Dare You To Blog Tour: Interview with Ryan + A Giveaway

Today I can barely contain my excitement over the fact that I have Ryan from Katie McGarry's upcoming release Dare You To joining me on the blog to answer a few questions. *takes deep breath* I fell in love with last year's Pushing the Limits, and like nearly everyone else, have been anxiously awaiting Beth's story. I ended up loving Dare You To as much as, if not more, than Pushing the Limits and I want to say a huge thank you to Kismet Book Touring and Katie McGarry for giving me access to Ryan ;-) Be sure and check the bottom of the post for a couple amazing giveaways as well as the full list of participating blogs. Welcome to Supernatural Snark Ryan!

Let’s say after all the events of Dare You To you are able to travel back in time to your first meeting with Beth in the line of the fast food restaurant. How would you alter your previous approach to ensure a more favorable outcome given what you’ve learned about Beth over the past several months?

Great question, but knowing Beth like I do now, I don’t think there’s anything I could have done to change our course. She doesn’t trust easily and would have been wary of me regardless of what I had done.

If Beth were asked to describe her feelings toward you after that first meeting, how scared of her answer would you be?

(Ryan chuckles) I don’t have to be terrified of her answer, because I already know. If Beth’s anything, she’s straightforward. She didn’t like me. She told me she didn’t like me and I believe she later threatened to take away my ability to have children.

Seriously though, I rattled Beth when we first met and she has a hard time admitting things like that.

You have just a few minutes alone with Isaiah and you can tell he’s in a relatively good mood. He might even humor you by answering a question or two. What do you ask him?

I don’t really have a question for him as much as I’d like to thank him. He protected Beth for years—kept her safe when her mom couldn’t or wouldn’t. For that, I’m grateful.

Beth doesn’t need to do anything special to impress you, but if she really wanted to by planning a unique date without asking you directly what you wanted to do, what are a couple of clues or hints we could give her to help her with that endeavor?

She can’t go wrong with tickets to a Cincinnati Reds game. Honestly, I like spending quiet time with Beth. She knows that. I think that’s why she sneaks over in the middle of the night to be with me.

If there was ever a moment during your courtship of Beth that you wished for the sudden arrival of a telepathic ability so you could know exactly what she was thinking, what moment would that have been?

Can I have the ability for our entire relationship? I love Beth, she’s got one hell of a poker face so I’m always trying to guess her thoughts.

Looking back though, I wish that I could have known her thoughts the night she tried to run away. I didn’t know what was going down at the time and looking back, if I had known, I could have handled things differently.

Outside of anything relating to Beth, what’s one dare you absolutely regret accepting?

Logan and I accidentally singed the upholstery of Lacy’s car once on a dare. She’s still pissed at us.

If you were to fictionalize the story of your life, what would the first line of that novel be?

Meeting Beth is the huge catalyst in my life so I’ll go with the opening: I’m not interested in second place. Never have been. Never will be.

It’s that attitude that helped me define what I want for my future and it helped with winning over Beth.

• • • • • • • • • • 

DARE YOU TO

An emotionally-charged roller coaster ride that will keep you turning the pages well into the night, DARE YOU TO tells the story of seventeen-year-old Beth Risk, who finds her life turned upside down at the beginning of her senior year. Forced to leave the mother she’s always protected and the only friends she’s ever known, Beth must start over at a new school, in a new town, with an uncle she hasn’t seen in years.

The last thing she wants is to catch the eye of the town’s golden boy, popular jock Ryan Stone, who seems determined to win her over for all the wrong reasons. But when she discovers that Ryan has secrets of his own, Beth is drawn to him despite herself. Soon she’ll have to make a choice—between the past that beckons her back, and the life she never dreamed possible.

With PUSHING THE LIMITS, Harlequin TEEN introduced a singular new voice that continues to resonate with teens and adults alike. With DARE YOU TO, Katie McGarry cements her place as a master of contemporary young adult fiction.

Releases May 28th from HarlequinTEEN

Goodreads • Amazon • B&N • IndieBound • BookDepository 

• • • • • • • • • • 

KATIE MCGARRY

Katie was a teenager during the age of grunge and boy bands and remembers those years as the best and worst of her life. She is a lover of music, happy endings, reality television, and is a secret University of Kentucky basketball fan.

Katie is the author of the full-length Young Adult novels PUSHING THE LIMITS and DARE YOU TO, and the e-novella CROSSING THE LINE. Her debut novel, PUSHING THE LIMITS, is a 2012 Goodreads Choice Finalist for YA Fiction and an RT Book Reviews 2012 Reviewer’s Choice Awards Nominee for Young Adult Contemporary Novel.

