. 59.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2013, review of Infatuate.
Publishers Weekly, January 16, 2012, review of Illuminate, p. 58.
School Library Journal, April, 2012, Jennifer Prince, review of Illuminate, p. 154; May, 2013, Jennifer Prince, review of Infatuate, p. 99.
ONLINE
Aimee Agresti website, http://aimeeagresti.com (October 5, 2018).
Chick Lit Central, http://www.chicklitcentral.com/ (July 18, 2018), Jami Deise, review of Campaign Widows.
Entertainment Weekly Online, https://ew.com/ (May 22, 2018), Ruth Kinane, author interview.
Girly Book Club, https://girlybookclub.com/ (September 30, 2018), Caitlin Winkler, review of Campaign Widows.
Writer’s Digest Online, http://www.writersdigest.com/ (May 1, 2018), Aimee Agresti, “5 Tips for Writing about Politics in Fiction.”
ABOUT
Aimee Agresti is a novelist and entertainment journalist. A former staff writer for Us Weekly, she penned the magazine’s coffee-table book Inside Hollywood. Her work has also appeared in People, Premiere, DC magazine, Capitol File, the Washington Post, Washingtonian, the Washington City Paper, Boston magazine, Women’s Health and the New York Observer. Aimee has made countless TV and radio appearances, dishing about celebrities on the likes of Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, E!, The Insider, Extra, VH1, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and HLN. The author of The Gilded Wings trilogy for young adults, she graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism and lives with her husband and two sons in the Washington, DC, area.
BOOKS:
INITIATE
A GILDED WINGS NOVEL: BOOK THREE
COMING SOON!
Angel-in-training Haven Terra battled the devils of Chicago in Illuminate.
She sparred with the demons of New Orleans in Infatuate.
But nothing can prepare her for the horrors she will face in her final test to earn her wings.
After freeing repentant devil Lucian from the clutches of the underworld, she watched in agony as her love Lance was captured and dragged to the depths of hell. Vowing to rescue him, Haven—with Dante, Lucian, and her fellow angels-in-training—is soon summoned to Paris…for the fight of her life. The City of Light is set to play host to a demon uprising, a revolution unlike any the world has seen, and only Haven can stop it.
Can she free Lance? Can she keep Lucian safe from the devils now hunting him? And can she defeat the underworld’s most lethal creatures and be initiated into full angelhood at last?
The epic, heart-pounding conclusion to the Gilded Wings Trilogy proves the fiercest power of all is the power to believe in yourself.
5 Tips for Writing About Politics in Fiction
By: Guest Column | May 1, 2018
136
Politics can be a contentious topic to address in any scenario these days—but that doesn’t mean you should avoid including politics in fiction if the story warrants it. Here, Aimee Agresti offers her best tips for writing about politics in a novel.
Photo by Michael D Beckwith on Unsplash
by Aimee Agresti
Some say the key to keeping any social gathering cordial is not to talk about politics or religion. I think that’s probably very true. And I also think: Well, thank God at least there’s no religion in my new book!
My novel Campaign Widows—about a group of friends left behind in Washington, DC, when their significant others are out on the campaign trail—was sparked by my own experience as a “campaign widow.”
Over the years, my husband, a longtime Senate staffer on Capitol Hill, has shipped out to various cities to work on campaigns. I didn’t know anything about this world when he joined his first campaign a million years ago and moved to New Orleans to help reelect a Louisiana senator. This new development in our relationship got me thinking that what seemed so exotic to me—him uprooting to a place he’d never been, leaving me behind for several months—was just business as usual for so many folks in DC.
[Join us for the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference, August 10-12, 2018.]
I mention this as a long way of saying the idea kicked around in my head for ages—while I wrote other books, worked on other projects—before I finally got around to starting the manuscript… in January of 2016.
Yep, 2016. So while our own bizarre real-life election—stranger than anything in fiction—played out, <>, trying <
But we can’t let all that keep us from writing about politics in fiction, can we? There’s a way to do it, and here’s my best advice for giving it a shot:
Tip #1: Figure out what your book is (really) about.
