My name is Gabriela Ramos, but you might know me better as Gabby from the Marked by Books blog. I was the one who plagiarized the review you did of the Anna Claiborne book.
I figured just stating it would be better than beating around the bush. I would just like to apologize from the bottom of my heart for doing what I did. I was planning to read the book, but I suppose I never got around to it. I know that there is no excuse for what I did, and I am not going to make an attempt to make it seem as though what I did has any excuse. I know that what I did was wrong, and that I should have never done it, and for that, I apologize.
I would also like to express the fact that Taylor, my partner, had NOTHING to do with what I did. It was all me, and I ask for you to not be upset with her. It was all my fault, and I take complete blame for my actions.
I'm really excited to get to be a part of the blitz for The Truth About Letting Go! The first time I ever saw this book was on this Xpresso Reads "Stacking the Shelves" post, and the cover for this book looked so well done that I just had to find out what it was about. About five minutes and a couple Goodreads reviews later, I decided that I really needed to read it. Next thing I know, I see the blitz on Xpresso Book Tours, so of course I signed up for it! And now here we are!
I've got a guest post here from Leigh Talbert Moore where she talks about her playlist for The Truth About Letting Go. And then we've got a couple copies of the book to give away, but first, here's a little bit of what it's about:
Ashley wants to smash everything in her once-perfect life. Charlotte wants to walk in Ashley’s seemingly charmed shoes. Colt wants to turn Smalltown USA on its ear—with Ashley at his side. Jordan wants to follow his heart… But Ashley’s the one sacrifice he never expected to make.
Up until
now, Ashley Lockett’s followed the rules. She’s always done the right
thing, played it safe, gone to church. Then her ideal life is torn apart
when her dad dies suddenly.
Now she’s miserable and furious, and
she makes a vow not to believe in anything. She’s on a mission to do
everything opposite of how she lived before—rejecting safety, the rules,
faith…
And then she meets Jordan.
Jordan has big
dreams, he’s a great kisser, and he wants to help her through her grief.
He also believes in everything Ashley now claims to hate.
Then she meets Colt. He is not safe. And he’s ready to help Ashley fulfill her mission.
When it comes to music, I'm like that dog in the movie Up... Doug!
Most songs tell a story, so when one I like comes on, I start singing or tapping along. Then I'm off imagining the story the musician is telling and not mine.
Song!
So basically, I can't write while music is playing.
BUT! I often use songs to help me remember certain scenes or to put me in the mood for a scene. If it's angry or happy or sassy. You know.
When I started writing The Truth About Letting Go, I had several songs swirling in my head. So I put them all together in an order that made sense, loaded them onto my iPod, and voila!
This first set all have that driving feeling that put me in Ashley’s frame of mind. Especially “Breakdown…” by Ryan Adams. Certain phrases in that song make me think of her angry despair and just her inner turmoil, her questions.
"Breaking the Habit" by Linkin Park
"Breakdown Into the Resolve" by Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
"Thnks Fr Th Mmrs" by Fall Out Boy
"Here Comes Your Man" by The Pixies
(This is for Jordan, obvs)
In the story, Jordan has to drive his mom’s ancient Toyota, and he and Ashley are forced to listen to her old music. "Zanzibar" by Billy Joel and "Missionary Man" by The Eurythmics are directly referenced.
"I Knew You Were Trouble" by Taylor Swift
(This is for Colt, obvs)
"Play With Fire" by The Rolling Stones. This one could be Ashley + Jordan or Ashley + Colt. Both of those couples are playing with fire in different ways.
"A Little Bit of Everything" by Dawes. This song could be Ashley's theme for the whole book. It sounds like an old hymn, which to me felt like the soundtrack of her ultimate realization and finding peace. Plus, the message is just so great. It’s a realization that it takes “a little bit of everything” to make a life.
"Strangers" by The Kinks. Ditto above, and it's the soundtrack to Ashley’s “walkabout.”
"Fireflies” by Fleetwood Mac. This one sounds like being at the creek to me and the things that happen there, which is a lot.