Writing has given Katie an excuse to pursue her passions. Research for her books has provided her with the amazing opportunity to train with baseball players, ride along in a drag car at ninety-six miles per hour and experience boxing and mixed martial arts. The most memorable moments for Katie are when she speaks to groups of teenagers about her research, writing and the truth that no dream is out of reach. Katie would love to hear from her readers.

Novels by Katie McGarry:

    • Pushing the Limits (available now)
    • Crossing the Line (e-novella, available now)
    • Dare You To (available May 28th 2013)
    • Crash Into You (coming soon...)

Website • Goodreads • Facebook • Twitter

• • • • • • • • • • 

GIVEAWAY

Thanks to the outstanding teams at HarlequinTEEN and Kismet Book Touring, I have a couple of unbelievable giveaways to share with you all today!

First up is your choice of either Pushing the Limits or Dare You To, just fill out the Rafflecopter form below. THEN, in addition to your choice of books, filling out the form below also enters you to win the grand prize pack (pictured above, look at all that awesome!), so good luck everyone!

The prize pack includes:

   • 1 copy of Pushing The Limits
   • 1 copy of Dare You To
   • 1 brown leather cuff bracelet
   • 1 iPod
   • 1 iTunes gift card
   • 1 personalized Dare You To baseball jersey

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Though this is the final stop on the tour, don't forget to check out all the previous tour stops for more chances to win!

Monday, April 29th – Bewitched Bookworms – Excerpt & Song
Tuesday, April 30th - Harlequin Blog
Wednesday, May 1sh – The Irish Banana 
Thursday, May 2nd – Review - Tyngas Reviews
Friday, May 3rd – Evie Bookish 

Monday, May 6th - YA – Bibliophile
Tuesday, May 7th – Review - Realm of Fiction
Wednesday, May 8th – Book Swarm 
Thursday, May 9th – Review - Book Nook
Friday, May 10th –  Alice Marvels
 
Monday, May 13th -  Xpresso Reads
Tuesday, May 14th – Review - Chapter by Chapter 
Wednesday, May 15th – Book and A Latte 
Thursday, May 16th – Review - Blog Girl 
Friday, May 17th – Supernatural Snark 

Review: Wild Awake

WILD AWAKE
Hilary T. Smith
Contemporary Young Adult
400 pages
Katherine Tegen Books
Available May 28th
Source: ARC from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Things you earnestly believe will happen while your parents are away:

1. You will remember to water the azaleas.
2. You will take detailed, accurate messages.
3. You will call your older brother, Denny, if even the slightest thing goes wrong.
4. You and your best friend/bandmate Lukas will win Battle of the Bands.
5. Amid the thrill of victory, Lukas will finally realize you are the girl of his dreams.

Things that actually happen:

1. A stranger calls who says he knew your sister.
2. He says he has her stuff.
3. What stuff? Her stuff.
4. You tell him your parents won’t be able to—
5. Sukey died five years ago; can’t he—
6. You pick up a pen.
7. You scribble down the address.
8. You get on your bike and go.
9. Things . . . get a little crazy after that.*
*also, you fall in love, but not with Lukas.

Both exhilarating and wrenching, Hilary T. Smith’s debut novel captures the messy glory of being alive, as seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd discovers love, loss, chaos, and murder woven into a summer of music, madness, piercing heartbreak, and intoxicating joy.

MY THOUGHTS
Loose and meandering, Wild Awake takes us on a strange and jumbled multi-week journey through young Kiri’s life while her parents are away on vacation, watching through a haze of detachment as she finds herself slowly but brutally knocked off one life path before stumbling her way onto another. Reading this story is a bit like attending the exhibition of a renowned painter, standing in front of one of their pieces, and realizing you are perhaps the only person in the room that doesn’t fully understand or appreciate what’s before you. Ms. Smith is clearly a talented writer, but Kiri’s story is extraordinarily hard to connect to, leaving us feeling fuzzy and disoriented as though we are the ones indulging in the pot Kiri’s so fond of, and we flip the pages in a sort of fog wondering when or if the piece of literary artwork before us is going to start resonating.

Kiri, despite spending nearly four hundred pages with her, is someone who remains a bit of a mystery to us, flitting around frantically like a bird (fitting given her surname) trapped in a cage it never realized existed before, and now that it knows it can do nothing but beat its wings against the bars in an effort to make them disappear. She’s all over the place in this story – obsessing about her music, despairing of the truth of her sister’s death, riding her bike all over town and getting herself in to extraordinarily dangerous situations for a sixteen year-old girl, and bouncing from one thing to the next without staying still long enough for us to get a true glimpse of her. Being with her is a dizzying experience, something only enhanced by her pot smoking and her occasional pill-popping, and we can’t help but find ourselves looking forward to the time when we can get off this crazy ride and put our feet back on solid ground.

