Authors from A to Z: I

Authors from A to Z is a posting challenge hosted by

Heather at Proud Book Nerd. The challenge is simple: each day for the month of June (except Sundays) share your favorite authors whose last name corresponds to the letter for that day.  
For more info, click the photo.

How I'm participating in the challenge:

This year I am going to try to highlight just one author each day that I am really taken with. If I can't come up with one, it may be a book, a song, or a surprise!

I = Ilsa J. Bick

Since I didn't have an author with a last name starting with "I," I chose one with a first name. I'm excited that I thought to do this because I really wanted to highlight Ilsa J. Bick for being one of the few authors to scare me silly. Scare is really a mild term; terrified is probably closer to how I felt after finishing her novel, Ashes. Terrified and elated (see exactly why in my review here).

Not only is Ashes a seriously intense story, it is also just the first book in Bick's Ashes trilogy. The next book, Shadows, comes out in September of this year and I cannot wait! The series is getting some new covers too, and while I think the original cover for Ashes fits the tone of the novel, I think the new covers are gorgeous! Bick also has more books out there, including Drowning Instinct and Draw the Dark, and they sound amazing as well. You can be sure that anything Bick comes up with YA-wise will be on my TBR list!