Tag Archives: reading

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

August is Read-a-Romance Month, and to celebrate, 10  YA romance authors have gotten together to sponsor a fantastic giveaway! The Grand Prize winner will receive 10 physical copies of the titles you see in the graphic, and a Runner Up will win the e-book of each title. International contestants are eligible from any country where Book Depository ships for free.

Are you a romance blogger? We’re doing something extra special for you! You’ll get extra entries in the Rafflecopter as a thank you for your tireless effort and dedication in reviewing our books, to helping promote our work and the romance genre in general, and for being such supportive cheerleaders!

Enter the Rafflecopter below for your chance to win! And don’t forget to check out the other nine sponsoring authors’ websites!

Betsy Aldredge
Sara Biren
Julia Day
Larissa Hardesty
L.H. Nicole
Maggie Ann Martin
Shaila Patel
Amy Patrick
J.C. Welker

To enter to win, simply fill out this  Rafflecopter giveaway!
Contest ends 8/31/17 at 11:59pm Eastern time. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited by law. You must be at least 18 years old to enter or have your parent’s permission. The winner will be chosen by Rafflecopter and notified by email within 48 after the end of the giveaway. You will have 48 hours to respond, or a new winner will be chosen. All decisions are final. Odds of winning will vary based on the number of eligible entries received. If a mailed prize is returned for whatever reason, another winner will be chosen. None of the sponsoring authors are responsible for any lost, stolen, or misdirected prizes. Each sponsoring author is solely responsible for providing their book to you directly. This giveaway is not affiliated with any social media accounts associated with any of the sponsoring authors.

My Swoon YA Summer Reading List

You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged in, oh … almost a year. Well, that’s because of two things. One, my husband took down my website and moved it to a new (easier and better) platform and parts of it had to be rebuilt and that was all just a tad overwhelming for me. And two, I’ve been writing. As in, books! And I have some exciting news on that front … but I will save that for next week’s post!

Anyway … thank you for stopping by after all this time. This week, I have a treat for you. I am really excited to share three Swoon YA reads that are on my summer TBR (To Be Read) list. All three of these look fantastic –  fantastic enough that the idea of posting about them motivated me to rebuild the site and hop back on my blogging horse. I can’t wait to check them out, and I hope you will, too!

Life in the No-Dating Zone, by Tricia Tighe

no_dating_zoneFirst of all … love the title. I want to know what the no-dating zone is and I really want to know what life is like there. Though I’m guessing from the cover image it doesn’t quite work out as planned, ahaha! Also, the reviews on this book’s Goodreads page call it “adorable,” “fun,” “sweet,”  and “goofy.” In other words, perfect for summer.

Here is the official blurb: After surviving her parents’ relationship drama when her older sister elopes, Claire Gardner vows not to date during high school. Now, three years later, Claire is thrust into new relationship drama–her two best friends have boyfriends. Which means Claire is spending more and more time alone. And she’s more than a little peeved.

Enter Gray Langley. His year-long crush on Claire’s friend Lindsey has made him desperate enough to ask Claire for help. Hesitant at first, Claire agrees–anything to get rid of Lindsey’s current evil boyfriend. But as Claire and Gray plot together, an attraction develops, and now she must decide if being with Gray is worth the pain that will come from confronting her parents with the reasons for her vow.

Kissing Frogs, by Alisha Sevigny

kissing_frogsA modern retelling of “The Frog Prince”? Yes, please. Also, I love me a good nerdy-girl goes popular goes nerdy again book. And also, one of its Goodreads reviews says this book is “like a piña colada on a hot summer day.” So, yeah. Sign me up.

The blurb: Popular party girl and high school senior Jessica Scott has a secret: she used to be a nerd – a big one; a goody two-shoes, grade-skipping, all-state spelling bee champ. But she lost the braces, put on some contacts, and applied all her academic genius to studying and imitating the social elite. Now she rules the school from the upper echelon of the high school realm. With her cool new friends and hottest-guy-in-school boyfriend, life’s a beach – and that’s where she’s headed for Spring Break. That is, until her teacher breaks the bad news that she’s failing Biology – and her only chance to make up the grade is to throw away the culminating trip of her hard-earned popularity and join the Conservation Club in Panama to save the Golden Frog.