Wild Awake is one of those stories that doesn’t follow a typical plot arc; there’s no beginning, middle, or climactic end, it just simply is – a life depicted on the pages that’s sometimes heavy and difficult to wade through and other times light and airy, leaving us unfettered but also a touch uneasy with nothing around us to help us get our bearings. This book will likely appeal to many readers who appreciate more unusual stories that don’t necessarily have a romantic or familial drama to overcome or a specific mystery to be solved, but for many this will be a challenging read full of fairly mundane details about Kiri’s day to day activities and a seeming lack of direction for the story as a whole. There’s undeniably a beauty to this tale, but like any piece of artwork, it’s highly subjective and will certainly inspire more conflicting opinions than most.

Rating: 3/5
 

Find Hilary:

Website • Twitter • Goodreads • Amazon

This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion. 

Review: The Book of Broken Hearts

THE BOOK OF BROKEN HEARTS
Sarah Ockler
Contemporary Young Adult
352 pages
Simon Pulse
Available May 21st
Source: Received from publisher via Edelweiss

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Jude has learned a lot from her older sisters, but the most important thing is this: The Vargas brothers are notorious heartbreakers. She’s seen the tears and disasters that dating a Vargas boy can cause, and she swore an oath—with candles and a contract and everything—to never have anything to do with one.

Now Jude is the only sister still living at home, and she’s spending the summer helping her ailing father restore his vintage motorcycle—which means hiring a mechanic to help out. Is it Jude’s fault he happens to be cute? And surprisingly sweet? And a Vargas?

Jude tells herself it’s strictly bike business with Emilio. Her sisters will never find out, and Jude can spot those flirty little Vargas tricks a mile away—no way would she fall for them. But Jude’s defenses are crumbling, and if history is destined to repeat itself, she’s speeding toward some serious heartbreak…unless her sisters were wrong?

Jude may have taken an oath, but she’s beginning to think that when it comes to love, some promises might be worth breaking.

MY THOUGHTS 
Both poignant and funny, with a focus on relationships both familial and romantic, The Book of Broken Hearts pleases on a variety of levels, giving us a taste of reality without any added drama for effect. What we get when we crack the spine of this book is a glimpse at life – a glorious collage of good moments and bad, heartfelt conversations and witty banter, and old doors closing as new ones open wide to beckon Jude through. There's plenty of pain as well as many a scene between her and her father that make us tear up even though we know Jude would despise our sympathy, but never once does Ms. Ockler heighten tensions or toss in layers of drama unnecessary to Jude's journey just to play on our emotions, instead every minute with Jude is one we value, and one that's a vital piece of the Hernandez puzzle we long to see in all its stunning completeness.

Jude delights with her sass from the very first page, an internal monologue in which she questions the intelligence of wearing her current wedgie-causing shorts in an attempt to give off a biker chick vibe immediately causing a grin to paint our faces, something we'll soon learn is a common occurrence throughout. While her ability to make us laugh comes smoothly and easily, her very real fear for her father's worsening condition as his Alzheimer's rapidly progresses echoes in her every smile, and we can't help but long to wrap our arms around her and squeeze tight. She handles her father's less lucid moments beautifully, hating and cursing his disease but loving him through it, and basking in the moments when the Alzheimer's deigns to return her father to her.

One of the highlights of Jude's character is her lack of judgement, the painful past of two of her sisters leading to the vilification of the entire Vargas clan, but despite that history she opens herself up to Emilio and decides to trust him with things she doesn't even share with her own family. She's not one to keep secrets from him or hold on to her anger when they have an argument, and thankfully Emilio is much the same way, both of them communicating to the best of their ability instead of bottling up all their emotions and simply waiting to pop. Their romance is definitely of the slow burn variety, and their sweet, simple moments together are made all the more significant given the seriousness of Jude's father's condition, his episodes bringing clarity to both them and us as to how important it is to accept and appreciate the brevity of life.

Though we don't get to know Emilio quite as well as we might like, this story as a whole is a highly enjoyable one with a strong emphasis on family, something that is all too rare in young adult fiction. Ms. Ockler has a gift for writing quirky, hilarious young women, and Jude is absolutely no exception, making us giggle-snort in a most undignified manner even as we wipe away a tear the chapter after. A dog with what can only be described as a bunny fixation, a Holy Trinity of older sisters, and a sexy, motorycle-building love interest solidify this read as a one-sit wonder, easily devoured in just a few hours.