The funny thing about my novel is that I never really considered it to be about politics at all. In my mind it’s always been about friendship: The political aspect is just the backdrop for the story of an unlikely group of friends bonded by the shared experience of being left behind.
Even a work of fiction that might address politics more directly than mine is still, at heart, going to be about people, relationships, friends or enemies. Books about politics can still be universal, so always keep that emotional core in mind as you write.
Tip #2: Be clear about what purpose politics will serve in your book.
Are you writing 1984 or Primary Colors or The Handmaid’s Tale or Election? What is your novel’s attitude toward the political world? I knew from the start that I wasn’t writing satire or something dark or dystopian. I wanted my book to be fun and escapist, and the campaign in my book to be its own zany character. I wanted the campaign, essentially, to be the villain: something so wild and over-the-top that it throws all the other characters’ lives into disarray.
Once I sorted out this dynamic, I realized I could get away with a lot. For instance, I didn’t need to identify any political parties, and no one in my book even needed to talk about pesky things like the issues. I was more concerned with the energy and spirit of the candidates in my election and about contrasting their different approaches, attitudes and personalities.
Tip #3: You don’t have to chase the headlines (unless you really want to).
Here’s where my advice gets very Choose Your Own Adventure:
If you’re not writing about what’s happening in the news right now: skip to Tip #4
If you are writing about the news but you’re extremely gutsy and/or you’re Sean Penn (i.e.: Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff): skip to Tip #5
If you are writing about the news and you’re moderately gutsy, continue reading Tip #3:
I probably don’t have to tell you this option isn’t the easiest, but I admire your fortitude! The political world moves at lightning speed (especially these days!) and writing about what’s in the news can make things extra sticky, so you’ll have to buckle up and take a deep breath if you’re tackling real-life.
Ask yourself these questions: What will be my balance of fact and fiction? How wedded am I to the headlines? How long a leash will I allow myself when fictionalizing it all? It might help to set some parameters around certain events, a time period, one character, one aspect of the bigger picture so you don’t feel like the story is forever changing (because it is forever changing and I imagine overwhelming to try to write about while it’s unfolding in real-time). No matter how much you’re incorporating reality and which lens you’re viewing it through, remember your novel is still going to come down to that winning ticket of strong characters and killer story. Now jump to the all-important Tip #5!
Write Smart, Write Happy: How to Become a More Productive, Resilient, and Successful Writer
Tip #4: Make your characters and events as different from the news as possible.
I wanted my book to feel escapist so I knew from the get-go that I wasn’t going to model the events of my novel or my characters or their appearances or their actions on anyone or anything actually going on at the time. I wanted the freedom to create everything from scratch. Of course, that doesn’t mean that readers won’t try to draw parallels anyway. Which brings us to, the most vital…
Tip #5: Accept that you’re not going to please everyone.
I am not a gutsy person. (Seriously, I don’t even ride rollercoasters.) So having a book set in the political world and hitting shelves in this particular… climate… is probably the riskiest thing I’ve ever done. Even if you’ve gone the route of Tip #4, like I did, readers are always going to draw comparisons to real-life, who could blame them? And some may even discount a novel for political reasons alone. In these contentious days, with emotions running high and the world of politics as divisive as ever, it can feel plenty intimidating to center a novel in this circus. Sure.
But, here’s the thing: No matter what you write about, there will always be someone who doesn’t love it. That’s just how it goes. So be fearless, write the book you want to write, and make it the best you can.
If your book has your vote and you believe in it, then it will find its staunch supporters.
A former “campaign widow,” Aimee Agresti is the author of the Gilded Wings trilogy for young adults. She’s also an entertainment journalist—who’s interviewed everyone from George Clooney to Angelina Jolie—and a former staff writer for Us Weekly, where she penned the coffee table book Inside Hollywood and continues to contribute to the magazine’s series of stand-alone collector’s issues on stars ranging from Taylor Swift to Princess Diana. In addition to Us, her work has appeared in People, Premiere, DC magazine, Capitol File, the Washington Post, Washingtonian, the Washington City Paper, Boston magazine, Women’s Health and the New York Observer. Aimee has made countless TV and radio appearances dishing about celebrities on the likes of Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, E!, The Insider, Extra, VH1, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and Headline News. She graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism and lives with her husband and two sons in the Washington, DC, area.