Unable to let go of her faded college dreams, Jess finds herself in a foreign country with a new social crew, and one handsome face that stands out as a blast from the past, threatening to ruin her queen bee reputation. Travis Henley may have grown up, but he still likes to play childish games and as payment for retrieving Jess’ lost ring from the bottom of a jungle pool, he wants three dates. While Jess does battle with spiders, snakes, wildfires and smart mean girls, she desperately tries to hang on to the last vestiges of her popular existence like the Golden Frog from its webbed toe. But as she starts to care about something more than tanning and texting – a species on the verge of disappearing forever – she may realize the worth of her inner nerd, and the one frog in particular that could be her prince in disguise.

Set in the lush and tropical El Valle de Anton, this modern fairy tale re-imagining of “The Frog Prince” is toe-curling contemporary romance with an environmentalist heartbeat, in the tradition of Stephanie Perkins.

Snark and Circumstance, by Stephanie Wardrop

snarkThis one is actually a novella, just 45 pages, and is the first in a series with equally fun Jane Austenesque titles. After all the sweetness of the two earlier books, I think I’ll be in the mood for some good old-fashioned teen snark! Fun premise … really looking forward to this one!

Here’s the blurb: One superior smirk from Michael Endicott convinces sixteen-year-old Georgia Barrett that the Devil wears Polo. His family may have founded the postcard-perfect New England town they live in, but Georgia’s not impressed. Even if he is smart, good looking, and can return Georgia’s barbs as deftly as he returns serves on his family’s tennis courts. After all, if Michael actually thinks she refuses to participate in lab dissections just to mess with his grade, he’s a little too sure that he’s the center of the universe. Could there be more to Michael Endicott than smirks and sarcasm? If Georgia can cut the snark long enough, she just might find out.

Book Club Bingo

books_0I’m always slightly terrified when I find out someone I know is reading my book. How will they react? Will they like it? Hate it? Or worst case, feel nothing?

So when I found out that the Joy of Reading Book Club at my church had chosen THE FUNERAL SINGER as its March pick, I was torn. Part of me felt so grateful and humbled that they would take the time to read and discuss it. Part of me was psyched to have an opportunity to sit in a room full of book lovers and listen to them discuss the characters and scenes I’d spent five years writing and revising. And, yes, part of me was quite nervous.

Well, last night was The Big Night … and I haven’t quite come down from it yet. It was more fun and boosted my confidence as a writer more than I could have imagined.

Eight women braved the icy Northern Virginia roads to get together for almost two hours to talk about MY BOOK. Crazy, right? And so cool!

Everyone seemed to really like it–or if they didn’t, they were gracious enough to pick out the things they did like and talk about those. But I could tell, at least a few of the women loved it. Like, really, truly loved it. They talked about how close they felt to Mel, how various themes in the book spoke to them, and how they were recommending it to their family and friends. I couldn’t stop smiling. They GOT IT!

Now before I go all Sally Field on you, let me say: I tell you this not because I want to pat myself on the back (well, OK, maybe a little … I am forever telling writers to celebrate even the smallest victories in this tough, rejection-laden profession, and I need to remember to do that as well) but because I want to make a point about why writers write.

We write for the people who get it.

There will be people who don’t get it, and that’s OK. Not everyone likes every book. Any time I get a less-than-glowing review or a one- or two-star rating on Goodreads, I go look at the ratings for THE HUNGER GAMES. See, I LOVED that book. Loved the whole trilogy. Got all my friends to read it long before the movies came out. But at this moment, on Goodreads, THE HUNGER GAMES has 7,629 one-star ratings. Granted, this is less than 1 percent of its 2.3 million ratings, but still. More than 7,000 people hated it. THE HUNGER GAMES! Crazy but true. So not everyone is going to love my book, and I am learning to be OK with that.

But, there are people out there who do love it. Maybe even people I’ve never met and never will. And I’m writing for them.

As writers, we tend to measure success in sales. Well, the number of people who buy my book may never even reach the number of people who hated THE HUNGER GAMES, but you know what? That’s okay. If even one person loves my book, gets it, grows to care about my characters … what more can a writer ask for?

By the way, my favorite comment last night came from a woman who was talking about Mick–a character who actually is dead throughout the entire book and whose funeral kicks off the book. She talked about how she had developed some misconceptions about him but as she got to know him on the page throughout the course of the novel, she realized he was more than just a druggie rock star.

Her comment: “I said to myself, ‘You shouldn’t be so judgmental.’ It made me want to be a better person.”

It made her want to be a better person.

My book did that? Wow. That’s why I write.