Category Archives: Young Adult

Uncontrollable Blog Tour: Building Community & Giveaway (@srjohannes)

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I am excited today to be participating in the blog tour for Uncontrollable, the second book in the Nature of Grace series by S.R. Johannes. She’s here posting her tips for building community in the book world, and I think she’s got some great advice, whether you’re a writer or a blogger. Then you can check out some information on the book, and even win an e-copy of your very own, courtesy of S.R. Johannes. Thanks for joining me, S.R.!

S.R. Johannes Guest Post – “Building Community”

To me, community is everything in this business. Building a community is my main focus in marketing. Some people see marketing as ads and promoting all the time. I see it as building relationships. I always seek to help others first and I always try and keep a personal connection with those I meet.

Tips to building community:

• Find blogs you like and comment
• Choose your networks wisely
• Spread the word about another’s blog or book
• Don’t talk about yourself all the time
• Be present – Stay out there and visible
• Focus on getting to know your users – not what they can do for you.
• Build a network over time, not overnight
• Be yourself and show your personality
• Respond to tweets, emails, and messages
• Be humble and grateful
• Give credit where credit is due
• Give back
• Don’t do auto-tweets – it doesn’t fool any one
• Be interesting and helpful in posts

I am of the belief it is better to succeed with people than succeed alone. So this is where my belief of community comes in. Building a community that supports is essential to any writer’s career – published or not, traditional or indie.

About “The Nature of Grace”

Uncontrollable is the second book in “The Nature of Grace” series by S.R. Johannes. Untraceable, the first book in the series, has won and been nominated for several awards including Winner of the 2012 IndieReader Discovery Award (YA), 2012 Georgia Author of the Year (YA Nominee), and a finalist in The Kindle Book Review’s “Best Indie Book of 2012 (YA)”.

Kirkus reviewed Untraceable as “A thrilling story is a dramatic entanglement of mystery, deception and teen romance.  The action flows like a brisk mountain stream interspersed with rapids, holding suspense to last page.”

If you like a page turner, you will love this series!

To continue on with the blog tour, check out the line up! Where SR talks about anything from marketing to writing to her books to personal interviews and giveaways.

Book Summary

As 16-year-old Grace recovers from tragedy, her science class is chosen by Agent Sweeney at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to help with research on the new “Red Wolf Reintroduction Program”. 

While she’s excited about helping with the conservation of the endangered wolves, Grace knows this means being outdoors in the worst winter recorded, in a place she no longer feels comfortable. It also means working closely with Wyn (her ex) and his annoying girlfriend (Skyler), a girl whose idea of getting close to nature is picking silk plants and growing fake plants. 

After a couple of wolves show up dead, Grace almost quits. However, when a fellow project team member goes missing, Grace continues the assignment under a renewed suspicion that someone might be sabotaging the conservation program. She quietly begins to hunt for clues. 

Little does she know, she is being hunted too. 

On Sale Now! 

Uncontrollable is on sale in paperback and ebook at all major booksellers including Amazon, iBooks/Apple, Smashwords, and B&N.

If you haven’t read Untraceable, you can get it in paperback and ebook at all major booksellers including Amazon, Apple, Smashwords, and B&N.

Author Bio

S.R. Johannes is the author of award-winning and Amazon bestselling Untraceable (a teen wilderness thriller) and new tween paranormal, On The Bright Side. She has also published short novelettes as well as a teen romance anthology with 16 other authors titled, In His Eyes.  Uncontrollable, the sequel to Untraceable, is scheduled for September 2012.

S.R. Johannes is a winner of the 2012 IndieReader Discovery Awards (Young Adult) and was also recently nominated for 2012 Georgia Author of the Year (Young Adult). Untraceable was also recently named a Finalist in The Kindle Book Review’s Indie Book of the Year (YA)

After earning an MBA and working in corporate America, S.R. Johannes traded in her expensive suits, high heels, and corporate lingo for a family, flip-flops, and her love of writing.  She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her dog, British-accented husband, and the huge imaginations of their little prince and princess, which she hopes- someday- will change the world.

Connect!

Follow S.R. online on her website, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest

You can also sign up for her newsletter to keep up on author or book news.

Giveaway!

Enter below to win an e-copy of Uncontrollable!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: If I Stay by Gayle Forman (@gayleforman)

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I’ve been hearing great things about If I Stay by Gayle Forman for a long time now, but I didn’t get around to reading it until one of my real-life friends mentioned that it (and its sequel, Where She Went) were among her favorite books. I figured if they’re her favorite books, she probably owns them, and so I asked to borrow them. I read both over the weekend of my brother’s wedding, then needed a few weeks to process them. They’re the kind of books I can’t form coherent thoughts about right off the bat.