Aimee Agresti's new novel Campaign Widows makes politics fun again
Abby Greenawalt
placeholder
RUTH KINANE
May 22, 2018 at 06:20 PM EDT
In Aimee Agresti’s new novel Campaign Widows, a group of women (and one man) deal with life alone in Washington D.C. while their significant others are away on the campaign trail. Only, they’re not really alone.
Cady Davenport moves to D.C. with her new fiancé, but when he promptly hits the road for the upcoming presidential election, she soon finds herself navigating her new life (and job) in D.C. with the help of a group of fellow campaign widows that includes a political speechwriter-turned-mommy-blogger, a potential first lady, a fabulous and influential Georgetown socialite, and a magazine editor.
The novel’s sharp pace, witty turn of phrase, and nonintrusive social commentary draw the reader into the glittery world of Washington during campaign season, and the widows succeed in making politics fun.
EW caught up with the author to learn how her life in the capital inspired the story, about casting rappers as presidential candidates, and about one story that was taken straight from real life.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why did you decide you wanted to tell the story of those left behind when their partners go off on the campaign trail?
AIMEE AGRESTI: This was an idea that was in my head for forever, for years and years and years. It’s funny, the idea was sparked by my experience as a campaign widow, but the book really is all fiction. A million years ago, when my husband was just my boyfriend, he was a staffer on Capitol Hill and came home one night and announced that he had joined the re-election campaign for a senator from Louisiana, and he was going to be shipping out to New Orleans for several months to work on his campaign. I didn’t know anything about how campaigns work. I’d never been to New Orleans and was a freelance writer with a lot of time on my hands, so I just said, “Great, I’m going to come visit every weekend, and we’re going to drink hurricanes!” He looked at me and said, “No, no, no.” He explained he was going to be working 24/7 and would have no time for fun, so he would see me when he came back after the election. So that was my first experience as a campaign widow. I quickly learned just how insane that campaign world is. They work so hard around the clock, and it’s just this intense world that I didn’t think about, so that sort of planted the seed. This was a group of people I never knew existed, all these people who were left behind when their loved ones go off on the campaign trail. Luckily, nothing crazy happened when my husband was on the trail!
On the surface, the novel is about what happens when you’re the one left behind and the strains it can put on relationships, but ultimately, it’s about friendship and women (and Jay) finding their way.
Yeah, the book is really about unlikely friendship which happens so often when you have all these<< people thrown together by circumstance>> who share this common bond of being left behind. I feel like with all of the women there’s that desire to try and have it all and figure out how to do it, to try to have the career, the relationship, and have it all going at 100 percent all the time. Cady, for example, is trying so hard to be a supportive girlfriend but also build her own life in D.C., and both are equally important to her. I wanted all of the women to struggle with that in their own way. They’re all trying and working so hard for every sector of their lives, but they’re just not sure that they’re doing as well at all of them simultaneously — which I think is what every woman feels.
So Reagan is a mother of two whose husband is off on the campaign trail. Is any of her story based on your experience as a mom and campaign widow?
Not really. She knows a lot more about politics than I do, that’s for sure. Some of the general mom stuff is definitely from real life; I mean my house is a mess, and the kids do crazy things. Though the one part in the whole book that was taken from real life is from Reagan’s story. You know the scene where her kid runs wild at the White House? That really did happen to me. We were really lucky, and we got to trick-or-treat with our kids at the White House a couple of years during the Obama administration, which was totally amazing. The first year we went, my oldest was 4 and my little guy was 1, and it was incredible. It’s like a circus come to life, and there were people on stilts and a whole theme and cookies and candy. It’s total sensory overload, even for adults, and they gave you the whole run of the lawn, but there’s this one area that they didn’t want anyone to go — this little patch of grass right outside the West Wing, and there’s Secret Service guys and everything. The four of us were just walking along about to go right past it, and my 4-year-old just takes off running right past the Secret Service guys. My husband and I were just frozen in shock. So the Secret Service guys take off running after our child, and I start yelling to my husband to get him before the Secret Service does. It was so embarrassing, and we’re all dressed up as Star Wars characters. Of course, the Secret Service guy gets there first. We’re like, “We were just leaving!” I knew it was just too good and had to go in the book. Not a great moment in parenting, but a good story to tell.
