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Brooding YA Hero: Becoming a Main Character (Almost) as Awesome as Me by [Carrie DiRisio, Broody McHottiepants, Linnea Gear]

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Carrie DiRisio

Brooding YA Hero: Becoming a Main Character (Almost) as Awesome as Me Kindle Edition

by Carrie DiRisio (Author), Broody McHottiepants (Author), Linnea Gear (Illustrator) Format: Kindle Edition

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Have you ever wished you could receive a little guidance from your favorite book boyfriend? Ever dreamed of being the Chosen One in a YA novel? Want to know all the secrets of surviving the dreaded plot twist?

Or maybe you're just really confused about what "opal-tinted, luminous cerulean orbs" actually are?

Well, popular Twitter personality @broodingYAhero is here to help as he tackles the final frontier in his media dominance: writing a book. Join Broody McHottiepants as he attempts to pen Brooding YA Hero: Becoming a Main Character (Almost) as Awesome as Me, a "self-help" guide (with activities--you always need activities) that lovingly pokes fun at the YA tropes that we roll our eyes at, but secretly love.

As his nefarious ex, Blondie DeMeani, attempts to thwart him at every turn, Broody overcomes to detail, among other topics, how to choose your genre, how to keep your love interest engaged (while maintaining lead character status), his secret formula for guaranteed love triangle success, and how to make sure you secure that sequel, all while keeping his hair perfectly coiffed and never breaking a sweat.

Reading age

12 - 18 years
Print length

267 pages
Language

English
Grade level

7 - 12
Lexile measure

840L
Publisher

Sky Pony
Publication date

October 17, 2017
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Not Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
ISBN-13

978-1510726666
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Readers—and authors—will swoon and raise a perfectly arched and knowing eyebrow at this clever confection, narrated by an egotistical main character, about writing the perfect main character. With a tongue-in-cheek look at YA tropes, writers are subtly encouraged to expand the genre in a way that is more clever, more subtle, and more inclusive. I would tell you more, but Broody and I are about to meet-cute in an epilogue.” —Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of Small Great Things and Between the Lines

"I smiled, I laughed, and I might have swooned! A brilliant combination of humor and clever insights. If you’re looking for entertainment or writing a young adult novel, you need to read this book." –Stephanie Garber, New York Times bestselling author of Caraval

"Hilarious and sneakily, cheekily feminist in the best way. I'm gifting a copy to every YA reader in my life." —Sandhya Menon, New York Times bestselling author of When Dimple Met Rishi

"Whether brooding snarkily, brooding soulfully, or brooding with a side of melodramatic backstory, Brooding YA Hero embodies everything I love—and love to hate—about the bad boys of young adult literature." —Jessica Cluess, author of A Shadow Bright and Burning

"The sentences are quippy and quotable, and the characters are laugh-out-loud hilarious but that's all just trapping to a truly thought-provoking and challenging satire on the books we love, the books we hate and the books we love to hate." —Laura Lee Anderson, author of Song of Summer

"DiRisio brings her @broodingYAhero Twitter persona to the page in this insidery faux manual “written” by Broody McHottiepants, the sort of dangerously attractive love interest who can be “found in all your favorite books.” After the prologue leaves Broody without work—“There are so many other stories to tell, Broody,” an all-powerful Author tells him. “You don’t need to star in all of them”—he sets out to instruct readers on how to grab the spotlight like him, highlighting an array of character types, techniques, and tropes (“If you’re a supernatural creature, try to find a girl who has no idea of her destiny and obsessively follow her around,” he suggests in a section about meeting one’s love interest). An equally recognizable villain, Blondie DeMeani—Broody’s ex-girlfriend—makes appearances, letting DiRisio show another side to this oft-seen archetype: might Blondie be more than just perfect hair and eye rolls? Amid all of the self-referential, self-obsessed silliness, DiRisio nods toward the forward momentum of YA literature, which is slowly but surely moving away from the familiar heteronormative relationships, predictable clichés, overused tropes, and overwhelming whiteness." —Publishers Weekly

"A clever, tongue-in-cheek novel that will appeal to teens with a disdain for the formulaic. A good choice for YA shelves or where satire is popular." —School Library Journal