Rating: 4/5

Find Sarah:

Website • Blog • Facebook • Twitter • Goodreads • Amazon

This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.

Interview + Giveaway: Molly McAdams + Stealing Harper

I'm hugely excited today to welcome new adult author Molly McAdams back to the blog to celebrate the upcoming release of her new novella, Stealing Harper. For those of you who have read Taking Chances, this novella is written from Chase's point of view. Molly was nice enough to answer a few questions about Chase and the events of Taking Chances and Stealing Harper for me, so I hope you all enjoy! And don't forget to check the bottom of the post for an exclusive excerpt as well as a fantastic giveaway!

For those who have yet to meet Chase, please describe him using only the title or titles of other pieces of fiction.

“More Than Meets the Ink” “Bad Rep” “Passionate Ink” “Bad Boy Secrets” “Torn By Love”

What was the most fun/fascinating/difficult part of being in Chase’s head and writing from his point of view?

I absolutely LOVED getting to know him. I felt like I knew exactly who he was when I wrote Taking Chances, but I really had no clue. He’s very complex, caring, and willing to hurt himself emotionally, if it means that Harper has a better life. So finding out all these things about him absolutely gripped me, and I fell in love with him all over again.

If you were to sit down and interview Chase, what’s the first thing you would ask him?

Before I wrote Stealing Harper, it would have been “Why didn’t you fight for her in the beginning?” but I know that answer now, along with hundreds of others I had. So now, it would probably be something along the lines of, “How are you? I miss you.” Chase will always have a big part of my heart when it comes to my characters.

You don’t pull any punches emotionally when it comes to your stories, and your characters (and readers!) are always put through the wringer. What’s the last book you read that tied you up in all sorts of emotional knots?

When We Collide by A.L. Jackson. All her books bring me to my knees with the emotions in them, I love what she evokes in her readers!

What’s one question you wish someone would ask you in an interview? How would you answer?

“How ninja are you?” I’d probably say something along the lines of… “I’m the lamest they come, unless there’s a spider, or other bug, or a random floaty object in front of me. Then I become so ninja it’s insane. I karate chop at whatever it is, then disappear before it can find me again.”

*Jenny dies laughing*

If you were to channel Chase and get a tattoo that represented the events of Taking Chances and Stealing Harper, what might it look like or say?

I’m not sure if I can think of something that represents what happened in the books. But, to be honest, I love the lilies Chase gave Harper. I wouldn’t get exactly that, but I am getting something from it. I’m getting one orange lily with the word “Princess” hidden in one of the petals. Those lilies are a way of Chase, and his love, to forever be with Harper. No matter what happens, it won’t go away. And I love that.

What’s one line from Stealing Harper that brought a smile to your face the minute you wrote it?

“Swear, bro, you should have started with that, because I thought you were going to start batting for the other team.” –Brian. I just love anything Brian says, really. haha

• • • • • • • • • •

MOLLY MCADAMS

Molly grew up in California but now lives in the oh-so-amazing state of Texas with her husband and furry four-legged daughter. Some of her hobbies include hiking, snowboarding, traveling and long walks on the beach…which roughly translates to being a homebody with her hubby and dishing out movie quotes. When she’s not diving into the world of her characters, she can be found hiding out in her bedroom surrounded by her laptop, cell, Kindle and fighting over the TV remote. She has a weakness for crude-humored movies, fried pickles and loves curling up in a fluffy comforter during a thunderstorm...or under one in a bathtub if there are tornados. That way she can pretend they aren't really happening.

Website • Blog • Twitter • Facebook • Goodreads • Amazon

• • • • • • • • • •

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM STEALING HARPER

And no, the fact that I hid the word “princess” within the design I wanted to complete my right sleeve had nothing to do with her or the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about her. At all. Fuck. I slammed my sketchpad shut and shoved it into my desk.

I stretched my arms and back before leaving my room and locking the door behind me. I’d almost gotten to the end of the hallway when I heard Drew’s loud slur.

“YYYEEEAAAH Bree and fresh meat are sleeping over tonight!”

I figured “fresh meat” was Bree’s new roommate and felt bad for once again forgetting to meet her. I needed to make sure my sister wasn’t going to be rooming with some crazy person. When I got into the living room, Bree was over taking shots with Drew and Zach, and there standing near the doors to the backyard was my gray-eyed princess. This better be a fucking mistake.

Plastering a smile on my face, I couldn’t help but embrace the images that were now burned into my mind, “Well, well. If it isn't the princess.”