Let’s talk about some of the political candidates. Haze is a famous celebrity rapper and potentially an unlikely president initially, but then again, in the current climate maybe not that unlikely.
Right, she’s an outsider and has a tough fight to be respected in the race. I really took great care developing the character because I wanted her to seem like she was totally out of left field in the very beginning, but then you find out she’s actually incredibly informed and involved in global humanitarian efforts. She also has such bold ideas and is interested in uniting people. So I tried to make her seem like a crazy choice in the beginning and then end up being someone who is really well-respected by the end.
And, as we know now, people like to vote for the extreme candidates. Another somewhat extreme candidate in the book is Hank, who is similar to Donald Trump in that they’re both these huge business tycoons who think they’re good at running a company and will therefore be good at running the country. Was that correlation deliberate?
Well, I definitely didn’t do that on purpose, but I did want to have somebody who goes into it just because he’s used to winning things. Hank’s done very well in his world, and he thinks that’ll translate to politics. But politics is its own beast, and if you are very successful in your own field, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to translate. Then I just loved the idea of having a woman as his spouse trying to sabotage him. I like that nobody in her world is even imagining that she’s doing it on purpose. She was really fun to write, and there was probably some wish-fulfillment there [laughs].
Graydon House
I love how you incorporated news stories and text messages throughout the novel. What was the hope behind adding those as a literary device?
Well, I realized we were only seeing in the heads of the characters who were actually the widows. Adding in Skye’s articles and other characters’ text messages was a way to get a feel for the other absent characters. With the Skye/Jay story, it was a good way to show their collaboration but also how far Skye’s articles were evolving throughout the course of the book. It’s just also fun for the reader when they get to read little snippets of things, and the texts are fun because it’s fast and immediate information, especially when people are in different places. I like the liveliness of that.
The novel ends in a place where there are plenty of stories to develop further. Was that intentional? Are you planning a sequel?
I left it the way I did just in case. I spent so much time with these characters that I still have thoughts about them and ideas about what they’re doing now. I miss them, so I wanted to leave things a little bit open so I can come back to it — if anyone wanted me to! But, yes, I definitely left it hanging.
Campaign Widows is out now.
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538335773286 1/3
Print Marked Items
Campaign Widows
Susan Maguire
Booklist.
114.15 (Apr. 1, 2018): p59.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* Campaign Widows. By Aimee Agresti. May 2018. 352p. Graydon, paper, $15.99 (9781525804267).
It's the 2016 presidential election, and the lives of five campaign widows (women and men whose
significant others are temporarily lost to the campaign trail) intersect in D.C. Cady took a lower-paying TV
producer job to be closer to fiance Jackson, but her newfound success doesn't seem to impress him. Reagan
is juggling her toddler twins with writing a parenting column, but she's occasionally drawn back into her
old, speechwriting world. Jay is a culture editor at Queue, but he manages to get his best writer and
boyfriend a gig following the campaign of Rocky Haze, the female rapper who is suddenly the frontrunner.
Birdie Brandwyine, wife of campaign-strategy superstar Buck, won't let a little marital discord interfere
with her legendary fundraisers, while potential future first lady Madison Goodfellow is more than willing to
work with the opposition. There are no direct, real-life matches for Agresti's well-developed characters,
which makes for a breezy read. Combining domestic and romantic foibles with an enticing cast (they may
be "widowed," but they are not staying home waiting for their men), Agresti's smart beach read will ease
readers into the 2018 election season.--Susan Maguire
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Maguire, Susan. "Campaign Widows." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2018, p. 59. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534956902/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c7bdd4d0.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534956902
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538335773286 2/3
Aimee Agresti: INFATUATE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2013):
COPYRIGHT 2013 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Aimee Agresti INFATUATE Harcourt (Children's Fiction) $17.99 3, 5 ISBN: 978-0-547-62615-4
This sequel to the well-imagined Illuminate (2012) falls off slightly but continues the mostly interesting
story. After the fall of the insidious Lexington Hotel, Haven, her boyfriend, Lance, and her friend Dante
head off to New Orleans, where they'll ostensibly become high school volunteers on numerous projects.