And there you have it! Happy reading and listening~
Leigh Talbert Moore is a wife and mom by day, a writer by day, a
reader by day, a freelance editor when time permits, a chocoholic,
a caffeine addict, a lover of any great love story, a beach bum, and
occasionally she sleeps.
Leigh’s debut novel The Truth About Faking is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Kobo.
Her second book, Rouge, is a mature YA/new adult romantic suspense novel set in New Orleans. It’s available on Amazon.
Thanks to Xpresso Book Tours, we get to tell you a little bit about Christina Daley's new novel, Radiant.
We're going to share an excerpt from the beginning of the book. Then we're going to give away a copy of the book, but first, here's what it's about....
Mary is part Vietnamese. Carter is a complete jerk. Normally, they don't talk much.
But when
Mary's in an accident on the way to school one morning, Carter nearly
dies saving her life. The doctors say his chances of living are slim,
and Mary's feeling the full weight of survivor's guilt.
However, Carter's
back at school in a matter of days, as if nothing had happened.
Although, he is a little "glitchy," and he's developed a sudden and
intense interest in Mary. She thinks he's suffering from major brain
trauma from the accident. Or that he's been possessed.
As it so happens, Carter really is possessed. And the thing controlling him is having the time of its life learning to be human.
Featuring a diverse cast of characters, RADIANT is a funny "paranormal-lite" story about being human, being in love, and being healed.
Christina Daley made her first book with neighborhood friends when she
was four years old. They "wrote" out some semblance of lettering with
crayons, cut up a cardboard box for the cover, and bound it all together
with clear adhesive tape. It was brilliant.
Quite a few years
later, Christina is trying her hand at writing "real" books. She lives
in Dallas, Texas, with a pet plant named Herb.
"The bell rang again, and Mr. Hubert began the Pre-Calculus lesson. But Mary hardly paid attention as she thought about what Sienna had told her. Was Carter really here at school? Now? She only had her last class with him—Physics. He normally sat in the back with some of his friends, while Mary took one of the lonely desks near the front. She'd have to wait until then to see if he was in a body cast or something.
When Pre-Cal was finished, Mary gathered up her stuff and headed for the door with the others as usual. But the moment she stepped outside, she collided with another person. "Gah!" she cried as waves of pain surged through her bruised side, bringing her to her knees.
"Mary!" Sienna said as she came over to her. "Geez Carter. What's wrong with you?"
Mary looked up. The person she had run into was Carter Maxwell. He wasn't in a body cast and he didn't have crutches or anything. He looked normal, actually. Except for the thick black sweater he wore over his school uniform.
"I am sorry," he said. "I did not mean to cause harm." He then knelt down and looked Mary in the eyes. There was a subtle spark of life in his green irises. "Are you all right, Mary?" he asked.
She didn't say anything for a moment. Mary didn't know that Carter knew her name, and she had never noticed he had green eyes before. Nor how nice they looked when he was concerned.
She shook her head quickly to break off his gaze. "No. I mean, yeah. I'm fine."
The corners of his mouth curled into a half-smile. "I am glad."
People were staring at them. Mary blushed under the added attention, and she quickly got to her feet.
"Need help carrying your stuff?" Sienna asked.
"Thanks," Mary said. "But I'm just gonna swing by my locker. I'll be fine."
"All right. See you in Art." Sienna shot one last warning look at Carter before heading down the hall.
Mary picked up her bag and turned the other direction. As she walked, she realized people were still looking at her. That's when she noticed Carter was walking next to her. And he was doing it in a really weird way. He made each step deliberate, like he was doing mini-lunges.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I am walking," he said.
"Um. Okay." Mary looked forward again, thinking that when she got to her locker, he'd go away. But he didn't. He stopped with her.
"I'm all right, Carter," she said. "You don't have to help me."
"Okay," he said.
Mary looked at him from the corner of her eye as she put her Pre-Cal stuff away and got her Art things. "Are you all right?"
Carter smiled. "I am. Thank you for asking."
Sienna was right. Carter was acting weird. That bus sure did a job on his brain.
