WUWM Milwaukee Public Radio Interview
http://www.wuwm.com/programs/lake_effect/view_le.php?articleid=412
L’Eco di Bergamo
A novel about novels, and about life, too, with a light and graceful touch.
La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno
Favorite is awesome: she succeeded in recounting the dramas and shocks of adoloscence with subtle irony.
Marie Claire (Italy)
A very smart mix of literature and life, a breathtaking debut by a writer which we hope to hear more from soon.
D di Repubblica
The plot is a mix of Flaubert and Woody Allen: The Heroines is an event
Kirkus Reviews
“Imaginative.”
Library Journal
[The Heroines] illustrates an intelligent understanding of literature, feminism, and its own female characters. Favorite handles drastic plot twists effectively…funny and energetic. Recommended.
Booklist
Set in 1974, Favorite’s first novel revolves around an entertaining premise: What if the heroines of classic novels could step out of fiction into the real world for a brief sojourn? … This clever, charming debut is a must-read for literature lovers.
Publishers Weekly
On a picturesque acreage near Prairie Bluff, Ill., 13-year-old Penny Entwistle, and her mother, Anne Marie, run a retreat where literary heroines seek temporary refuge from their tragic destinies. Franny Glass, Madame Bovary, Scarlett O’Hara, Catherine Linton and others find respite from their varied crises, but must return to their books eventually and suffer the fate that awaits. Penny, in the first throes of teenage rebellion, has little patience for her mother and the heartbroken or otherwise distraught women Anne Marie refuses to counsel (lest she change the course of their stories). And Anne Marie lavishes on her heroine lodgers the attention her daughter longs for. But when a mythical Celtic knight arrives, searching for his lost heroine Deirdre, Penny gets caught up in a web of deception that lands her in the loony bin. While the staff diagnoses her fabulous story as an attempt to deal with the long-ago death of her father, her mother commits Penny as a means of protecting her from peculiar goings-on at the house, and Penny must rely on the very fictional characters her mother favors to help her. Favorite offers a fun take on the impact literature can have on our lives.
Chicago Sun-Times
As a metafiction, The Heroines allows Favorite to spoof the conventions of fairy tales and 19th century women’s literature; the prairie around Anne-Marie’s house shares distinct characteristics with the moor in Wuthering Heights, while the nearby forest, where Penny first encounters Conor, feels soaked in the mystery and enchantment of the Brothers Grimm. . . . But for all Favorite’s literary game-playing, she never lets it turn The Heroines into anything less than a good yarn.
Read whole article: http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/books/739368,SHO-Books-favorite13.article
Redbook
Fact and fiction delightfully collide in this fast-paced read.
Good Housekeeping
[A] beguiling literary debut…to carry you away.
Chicago Reader “A Favorite at Last”
link to article: http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/thebusiness/080117/
West End Word, St. Louis
A feminist parable….The Heroines has a lot to say about free will and inner strength and says it all in a clever, concise way. It is one novel that is not afraid to ask, “What would Scarlett do?
Italian Reviews, under Rescensioni Stampa http://www.elliotedizioni.com/catalog/title/title_card.php?title_id=26
North Shore Magazine
A delightful tale rooted in both fiction and history, designed to appeal to both young readers and adults, mixing sly references to the 1970s with a page-turning fantasy-filled plot that should appeal to adolescent dreamers and old literature-lovers alike.