Recruited and led by Connor, they really join a group of angels-in-training, volunteering by day but
strengthening their powers at night. Each of them will face a challenge that may tempt them to abandon
their angel status and join the devils. Early on, they encounter a raucous group called the Krewe, which
goes on bloody rampages at night. Clearly, these are the devils they'll have to fight, but Haven has other
problems. In the haunted mansion next door, Haven meets Lucian, the devil from the Lexington Hotel who
nearly captured her heart and who now needs her help to escape the underworld. Agresti again focuses on
Haven's developing powers and on her relationships, but the battles with the devils that introduced action in
the previous book seem less suspenseful this time, as readers see them mostly from afar. This time, although
said to be much stronger than before, they emerge only as an occasional threat and so feel less dangerous.
The plotline with Lucian stands out as the most interesting part of the story. Nevertheless, this stands atop
the current heap of angel books. (Paranormal suspense. 12 & up)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Aimee Agresti: INFATUATE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2013. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A316776571/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5fff5ae7.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A316776571
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1538335773286 3/3
Illuminate
Publishers Weekly.
259.3 (Jan. 16, 2012): p58.
COPYRIGHT 2012 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Illuminate
Aimee Agresti. Harcourt, $17.99 (528p) ISBN 978-0-547-62614-7
Agresti's debut novel (first in a projected trilogy) is a tense tale of angels, devils, and the cult of celebrity
that is let down somewhat by an unrealistic setup, paranormal elements aside. Nerdy Haven Terra is
suffering through her junior year of high school when she and two other high-achieving students are picked
for a prestigious internship, living and working at a newly reopened luxury hotel in Chicago. The teens are
repeatedly told that this is their chance to make connections with the rich and powerful, but . Haven
suspects the staff is hiding something sinister, a theory confirmed by a magical book that warns her of
danger and tells her that she's in training for a greater purpose. When Haven figures out she and her friends
are being groomed in a plot to collect souls, the race is on to save all three of them. The internship premise
is pure wish fulfillment, and some characters, such as Haven's gay best friend Dante, are painted very
broadly. Still, Agresti's story <
satisfying. Ages 12-up. Agent: Stephanie Abou, Foundry Literary + Media. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Illuminate." Publishers Weekly, 16 Jan. 2012, p. 58. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A278169777/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=af65f066.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A278169777
Agresti, Aimee. Illuminate
Jennifer Prince
School Library Journal. 58.4 (Apr. 2012): p154.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
AGRESTI, Aimee. Illuminate. Bk. 1. 534p. (A Gilded Wings Novel). Houghton Harcourt. 2012. Tr $17.99. ISBN 978-0-547-62614-7; ebook $17.99. ISBN 978-0-547-82250-1. LC number unavailable.
Gr 8 Up--Shy and smart, 16-year-old Haven is thrilled when she and her BFF, Dante, and another classmate, Lance, are granted internships at a swank Chicago hotel. At first, the students are impressed by the hotel's owner, Aurelia; her right-hand man, Lucian; and their stunning staff, the Outfit. Soon though, tingling scars, a mysterious notebook, and tell-tale nightmares clue in Haven and Lance to their budding roles as angels, and Aurelia's and Lucian's true identities as aides to Satan, who plan to steal hundreds of souls on prom night. Using the Lexington Hotel where Al Capone stayed as the setting, <
Prince, Jennifer
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Prince, Jennifer. "Agresti, Aimee. Illuminate." School Library Journal, Apr. 2012, p. 154. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A285207611/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=02f6accb. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A285207611
Agresti, Aimee. Infatuate
Jennifer Prince
School Library Journal. 59.5 (May 2013): p99.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
AGRESTI, Aimee. Infatuate. Bk. 2. 402p. (A Gilded Wings Novel). Houghton Harcourt. 2013. Tr $17.99. ISBN 978-0547-62615-4; ebook $16.99. ISBN 978-0544-03479-2.
