Literary Las Vegas: Daria Snadowsky

Still raw from the heartbreak of splitting up with the only boy she'd ever loved, Dominique Baylor returns home for the summer after her first year of premed studies at Tulane. The months away, she thinks, may serve as a test. Can she get over her ex and consider falling for someone new whom she has kept at just-friends distance?

"Anatomy of a Single Girl," Henderson author Daria Snadowsky's sequel to "Anatomy of a Boyfriend," follows 18-year-old Dominique as she explores the relationship between love, lust and friendship. The book was scheduled to be released by Random House's Delacorte Books for Young Readers imprint today. A reissue of Snadowsky's first book is also planned.

For more information on the author, visit daria-snadowsky.com.

Excerpt from 'Anatomy of a Single Girl'

I answer, "Oh, next semester is just around the corner, and once I'm back, you'll get sick of me."

But he doesn't seem to listen as his piercing brown eyes lock me into their gaze. As I let myself gaze at him, too, I think how Amy is so correct that a good personality can make a guy better-looking. Back in the fall when Calvin was an RA in my dorm, I could barely distinguish him from every other medium-height, middleweight Average Joe roaming the halls. Then again, the more he flirted with me, the more I wrote him off as a drip. It wasn't until the end of spring term, when we were two of the only undergrads not leaving campus, that I accepted his hail on IM and promptly realized how blind I'd been. We began hanging out, and, like magic, he grew more attractive with every laundry run, gym workout, and team trivia game we did together. And at this moment, with his dimpled cheeks ruddy from the 80 percent humidity and his bushy eyebrows squinty from the afternoon sun, he's downright adorable....

So why don't I adore him?

Or am I not letting myself adore him?