"Don't you have to go to class or something?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
Mary closed her locker and headed towards Art. Carter followed. The halls were emptying as kids got to their rooms, but it was still embarrassing with him lunging next to her. Mary stopped and faced him. "Listen, Carter. I really am all right. You don't have to walk with me to class." In fact, she preferred that he didn't.
He smiled. "You said that already."
"Yeah," she said. "So…stop following me."
Carter wrinkled his brow. "Do I make you uncomfortable? Walking with you like this?"
Give the man a prize. "Uh, yeah," Mary said. "Very."
He looked a little sad suddenly. "I am sorry. I will leave you alone." He turned and walked down the other hall.
Mary felt bad. She didn't mean to make him sad. She just wanted him to stop following her. She sighed and headed down the same hall to apologize. But when she got there, she didn't see him. "Carter?"
He was nowhere. Despite the weird lunges, he apparently could move quickly.
That's when she remembered. For days, Mary had put herself through a series of guilt trips, thinking Carter was going to die or end up a vegetable. She had never considered everything going back to normal. Or, relatively normal. This was the first time she'd seen Carter since the hospital, and she had forgotten to thank him for what he had done."
I'm so excited to get to participate in the reveal for the cover of Afterlife Academy! When I first saw the blurb for the novel on Xpresso Book Tours, I thought it was absolutely hilarious. While the cover wasn't what I had expected based on the summary I had seen, I still think it's beautiful!
The rose is definitely my favorite part, especially because it, the model's lips, and part of the title are the only pieces in color. The only thing that I would change would be the stray hairs you can see over her face, mostly because they interrupt the whole pristine in death image. Overall, however, they barely take anything away, and I still think it looks great!
Even being dead isn’t enough to get you out of maths class.
Dying wasn't
on sixteen-year-old Riley Richardson's to-do list. And now, not only is
she dead, but she's stuck in a perpetual high school nightmare. Worse
still, she's stuck there with the geekiest, most annoying boy in the
history of the world, ever. In a school where the geeks are popular and
just about everything is wrong, Riley has become an outcast. She begins a
desperate quest to get back to her perfect life, but her once-perfect
life starts to unravel into something not nearly as perfect as she
thought it was.
And maybe death isn’t really that bad after all...
Welcome to AfterlifeAcademy, where horns are the norm, the microwave is more intelligent than the teachers, and the pumpkins have a taste for blood.
Jaimie is a 27-year-old
English-sounding Welsh girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in
South Wales and enjoys writing, gardening, drinking tea and watching
horror movies. She hates spiders and cheese & onion crisps.
She has been writing for years, but has never before plucked up the
courage to tell people. She writes mostly chick-lit and young adult.
Kismetology is her first novel and there are plenty more on the way!
Welcome to our stop on Cameron Jace's I Am Alive book tour, hosted by Xpresso Book Tours. We're going to share an excerpt from a little later in the book, then we've got a copy of the novel to give away here! But first, here's what the book is about:
Every girl dies - not every girl really lives.
Sixteen-year-old
Decca Tenderstone feels captivated when she meets Leo, who is arrogant,
silent, beautiful, and shoots almost every one he meets.
the usual boring girl meets badboy story... hmm... with a twist ...
They
live in a dystopian future in Los Angeles where every sixteen-year-old
is ranked on a scale from one to ten to determine their future.
Outranks, who are considered a danger to society, are forced to attend
the Monster Show, a brutal sacrificing ritual that is broadcasted
worldwide on live TV, where rebellious teens are labelled Bad Kidz or
Monsters and get to fight for their lives in deadly games.
To prove that you're still alive you have to scream I Am Alive every six hours. Lower your voice, and you're dead.
Decca
doesn't need Leo's company. She has secrets of her own. While they both
can't stand each other, she will find out why she doesn't fit into any
rank.
Nothing will stand in her way as she has to make choices concerning love, life, staying alive, growing up, and finding out who she really is.