"A satirical look at the world of the male hero in young-adult literature . . . In short, subheaded chapters that address the audience directly, he does so, hitting on some funny moments that are also critically insightful. —Kirkus Reviews --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Carrie DiRisio runs multiple popular social media accounts including @BroodingYAHero, and is the social media intern for Serial Box Publishing. Her speaking engagements include talks at the Carnegie Library System of Pittsburgh, Western PA SCBWI workshops, and the upcoming YALSA national symposium. She proudly considers herself a Slytherin and aspiring Disney villainess, who also loves the color pink and making people laugh with funny GIFs. She resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she is currently pursuing her MBA in Digital Marketing.

Broody McHottiepants is a master of all trades (Of course. Why would he be anything less than that?) His current hobbies include making bad life choices, shedding manly tears, rescuing clumsy protagonists, and, of course, gazing into everyone's eyes. This is his first book, although he'd like to remind you he's starred in many novels and movies, including your favorite one. He'd also like to remind you to let out that breath you didn't know you were holding. When he's not saving the world from a bleak dystopia, getting crowned Prom King, or falling in a love triangle, he can be found sulking in a corner.

Linnea Gear was born and raised in Cave Creek, Arizona, a small town known for its Wild West feel. She has been drawing professionally since 2013. Linnea currently lives in Flagstaff, AZ, earning a BS in Chemistry and currently splits her time between drawing concept art and drawing chemical equations. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B071VN1GMR
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sky Pony (October 17, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 17, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3247 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 267 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #935,800 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #39 in Teen & Young Adult Books & Libraries Fiction eBooks
- #263 in Teen & Young Adult Romantic Comedy eBooks
- #346 in Teen & Young Adult Humorous eBooks

Customer Reviews:
66 ratings

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Carrie DiRisio

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Carrie Ann DiRisio is a YA writer and creator of @BroodingYAHero. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with one large fluffy cat, and is currently pursuing her masters in Digital Marketing, although her true dream is to become a Disney Villainess, complete with a really snazzy gown.

In addition to writing and plans for world domination, she also enjoys running, coffee, Krav Maga, and knitting.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5

66 global ratings

5 star		55%
4 star		18%
3 star		11%
2 star		12%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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The premise quickly wears thin

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 17, 2020

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I bought this a while ago because I used to see RTs from the Brooding YA Hero account on Twitter and they would always make me laugh or smile, so I figured I might as well take my chances on the book, because book adaptations of internet phenomena and memes are always better than the source material. To quote Julia Roberts, "Big mistake. Big. Huge."

Making fun of YA is kind of the low-hanging fruit when it comes to literary parody. Once something becomes popular, it feels like everyone falls over themselves trying to copy, until, like a Xerox (remember those??), there are so many copies that the trend is completely burnt out to exhaustion and has literally and figuratively become unreadable. BROODING YA HERO seems specifically to be targeting what I call the "Byronic Revival Movement" of the late 2000s/early 2010s, which started with the popularity of Twilight and persisted with love interests from things like Six of Crows or Empire of Storms, with brooding, ridiculous love interests whose sole claim to fame was being a hot bad boy.

BROODING YA HERO is an exhaustive criticism of young adult books, tackling a number of elements that result from frenetic copying of popular trends, lazy writing, and reliance on tropes. Some of the things that are mentioned in here are the fetishization and stereotyping of people of color, the chosen one stereotype in fantasy novels, and the treat-em-mean-to-keep-em-keen style of "wooing" where the love interest often acts in ways that are quite abusive to the heroine and it is accepted that his lack of emotional intimacy is a weakness that should be tacitly understood and accepted and overcome by others because he is worth get to knowing and making the effort for. The author also points out that YA books have a tendency to punish female characters who exhibit agency and confidence (especially sexual confidence), and that most popular heroines typically are either unaware of their appeal, or act as blank slates that exist only to further the hero's narrative arc.

