Carpe Diem

Name: Carpe Diem
Brand: Penguin Random House
Availability: InStock
Author: Autumn Cornwell
ISBN: 9780739363966

Author: Autumn Cornwell

Narrator: Lynde Houck

Unabridged: 8 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Listening Library

Published: 02/26/2008

Categories: Young Adult Fiction, Family, Travel, Coming Of Age

Synopsis

“I’ve got my entire life planned out for the next ten years–including my Ph.D. and Pulitzer Prize,” claims sixteen-year-old overachiever Vassar Spore, the daughter of overachiever parents, who named her after an elite women’s college. Vassar expects her sophomore summer to include both AP and AAP (Advanced Advanced Placement) classes. Surprise! Enter a world-traveling relative who sends her plans into a tailspin when she blackmails Vassar’s parents into forcing their only child to backpack with her through Southeast Asia.

On a journey from Malaysia to Cambodia to the remote jungles of Laos, Vassar is faced with things she isn’t prepared for–adventure, danger, a Malaysian cowboy-slash-bodyguard her own age–and in learning to “live in the moment” uncovers a family secret that turns her world upside-down. Vassar Spore can plan on one thing: She’ll never be the same again.

About The Author

A travel junkie, Autumn Cornwell has explored 22 countries and counting. She's spent the last couple summers working with refugees and orphans in Burma, Thailand, and Laos. Southeast Asia remains close to her heart since her days as a missionary kid in New Papua-where she ate her weight in guavas and mingled with reformed headhunters and cannibals. Which was nothing compared to navigating the intrepid jungles of the TV & Film Industry, where she spent most of her career.Autumn lives in Los Feliz, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, with her husband JC, and their son Dexter. Carpe Diem is her first novel.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Shannon

Vassar Spore is sixteen, an only child of driven and over-achieving parents, and determined to be valedictorian of the Seattle Academy for Academic Excellence, go to Vassar College (her namesake), get a PhD, win the Pulitzer, and more. In fact, at the encouragement of her parents, she's got her enti......more

Goodreads review by Angie

I ran across CARPE DIEM around four years ago in the Feiwel & Friends catalog. They had the excellent good sense to reprint the wonderful President's Daughter series by Ellen Emerson White, and I wondered what other YA titles they had on the docket at the time. My eye was drawn to this cover right o......more

Goodreads review by Beth

This is a young adult novel, but I picked it up because I'm friends with the author. It was an adventure story that I couldn't put down-- this is definitely a book that would have been a favorite of mine if it had been around when I was growing up. Autumn herself has traveled all over Southeast Asia......more