Wonderlander, Neverlander, Unicorn-chaser, enchanter, musician, survived
a coma, & totally awesome. Sometimes I tell stories. Always luv the
little monsters. I write young adult paranormal romance, urban
fantasy, and science fiction mostly. The Grimm Diaries series is a seven
book saga that deals with retellings of fairy tales from a young adult
POV - it connects most of the fairy tales together and claims to be the
truth about fairy tales. I live in San Fransisco and seriously
think circles are way cooler than triangles.
"The first thing I see when I wake up is a pair of beautiful green eyes. It’s Leo. He is holding a bar of chocolate in his hand, and he doesn’t have a sleeping bag. I crawl sleepily out of mine. “Are you okay?” he asks. “I had a bad dream,” I yawn. “Really? I thought I heard you cry out.” “So? Can’t a girl have some privacy in a bad dream? Why are you awake?” The rest are asleep. “Just checking on you.” He smirks, a little better than usual, with a smile hidden somewhere. “I brought you chocolate,” he offers. I take it abruptly. “You found my weak spot.” I bite hard. The chocolate tastes funny. “So what’s yours?” “Mine?” “Your weak spot.” “I don’t have one,” he says bluntly. “Not even me?” “That, we have to talk about when we get out of here alive.”"
EDIT: THIS BOOK HAS BEEN RENAMED TIMEBOUND AND IS COMPLETE WITH A BRAND NEW COVER YOU CAN SEE HERE.
On Tuesday I hosted the tour for Time's Twisted Arrow, and you can find it here (make sure you check it out because we're giving away a couple copies of the book!) Unfortunately, I was kind of out of it at the time because I had stayed up too late trying to finish the book because it was just so awesome. Then one thing led to another and I was having difficulty forming coherent sentences to write, which is not nearly good enough for this book. So now it's back, finally getting the kind of review that this amazing book deserves!
They weren't panic
attacks. Of that, seventeen year old Kate is certain, no matter what the
shrink told her parents. But it's even harder to accept the explanation
offered by her terminally ill grandmother - that Kate has inherited
designer DNA from the time-traveling historians of CHRONOS, who were
stranded in the past by a saboteur. Kate knows that her grandmother's
story could easily be the brain tumor talking, but that doesn't explain
the odd medallion or the two young men - one of them hauntingly familiar
-- who simply vanish before her eyes on the subway. It doesn't explain
Trey, the handsome stranger who now occupies Kate's assigned seat in
trig class. And it definitely doesn't explain why Kate is now in an
alternate timeline, where leaders of a previously unknown cult hold
great power and are planning a rather drastic form of environmental
defense.
In this new reality, Kate's grandmother was murdered at
age twenty-two on a research trip to the past, which means that Kate's
mother was never born, her father doesn't know her and, for all intents
and purposes, she doesn't exist. The only thing keeping her from
disappearing entirely is the strange blue medallion around her neck, and
the only thing keeping her sane is her burgeoning relationship with
Trey. To restore the time line, Kate must travel back to 1893 and keep
herself and her grandmother clear of H.H. Holmes, the serial killer who
is stalking young women at the Chicago World's Fair. But that choice
comes at a price - she'll remember the past few months with Trey, but
when he looks at her, he'll see a total stranger.
When I finished this book, I was trying really hard not to cry. It may
have been because of the obnoxious fluorescent lights that had been
shining on me for the past few hours as I read this book in one sitting,
but I think it's something else. I am SO GLAD that Rysa didn't leave me
with a cliffhanger here. I'm pretty sure I'd still be holding back
tears, but it would not be joy streaming down my face. It would be
bitter, agonizing pain because I wasn't ready to let go of the
characters yet.
I'm still not, but at least there was a respectable amount of closure.
I'd been worrying a lot as I saw the book coming to a close, and I was
really afraid that everything was going to end right in the heat of it
all (haha, literally). This ending still has me on my toes, but at
least they're firmly planted on the ground instead of ready to chuck my
Kindle off of a cliff for leaving me with such a finale.
It wasn't just the ending that was perfect, though. The entire book was just so amazing that I couldn't stop smiling. Most of the time. The times when I wasn't smiling, I was about to break down into tears because I felt so bad for Kate. Like when she got the letter from her father.... yeah that was bad.
