You have that look on your face,” she whispered mockingly, “that Beast-just-gave-Beauty-a-whole-frickin’-library look and now she’s going to spin around like she can read them all at once through osmosis.

When she was reading she wasn’t the quiet Sullivan twin, she wasn’t the one no one ever noticed. She became a princess in a castle. Or a clown juggling under the circus big top. She explored jungles on elephants’ backs and took trips to Mars on spaceships. Reading took her anywhere she wanted to go. And Sophie found that she wanted to go absolutely everywhere.

There's no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

The summer night was settling upon the neighborhood like a dark lace veil, casting dappled shadows on the roofs and sidewalks and lawns.

In her experience, there were only two kinds of guys: the ones into sports and the ones into video gaming. It seemed guys had to be obsessed with something, whether it was watching a game or playing in it or keeping some weird collection related to it.

He was like her favorite type of candy, she realized, a bit sour at first but all sweetness in the long run. Admittedly . . . that tartness was part of the allure all along.