But now I think I can (maybe) talk rationally about them. Although, for the purposes of this review, I’ll only be discussing If I Stay, because they are very different books.

The Plot (from Goodreads)

In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen ­year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly beautiful, Mia’s story will stay with you for a long, long time.

My Thoughts

If I Stay alternates between Mia’s flashbacks of her life and her out-of-body experience after the accident, watching her friends and family react to what has happened to her, her parents, and her brother. We get to see snippets of her childhood, her interaction with her parents and brother, and the evolution of relationship with her boyfriend, Adam, and her best friend, Kim. Meanwhile, we’re also in the hospital, seeing how Adam, Kim, Mia’s grandparents and other extended family members are coping. And through it all, Mia has to decide if she’s going to succumb to her injuries or fight for her life; if the experiences she hasn’t yet had are worth the pain of the world she’d be returning to.

This book hurt to read. While Mia is a bit of a detached narrator, it was still devastating to view the scene of the crash through her eyes, and to experience each of her revelations with her throughout the book. But although there is lots of sadness and hardship in this book, there is also joy and humor. Mia had an overall happy life. She had parents who loved her, a boyfriend who was devoted to her, and friends that cared for her. She had a creative outlet in the cello that the people in her life may not have totally understood, but still supported.

In a way, that happiness made what happened to her that much harder to read about. Her losses were large and meaningful, and it made it easy to understand why she would debate whether or not she wanted to return to a life that had been stripped of so much. There was no clear-cut right or wrong answer, and no matter what she chose, it would have made sense. It also makes her ultimate choice a double-edged sword. I simultaneously agreed with her choice and regretted, along with Mia, what she gave up by making it.

The few annoyances I had with this book were actually not problems with the book, just bits of added realism for the characters. While Mia adored her parents, and they loved her fiercely, as she looked back on her life, she would reflect on some occasions with her parents that she thought were awesome and I thought were questionable parenting decisions. But of course, that’s because she’s a teenager and these are her parents, and I’m an adult, and a parent, so our perspectives are going to be very different. (Of course, that also has a lot to do with your personal parenting — and life — philosophy, and we all know there are as many of those in the world as there are people. So other parents may think Mia’s parents are the epitome of parenting, and that’s fine too). There were also a couple instances with Adam in flashback that made me raise an eyebrow or two, but again, I understood why they made sense for the characters.

One of my favorite aspects of the book was the use of music, and how Mia, her parents, and Adam were all musicians, albeit very different kinds. Whenever Mia was talking about how she felt playing the cello, or about how her parents or Adam talked about music, I continually thought, yes. This is how musicians think (while I’m not the virtuoso Mia is, I still have a musician’s brain). It made me want to go watch cello videos on YouTube (because there are some awesome cello videos on YouTube. Like this one. Or this one), or to sing, or to dust off my piano music. I loved how they all related through music, and while they approached it differently, they all understood that the music was the important thing.

If I Stay is a powerful and introspective look at life, love, family, friendship, and how everything we know can change in an instant. It was beautiful and haunting and sweet and sad, all at once. It’s not like any other book I’ve read, and it stuck with me for a long time after I turned the last page.

[Oh, also, I have no idea why the cover blurb says it will appeal to fans of Twilight. While it definitely could appeal to fans of Twilight, it is absolutely nothing like Twilight, except that it features a teen female protagonist with a boyfriend.]

Content guide: Contains graphic description of a devastating car accident, profanity, some sexual activity.

 

Review: What’s Left of Me by Kat Zhang (@KatZhang @harperteen)

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Received an advance digital review copy from Edelweiss

I’ve been interested in What’s Left of Me, the debut by Kat Zhang, since I first heard of it. The premise was intriguing – two people trapped in the same body, fighting for dominance? But unlike in other books exploring a similar theme, like The Host, the characters in this book are actually born that way? I sensed potential for greatness. And when I realized Kat was another Nashville author whom I would have the opportunity to meet, that sealed the deal. I needed to read this book ASAP.

The Plot (from Goodreads)

Eva and Addie started out the same way as everyone else—two souls woven together in one body, taking turns controlling their movements as they learned how to walk, how to sing, how to dance. But as they grew, so did the worried whispers. Why aren’t they settling? Why isn’t one of them fading? The doctors ran tests, the neighbors shied away, and their parents begged for more time. Finally Addie was pronounced healthy and Eva was declared gone. Except, she wasn’t . . .

For the past three years, Eva has clung to the remnants of her life. Only Addie knows she’s still there, trapped inside their body. Then one day, they discover there may be a way for Eva to move again. The risks are unimaginable-hybrids are considered a threat to society, so if they are caught, Addie and Eva will be locked away with the others. And yet . . . for a chance to smile, to twirl, to speak, Eva will do anything.

