I’ve been looking forward to reading this book every since making my cyber-acquaintance with Diana earlier this year. Diana’s living the dream of every aspiring writer of commercial women’s fiction: she’s pursued publication determinedly and is now reaping the rewards with a debut novel, Secret Society Girl, — issued by Delacorte in hardcover — that’s garnered significant press including reviews in Bloomberg News, the New York Observer, Booklist, and The Washington Post.

She’s also smart and high-energy (if you need proof of that just follow her blog!) and is dedicated to mastering the craft of writing and the ins & outs of commercial fiction as a profession.

So it’s no surprise that Secret Society Girl is a well-structured novel. The characters come alive — I feel I could practically pick them out on the street — and the pacing is excellent.

The book’s setting is a fictional Ivy League campus (Diana’s a Yalie) and the mileu is definitely the 20-something crowd; since I haven’t been 20 in (ahem) some time, and since my politics tend toward libertarianism rather than the heroine’s liberalism and have also had a lot of their rough edges knocked off over the years, I am not exactly a 1:1 fit with the book’s natural born audience. All the more tribute, then, to Diana’s writing that the narrative engaged me as it did. Never once did my attention to Amy’s fate flag; never once did I lose interest in the story’s arc.

Diana’s now working on the book’s sequel, of course — but I, for one, am equally interested in where she’ll go as a writer once the Secret Society franchise has run its course. I have no doubt she’ll be scaling some impressive peaks. It’s going to be wonderful to watch.