Product Description After five months of sheer absolute craziness I was going back to being plain old background D.J. In photographs of course I'm always in the background... But it turns out other folks have big plans for D.J. Like her coach. College scouts. All the town hoops fans. A certain Red Bend High School junior who's keen for romance and karaoke. Not to mention Brian Nelson, who she should not be thinking about! Who she is done with, thank you very much. But who keeps showing up anyway... Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Catherine Murdock
Dear Amazon Reader: The Dairy Queen series began with a dream and ends with a pizza. In late 2003, I had a dream about a girl playing football. As I'd been studying screenwriting for eight years, I immediately began to craft this idea into a script. Then, all too aware of my script failure rate, I decided to attempt a "practice novel" using everything I'd learned about character development, plotting, dialogue, and description. Today, I can offer aspiring authors this hard-earned advice: If you want to write halfway decent books, start by writing truly horrendous screenplays. I set Dairy Queen in Wisconsin, as I have family there and so can visualize the landscape, and I laid it out as a traditional three-act script, the only story structure I knew. I never intended to write a second book--I really love the vagueness of Dairy Queen’s ending--but when the publisher asked if I had a sequel in me, what could I answer but "Yes"? I love The Off Season's ending as well, but readers (may I mention how utterly fantastic the fan mail is?) wanted more. So--boom--I found myself writing a third. All of a sudden I had a trilogy. Given what I'd learned about college sports recruiting from the first two books, it seemed only natural to examine this in Front and Center, while of course continuing the saga of D.J. Schwenk's love life. So many stories have as their conflict "Will the hero(ine) get the scholarship? Will s/he get the love interest?" And of course you already know the answers on page 1. To me, a much more challenging story, both to read and to write, would be "Does she want a scholarship? And which love interest will be it be: the dreamboat who keeps breaking her heart, or the safe, fun guy who's not quite Mr. Right?" Call me old fashioned, but I like a little mystery in my narrative. Which is why I'm also not going to tell you how the pizza fits in. But it does. Really. Sincerely, Catherine Murdock
A friend of mine had recommended Dairy Queen, so I bought it, but never got around to actually reading it. However, I thought I'd like this when I saw it was a Vine product.
How right I was! This third book shows a D.J. who has confidence in her basketball talents, but none in her leadership abilities, which she perceives as the difference between getting a scholarship and not getting one. She knows what advice to give, but has to siphon the information to someone who doesn't feel hesitant to give it out.
One of her three brothers has become obsessed with directing her into getting a Big Ten college...but she prefers a different arena. The thought of losing a game for a team in front of a huge crowd seems horrible and insurmountable. And dealing with her brother's bossiness is no picnic, either.
On top of all that, D.J.'s not feeling so confident about romantic relationships either. Brian Nelson and she have broken up and she still misses him--too much.
How she develops leadership ability and confidence in relationships--as well as her future plans--is the delight and tale of this book.
I will be reading the first two books in this series forthwith.
Front and Center doesn't have a lot of story, but it provides excellent closure to the Dairy Queen series. While I was a little disappointed that it wasn't longer with more meat, I enjoyed it very much anyway. Murdock does a brilliant job of resolving all of the issues brought up in the previous books. The most important thing is that, like the title, DJ is front and center in this novel, right where she should be, narrating in the way that only she can. I love her so much: her humor, her work ethic, her insecurities, her heart of gold. She's one of my favorite characters of all time and I was grateful for one last hurrah.
This third book in the Dairy Queen series was worth the wait. I enjoyed every page. I love the way DJ came to life in the pages of this book even in all her imperfection. It was a satisfying end to the series for me, but, of course, I wouldn't be disappointed if there were another book someday.