My Thoughts

This book took some getting used to, because of the unnatural (yet accurate for the story) use of pronouns and verb conjugations. Because there are two people sharing one body, you get paragraphs like this:

“Kind of,” Addie said. She managed to keep our voice bland despite Hally’s dogged high spirits, but our fingers tugged at the bottom of our blouse. It had fit at the beginning of the year, when we’d bought all new uniforms for high school, but we’d grown taller since then. Our parents hadn’t noticed, not with — well, not with everything that was happening with Lyle — and we hadn’t said anything.

“Want to come over?” Hally said.

Addie’s smile was strained. As far as we knew, Hally had never asked anyone over.

– page 8, What’s Left of Me

Keeping in mind that all those “our”s and “we”s are talking about two individuals sharing the same body. Sometimes Addie acts independently of Eva, sometimes they act together. Sometimes people are addressing both of them, sometimes just one. You’d think it would be really confusing, but it’s not once you get used to it. I do, however, feel sorry for Kat’s editor. Grammarcheck would have had a hard time with this one.

I really liked that this story was told from the perspective of Eva, the recessive soul. It was fascinating watching Eva and Addie’s sibling dynamic, when one of them had only a voice and no body. They could communicate with each other, but Eva couldn’t speak with their voice to anyone else. So lots of times, Eva sat helplessly inside their body, urging Addie toward a course of action, only to have to suffer the consequences when Addie made a different choice.

Although it wasn’t a major plot point of the book, I was completely fascinated by the family dynamics in the book. Eva and Addie’s parents both, at some point during their lives, tell them that they love both of them. But at the same time, they urge Eva to fade away, and for Addie to assert her dominance. It’s such a weird and challenging concept — how should a parent’s love be affected by having two children inhabiting the same body? And should they mourn the “death” of one for the good of the other, or should they simply accept it as the way life works? Eva, obviously, feels hurt by the withdrawal of her parents’ affection — from her, not Addie — even as she tries to tell herself it’s normal for them to stop talking to her. Again, this isn’t actually a huge part of the story, but it was such an interesting question to me.

And the question necessarily expands to intertwine with the main narrative. Should one soul be forced to fade away, or do both have a right to share the body? And if both souls have equal rights to the body, who gets to choose what they do? If one soul is romantically attracted to someone and the other is not, which gets to follow their heart?

As Eva and Addie struggle with these philosophical questions, they have to deal with the physical problem of being taken and incarcerated if their hybrid nature is discovered. And so in addition to the internal struggle, there is a lot of external action, adventure, and peril. Even a touch of romance, although that too becomes a delicate and challenging situation. It’s a great mix, and I was completely sucked in.

Eva’s narration is sparse but effective, and the storytelling flowed nicely. There’s still some huge questions at the end of the book, but it’s not a cliffhanger. Truthfully, I don’t know if it’s possible to fully and neatly answer all of the questions raised by this book, so in that way, it would actually work as a standalone (even though it’s the first of a trilogy). Oh, and although it’s being touted as a dystopian, it’s really not. Nor is it really sci-fi. More of an alternate reality. It’s one of those books that’s kind of hard to define, which I think actually broadens its appeal.

I thought this book was really good, but it didn’t completely knock me off my feet. I feel like it could, and I’m almost expecting that from the sequel. But while this one was highly enjoyable, it didn’t quite crack that amorphous bubble that houses my all-time favorites. That said, I still highly recommend it.

Content guide: Contains some violence

Review: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (@Scholastic)

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Read and reviewed as part of the Southern Book Bloggers ARC Tour

I’ll be honest. I had absolutely no idea what The Raven Boys was about when I requested to be part of the ARC tour. I just knew a bunch of other bloggers had been raving about how excited they were for it, and about what a great writer Maggie Stiefvater is, so I threw my hat in the ring. And then it arrived in the mail and it was thick, and I had just been in a mini-slump and thought “Oh no. I’ll never finish this in a week.”

And then I finished it in three days (which for some book bloggers is still slow, but with the way my life has been lately, let me assure you that three days is about as fast as it gets). If that tells you anything.

The Plot (from Goodreads)

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

From Maggie Stiefvater, the bestselling and acclaimed author of the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, comes a spellbinding new series where the inevitability of death and the nature of love lead us to a place we’ve never been before.

My Thoughts

First of all, the synopsis is misleading. It implies that there is a romance in this book between Blue and Gansey, and there is not. There is a hint of romance between Blue and one of the other Raven Boys, but not Gansey. Now, I’m pretty sure that if all the foreshadowing is to be believed, the Blue-Gansey romance will come later in the series, but in this first book, there’s actually very little romance at all.

This book does really well on a few fronts. First, the story itself is really interesting. The complex relationships between the boys and Blue, the intricate supernatural element that they’re exploring, and the interwoven mysteries that play out all kept the narrative moving and my attention occupied.

