Marisa de los Santos & My Fence

A while back, I got a fence to confine my dogs to the backyard. They used to have an invisible fence, but it just wasn't working for Augusta. A startling zap to the vocal cords didn't faze her at all... so I splurged and had a wooden fence installed.

That first summer with the fence, I decided to paint the spines of beloved books on the slats. My Harry Potter section is probably my favorite art that I've done so far, but I'm also quite fond of my Marisa de los Santos collection. She's my favorite author and has been for quite sometime.

Realistic fiction is Marisa de los Santos's jam and the first thing I ever read by her was a novel called Love Walked In. There is a scene in that book that's so beautifully descriptive and it's all about towels. I am a sucker for towels. At TJ Maxx and Marshall's and HomeGoods and stores like those, I love to walk down the towel aisle and look at all the different colors. In Love Walked In, Claire's mother comes home with more towels than she will probably ever need and I just absolutely adored that scene!

Years later, I read Belong to Me, which also features Claire (and Cordelia and Teo, too), but this time there's also a woman named Lake. She works at a restaurant and Cordelia visits this restaurant... where she orders puttanesca! Until I read Marisa de los Santos's amazing description of puttanesca, I had no idea what it was. But the salty, tomatoey, olivey goodness sounded like it was right up my alley. Therefore, I looked up a recipe and made it.

(Coincidentally, I actually referenced the puttanesca mentioned in Belong to Me in my own novel Come and Go So Quickly, which you do not have access to yet because it needs major editing before publication.)

Anyway... the next book I read with Claire, Cordelia, and Teo was called I'll Be Your Blue Sky and I loved that book too! It makes me so happy when characters are recurring in storylines, which is why my characters always show up in books that aren't necessarily their books. Marisa de los Santos does this all the time!

Because Marisa de los Santos is my favorite author, it makes sense that her novels would be on my fence.

Here's a cool thing: I recently requested to follow Marisa de los Santos on Instagram and she not only accepted my request, but she also followed me back! I was beyond flattered. I mean, how cool is that?!

The answer: Beyond cool.

If you haven't already read some of her books, you really should. The characters are incredibly lovable and complex, and she does a really nice job with imagery as well. If I were you, I'd start with Love Walked In, but you do you -- whatever you choose, it'll be a good choice!