Dear friends,

This is the second day of our Book Author Challenge. Angy Potter at Collector of Book Boyfriends and I are organizing this daily event for 31 days. The whole month of March. Join us if you’d like. Just find an author fitting the daily topic and you’re good to go. Use the #BookAuthorChallenge so we can track and like your posts.

OK today’s topic is Highly Recommended.

As in the author you want to push on everyone.

I don’t know you but when I’m passionate about one author (and I have three special ones) I want everyone to read and love them. I can be very insistent. Like a fly around a horse. Sticking like the chewing gum under your sole. Sending lots of recommendations by this author. Shouting everywhere that I love her books and everyone just should stop moving on with his life and just read her.

So my trio is composed with Emma Scott, Amy Harmon and Suanne Laqueur. I will gush about Emma (I so FLOVE that woman) and Amy (a real gorgeous person) aplenty in other posts this month.

Yes you guessed my winner of the day is Suanne Laqueur!

I discovered her writing thanks to my friend Danielle at Pretty Mess Reading. She was raving about The Man I Love.

Her review was so convincing that I thought: OK I have to read this book.

It was one of the biggest slaps to my face!

It was an experience like none other. A writing like I’ve rarely read. Something passionate, powerful, challenging, angsty beyond reason.

You should know that when I fall head over heels for an author I can’t help but contact her (or him).

I think writing books is a lonely job. You are alone behind your screen either with your cat or your dog. You pour your soul on these pages but will reader love it?

So I make it my mission to connect with them and give feedback.

I discovered a brilliant woman. Smart. Generous as Suanne shares her life, her family with her readers. If you follow her she’ll get to know you know you. She’ll give you the best recipes. She’ll ask your opinion about how to forge a false ID (true story)! She’ll make you fall in lust with Justin Trudeau (yes he has a nice behind). She’ll rage when politicians are taking insane decisions. She’ll show you her husband diving in swim trunks in the snow. She’ll…

That’s about the woman.

But the writer will leave you bloodless. She will drain you from all your energy. Still you’ll be amazed and will ask for more.

Here is what I wrote about her last book A Charm of Finches and her writing:

“That’s how talented Suanne is: immediately sucking you in her story barely releasing you from her clutches from time to time just to let you breathe a little and give you a false security feeling before the next blow.

Seriously this book should come with a warning. Suanne tells a terrible and powerful story. One where you’ll call for your mom to come rescue you because the fox is in the den and you’re the panicked little chick.

I love her and I sometimes hate her equally as she loves destroying her heroes before rebuilding them. They are real Phoenixes reborn from their ashes and throughout this long, painful but glorious process we suffer right alongside them. It’s raw, flesh against flesh will against will, it’s messy, painful and cathartic. It’s life in all its glory.

You end up shaken, overwhelmed, emotional with a gigantic book hangover because it was so exceptional that you want more. Always more.”

When I met Suanne one week ago at RARE London it was a strong hug and it was like going home.

I came back later to her table as she was sitting alone and we chatted books. Her next one (Suanne I so want in your beta readers for this one and build the plot, etc.). I told her assistant of the day that I “wanted her to have a big queue in front of her table because she deserves to have many, many, many, MANY pepole reading and loving her books”.

OK I’m stopping here.

I think for Highly Recommended I gave you a pretty good picture of my love for Suanne.

Don’t forget my two other unicorns Amy and Emma but I’ll bore you to death with them in another post.