I think all of the criticisms in this book are fair and part of the fun is trying to guess which books in particular that she is making fun of. Sometimes the references are fairly obvious (Twilight, Meg Cabot's Mediator series, etc.), but others are fill-in-the-blanks that you can populate with your fave-to-hates. Where the book really fails in my opinion is the repetitiveness and narrative structure of the book. It's written from Broody McHottiepants's POV, which quickly starts to grate. I had been hoping, when I bought this, that it would be written and constructed in the vein of Sarah Wendell's BEYOND HEAVING BOSOMS, which was a fun criticism of bodice-rippers and romance novels, while also essentially providing a reading list of some of the author's faves, even as it talked about cliches and popular trends that could be a bit ridiculous. This was definitely not that.

I ended up DNF-ing this around the 27% mark during my first read of this book and I can see why.

2 out of 5 stars

4 people found this helpful

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Kelly *BookCrushin*

This book will make you a better reader & writer! A Must Read!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 21, 2017

Verified Purchase

As this book is all about teaching you how to unlock your main character potential,
it stands to reason that anyone who reads it can become one.

Brooding YA Hero: Becoming a Main Character (Almost) as Awesome as Me isn’t your typical novel. It is a handbook, a guide so to speak, it’s really a book about books! But it is hilarious, witty, super creative and ultimately very feminist. There are quizzes, puzzles, horoscopes, and clearly amazing illustrations. I literally shed tears, I was laughing so hard! I think that every fan of young adult literature should read this book, even though it pokes fun at the most tropiest of things, it’s also just all-around enjoyable.

Brooding YA Hero is full of sass, hilarity, and social commentary about the world of YA. If we can’t laugh at ourselves or the things we love, then aren’t we all just self-satisfied and boring? Maybe that was just me and my take. But seriously, this book should be on every single young adult writers’ shelves, as well as every lover and reader of YA. I never saw myself as an aspiring writer, but with all the book events I go to, so many people ask those types of questions about advice for an aspiring writer, and I think from now on, everyone should just buy this book!

The topics covered within these pages may be full of snark, but they also shine light on important issues and is truly a guide of how to write a good brooding hero, and what not to do … like kill off the only queer character, or be the white savior of the POC character. It doesn’t tell you stop reading the tropiest YA, but it opens your eyes so a reader can know what tropes are out there. There are some not so subtle riffs on some very popular books, and I loved the side-eye shade and I just dutifully read, sipped my tea, and laughed out loud!

If you love cliches or not there is something in this book for every reader. I think if you read Brooding YA Hero, it will not only help if you want to be a writer, but ultimately I think it will make you a better reader too!

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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LibLob-x

Laugh-Out-Loud Fun

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 17, 2018

Verified Purchase

This book is as fantastically tongue-in-cheek and laugh out loud funny as you've expect from a handbook on how to write YA. It pokes fun at the tropes that we all love and hate about the genre, but at the same time offers up enough plot and character development to actually provide a refreshing angle on some characters that we think we already know.

I would happily read an entire series of these - I've not been so thoroughly entertained in years!

Lesley Barklay

Everyone should read this book!

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on September 19, 2020

Verified Purchase

I love this book so unbelievably much. Every page makes me laugh out loud.
If you are a reader of YA fiction, you will be aware of all the tropes about brooding YA heroes. If these tropes bother you at all, this tongue-in-cheek 'how to' book is definitely for you. In it, you will discover how to become the main character in your own story, so that authors give you all the best adjectives, and describe your glowing gem-like orbs in every chapter. You will also learn the secrets to the different types of smirks that will help you through every situation. My personal favourite was the 'lean and smirk' (TM Broodie McHottiepants). You will also discover the need to take your shirt off in every chapter, so that your love interest has the opportunity to gaze at your 10 pack/ washboard abs.
Read this book. Believe me, you won't be disappointed.

VARB

Me gusta

Reviewed in Spain 🇪🇸 on December 13, 2017

Verified Purchase

Embalaje adecuado. El libro llegó sin ningún daño. Recomiendo esta lectura. Adecuada para escritores y para todos los que estamos dentro o queremos entrar al mundo de la literatura para jóvenes.

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Bücherkatze

Entertaining tour through young adult fiction

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on July 26, 2018

Verified Purchase

The main character of every YAF is writing a book about himself, explaining why all the cliches are right and to be as good as him.
I enjoyed reading a book with such an unusual concept.

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