Gr 9 Up--Six months have passed since Haven, Dante, and Lance learned of their angels-in-training status and saved their high school prom from going to Hell-literally. Now the trio goes to New Orleans where they meet up with other teen angels to take part in the next round of training. Mystery and mayhem abound as shape-shifters from the infernal regions, known collectively as the Krewe, are bent on harvesting the angels' powerful souls, and it is up to the angels and their scarcely tried skills to stop their enemies. <
Prince, Jennifer
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Prince, Jennifer. "Agresti, Aimee. Infatuate." School Library Journal, May 2013, p. 99. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A328418621/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=20fa3812. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A328418621
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Book Review: Campaign Widows
By Jami Deise
There’s a common saying that Washington, D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people, and if you’ve ever seen a coterie of pretty young staffers orbiting around a fat wrinkled white man that folks call “Mr. Speaker,” that’s only half of it. The Hollywood part comes in <
Two novels about politics that hit the shelves this summer are getting a lot of press: romance writer Aimee Agresti’s Campaign Widows, and Jo Piazza’s Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win (review coming soon). Piazza’s book is for those who know the difference between a primary and a caucus; Agresti’s is for<< readers who like all the romance and drama of the race>> but might not be able to articulate the difference in the platforms of the two major political parties. It’s good to have choices!
The concept behind Campaign Widows is a look at the people who are left behind when their significant others hit the road during a presidential campaign. That road starts in January in Iowa and doesn’t end until November, leaving bodies and marriages along the way. The person left behind is in the odd position of wanting their significant other’s boss to win, but knowing that if the boss loses, life returns to normal.
The characters in this dilemma are Cady, a TV producer whose new fiancé works for a candidate; Jay, an internet producer whose boyfriend is a reporter assigned to another candidate; Reagan, a mother of toddler twins whose husband works for a third candidate; Madison, married to a Trump-like fourth candidate; and Birdie, a fundraiser with interest in all the campaigns and a husband who has his own life.
Part of the reason why the book is difficult to follow is that Agresti takes care to never use the words “Democrat” or “Republican.” While that keeps the narrative from taking sides, it also prevents the reader from slotting characters into one camp or the other, which might have made it easier to keep track of everyone.
Although the story takes place in an alternate 2016, Agresti has created candidates that are more outlandish than the reality TV billionaire who became president of the United States. And it made me wonder, will 2020 bring a return to presidential candidates who were governors and senators… or will it be a contest between Kim Kardashian, Oprah, and Elon Musk?
When reality is more unbelievable than fiction, thank goodness we have authors like Agresti to escape with.
Thanks to Graydon House for the book in exchange for an honest review.
Campaign Widows by Aimee Agresti (Review by Caitlin Winkler)
Rating: 3.5/5*
Have you ever wondered what it’s like for the people behind the scenes of a presidential election? For the staff, the strategists, the reporters, etc.? Now how about for the families of those workers who are on the road for the better part of a year? Meet Cady, Birdie, Jay, Regan, and Madison-the group at the core of this novel. They each have their own backstory and role, but they all comprise the campaign widows.
This book was not a favorite of mine, however, that being said, I did find it to be an entertaining read that was a good escape. While I found myself laughing often during the story, I had a hard time really connecting with the characters. The overall plot was interesting, specifically what is it like for the people who have loved ones in politics during a presidential election, and how that impacts their personal lives.
When reading this novel I almost felt as if I was in a DC political soap opera, which was enjoyable at times but also could be a tad cliche at others. I did find one character, in particular, to be very entertaining and found myself enjoying her storyline most of all- I’ll leave you to identify your favorite character. Overall, I would recommend this book for those looking for a light, easy, and funny read; a perfect book to take on vacation!