I also really liked several of the characters, particularly Blue, Adam, and strangely enough, Ronan. I’m not even sure if I was supposed to like Ronan, but I did. Adam was definitely my favorite of the Raven Boys, and I thought the best developed. And Blue was feisty and quirky in a way that let me see how she would really fit in well with the odd group of friends.

Maggie Stiefvater’s prose is engaging and flows nicely. I can see why her books are so popular (and now I’m motivated to actually go read the Shiver trilogy, which has been sitting unread on my shelf for months).

One warning: This book asks some pretty big questions that are not answered in this book. One in particular that I thought for sure would be addressed before the end of the book, isn’t. It’s not a cliffhanger per se, just big questions that remain unresolved. Now I’m thinking that it will probably take the entire trilogy to get answers to some of these, but it took the entire book for me to realize the answers weren’t coming.  It didn’t really bother me, but I just want you to be aware.

I did have a few problems with the book that kept me from completely loving it. The first is the shifting POVs. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good multiple-POV book, when it’s done right. And for the most part, this book did it right, with one exception. The villain (of sorts) gets a voice, and while part of me loves the idea of a villain getting to tell his side of the story, I don’t think it worked in this book. It all comes back to my whole hangup with “is this voice necessary?” and his POV was used so infrequently, I didn’t think it was necessary. Interesting? Kinda. Necessary? Probably not. Yes, he lets us in on a few pieces of information we wouldn’t have had otherwise, but I don’t think the story would have suffered without them, or if we had learned them through another method.

Then there’s the fact that I just didn’t really feel connected to Noah or Gansey, and I’m not sure why, but this story really needed me to have a connection with both of those characters to fully succeed. This just might be a problem with my brain, because I haven’t heard of anyone else having this problem. But bottom line, I felt like I really should care about these characters, and I didn’t. Not too much. I didn’t dislike them; I was just sort of apathetic towards them.

Now, will that apathy keep me from picking up the sequel? Definitely not. As I mentioned before, I loved some of the other characters, and the story is fascinating. So while I may not have thought the book was perfect, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. I will be eager to pick up the next one when it comes out to see what happens next with Blue and the Raven Boys.

Content Guide: Contains profanity and some violence

Throwback Thursday (September 6) – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

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Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books!

It’s the nature of book blogging to focus mainly on new releases, but there are thousands of great books out there that haven’t seen the “New Releases” shelf in years. We hope to be able to bring attention to some older titles that may not be at the top of the current bestseller list, but still deserve a spot in your To-Be-Read pile.

You don’t have to be a book blogger to participate! You can put up a Throwback Thursday post on your non-bookish blog; or if you don’t have a blog at all, just use the comments to tell us about a book you remember fondly.

Here’s how it works:
1. Pick any book released more than 5 years ago. Adult, YA, Children’s; doesn’t matter. Any great book will do.
2. Write up a short summary of the book (include the title, author, and cover art) and an explanation of why you love it. Make sure to link back to The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books in your post.
3. Link up your post at The Housework Can Wait or Never Too Fond of Books.
4. Visit as many blogs as you can, reminisce about books you loved, and discover some “new” books for your TBR list!

Feel free to grab the Throwback Thursday button code from the sidebar to use in your posts.

Thanks for participating, and we look forward to seeing which books you choose to remember!

My Throwback this week is…

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (or Philosopher’s Stone if you’re British) by J.K. Rowling

On the one hand, this choice is a little bit of a cop-out, because isn’t it just automatically assumed that everyone’s read Harry Potter already? But the sad truth is, there are still people out there wandering the earth who haven’t yet met Harry. They don’t know what muggles, Quidditch and butterbeer are. They don’t cringe at the words Crucio and Avada Kedavra. They may not even know how to pronounce “Hermione.”

So to those people, I say give it a chance. I scoffed at the series for years. I thought they were children’s books, and I couldn’t figure out why any self-respecting adult would read them. But one year, for my birthday (I seem to be developing a theme with birthday books), a friend gave me Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, because he liked it more than Sorcerer’s Stone, and I read it, and I was hooked.

The story is wonderfully imaginative. The writing is beautiful, and it matures with the readers (Sorcerer’s Stone, featuring an 11-year-old Harry, is a solid middle-grade. Deathly Hallows, featuring a 17-year-old Harry, is written for older teens). The attention to detail is amazing. There’s casual mentions of things in Book 1 that don’t wind up being significant until Books 6 and 7. The wide assortment of characters is among the most fabulously developed of any cast, ever. From Harry’s classmates to his enemies to his friends’ parents to his teachers, you won’t find any one-dimensional characters in the pages of Harry Potter.

If you’ve never visited Hogwarts, let’s remedy that.

And if you have, here is your reward.

And another!

This is a blog hop! Link up your Throwback Thursday post below!