And I'm not a crier. I don't think I've ever cried when reading a book, and I can still say that even though I came pretty close this time. This book was just so.... agh! I still can't put words to it even though I've been trying to process everything that happened for the past four days. If that doesn't tell you how incredible this book is, then nothing will.
The most impressive part about this book was how well Rysa Walker handled time travel. While I'm not going to say that I didn't have any questions, this is THE BEST TIME TRAVEL BOOK I'VE EVER READ. I already mentioned that it's the best book I've read so far this year in general, but it's the best book concerning time travel that I've read in my entire life.
I'm not going to lie, time travel is hard. In my opinion, it is one of the most difficult topics to write about because there are so many loose ends to cover that will always leave the reader questioning if they're not taken care of. That's why I was wary of reading this book at first, but Rysa Walker handled it better than anyone else that I know of.
While the time travel was the best part, my favorite part was the characters, especially the two main guys. I am so sick and tired
of those idiotic "bad boy" male leads, and this was such a welcome
breath of fresh air. Yes, I know, call me a goody two shoes or whatever,
but I always go for the good ones in books. Just ask Gabby, it's
annoyed her many times before.
Trey and Kiernan, man I love those guys. Both of them, which will
probably not end so well for me later on, but I still love them both to
death. Especially another version of one of them (yeah, some of you know
what I'm talking about). They're just so awesome in so many ways, I
can't even handle it!
They both care so much about Kate, and they're not looking to drag her down into their dark and dangerous world like so many other male book characters will. Boys, please just get your own act together before you come messing with these girls because they don't need any of that. I don't care if you "ooze mysterious excitement" or whatever other kinds of wonderful things you bring along with you. It's kind of getting old.
That doesn't mean that Trey and Kiernan are perfect little angels without any other purpose in life other than to stand beside Kate and looking pretty. They definitely have their own stories and problems, but the important thing is that they don't try to hurt Kate because of them. I actually believe that both of them truly love her, so I'm really excited to see how things will turn out.
Couple all of that with a heroine that can actually take care of herself (thank goodness!), one really kick-butt grandma, and a loveable Irish setter,
and you've got quite the book on your hands.
Now my only problem with this wonderful package is what it's wrapped in. I know, everyone says not to judge a book by its cover, but for now, they can shove it. I'm judging because I know that's what we, as readers, do. Just looking at the image on the front, it doesn't scream amazing, action-packed, comedy-ridden, romance-filled bundle of adventure like the actual story does. It's just.... brown. And swirly with numbers. My first impression was that it was a historical novel, which is so not true. I hate historical novels, and the blurb just barely managed to snare me long enough to grab it.
Yeah, even writing this I can see how that seems petty, but like it or not, that's how it works. The first thing we see is the cover, and we're going to make assumptions based on it. Luckily, the meat of the package more than compensates for any misgivings I had at the beginning. It could have been wrapped in a paper bag, and it still wouldn't have made any difference in the fact that this book is the best I've read all year.
Rating: ∞ stars
And to wrap it up, here's my favorite spoiler-free passage:
"I looked again at the picture, unsure which bothered me more - that I had been kissed by a married preacher or that he had died more than half a century before I was born."
A copy of the novel was provided for us in exchange for an honest review.
I highly suggest that you check out Fiktshun's post for February to get all of the official information and link up your reviews.
And also to find out about the mini-challenge for this month. The idea is to create a button with one of your favorite quotes from a book you're read so far for the challenge. Pretty cool, huh? Here's mine!
This is from Blood Shadows by Lindsay J. Pryor. If you're interested, my review for that is here. I really liked this book. It was hilarious at exactly the right moments, and the characters were a lot of fun to get to know. I definitely recommend it!
***
And for the actual recap part, here are the books I read in February for the challenge.
I know, only two! I'm awful! There were just too many books that I read this month that were published this year. At least these two were pretty good.
So, have any of you guys signed up for the challenge too? What have you read so far?
