The Sound of Us - Tapa blanda

Still smarting after her best friend stabs her in the back, 17-year-old Kiki Nichols is inclined to spend all her time watching reruns of her favourite cult TV show, Project Earth, nerding out on Twitter with the other fans, and writing tragically corny song lyrics about love gone wrong. Her only chance to attend a music school is to win a coveted scholarship to Krause University at their pre-college summer voice program. Kiki's always had a natural talent for singing. So she's pretty confident she'll be a shoo-in for one of those scholarships. But it turns out that every other high school singer there is just as good, and maybe even better, than she is. And there are these Footloose extreme rules: like being in bed by curfew; singing only classical opera; and percussionists being at the bottom of the dating hierarchy - which is totally depressing for Kiki after her Phantom-of-the-Opera-esque basement run in with the nerdy secret drummer she can't stop thinking about. As Kiki begins to make friends, and (gasp!) actually prefer the company of real people to TV characters and Twitter avatars, her eye slips from the prize. And it doesn't help that there is someone in the program reporting their misdeeds to the head of the department. Kiki is finally living, but it may be at the expense of her scholarship and the future she wants more than anything.

Julie Hammerle writes a popular ChicagoNow entertainment blog, called Hammervision. Aside from TV blogging, she has been a Latin teacher, a Realtor, and a Weight Watchers leader. She started singing classically at age 13. She can be found on Twitter and at www.juliehammerle.com