She froze when she heard me, and as she turned to look at me her eyes narrowed and the fakest smile I’ve ever seen crossed her face, “I almost didn't recognize you without a tramp attached to you.”

Be sure and check out both yesterday's excerpt over at Flirty and Dirty Book Blog as well as today's additional excerpt at Confessions of a Bookaholic!

Stealing Harper: 

Goodreads • Amazon

• • • • • • • • • • 

GIVEAWAY

Win a Molly McAdams prize pack! Prizes include all of Molly's books as well as a beautiful lily pendant, just fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Good luck everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

• • • • • • • • • •

PRE-ORDER STEALING HARPER

HarperCollins has been running a fabulous promotion wherein if the pre-orders for Stealing Harper reached a certain number, the novella would be released a full two weeks early. WIN! That goal has since been achieved, ensuring Stealing Harper will be released on May 21st, so mark your calendars, and be sure to pre-order your copy!

 

Review: The Last Academy

THE LAST ACADEMY
Anne Applegate
Paranormal Young Adult
320 pages
Scholastic Point
Available now
Disclosure: Received from publisher for the purpose of a review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
What is this prep school preparing them for?

Camden Fisher arrives at boarding school haunted by a falling-out with her best friend back home. But the manicured grounds of Lethe Academy are like nothing Cam has ever known. There are gorgeous, preppy boys wielding tennis rackets, and circles of girls with secrets to spare. Only . . . something is not quite right. One of Cam's new friends mysteriously disappears, but the teachers don't seem too concerned. Cam wakes up to strangers in her room, who then melt into the night. She is suddenly plagued by odd memories, and senses there might be something dark and terrible brewing. But what? The answer will leave Cam—and readers—stunned and breathless, in this thrilling debut novel.

MY THOUGHTS
The synopsis for The Last Academy is one that has us entering into this debut full of greedy anticipation, wondering what secrets lurk beneath the mask of polite society perfection, but what it doesn’t prepare us for is the youthfulness of its heroine. Camden, while only fourteen, reads as a very young fourteen, making it difficult for older readers of YA fiction (like myself) to connect to her and her peers. Without that connection we find ourselves a bit antsy and fidgety, unable to settle in as neither characters nor mystery create that desirable pull that keeps us up late reading even though we know our bodies will stage a revolt in the morning for doing so.

Camden isn’t an unlikable young woman, she just fully embodies her young age, some of her internal commentary making us laugh but also just as often reminding us of how many years separate us. Her relationships with a handful of girls at the academy are extraordinarily strange, moments of friendship between them suddenly and jarringly deteriorating into petty teenage vitriol before coming back around to wary friendship once again. The other girls themselves are difficult to tell apart, their personalities superficial and so similar that we often lose track of which of the young women Camden’s actually speaking to at the time, leaving us just as confused character-wise as we are unsure about what is happening with the disappearances at Lethe.

There is a romance in the The Last Academy, but like Camden’s relationships with the girls, it lacks depth, our lips barely twitching when she and Mark are together instead of creasing our faces with the full-wattage grin we so desire. The age difference between she and Mark, while technically a rather insignificant four years (he’s a senior to her freshman), feels far greater given Camden’s aforementioned youthful countenance and the fact that a great deal of personal growth typically happens during those four years, thereby making their "love" a bit off-putting rather than sweet. Mark himself is cute and an all-around good guy, but it’s hard to believe in his feelings for Camden both due in part to the age difference as well as the fact that he pops up randomly and simply isn’t on page long enough for us to learn anything real about him.

The highlight and saving grace for this read is the concluding thirty or so pages where all the loose threads that had been floating aimlessly throughout are nicely tied together with a surprising twist, one we begin to guess based on the hints we’re given, but don’t understand in full until Ms. Applegate reveals all. While much of the story is a struggle, we do leave it on a high note, able to forgive and forget some of the flaws we spent the first 250 pages frustrated with as we find a bit of contentment in an ending that brings everything full circle.

Rating: 2.5/5
 

Find Anne:

Website • Facebook • Twitter • Goodreads • Amazon

This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review, but my thoughts are my own and were not influenced in any way.

Things of Awesome: May Edition

Okay. I think I just need to admit defeat with this feature and demote it to a every-once-in-a-while-when-I'm-not-too-lazy-on-the-weekends-to-do-it post, because the sporadic nature of it really prevents it from deserving the title of "feature". There are handful of fun things I want to share with you this month though, complete with a new conversational snippet between me and Kevin. I hope it makes you guys smile, and Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

1. LOSING IT EXTRA SCENES

I read Losing It by Cora Carmack a little while back and loved it to pieces, so I'm thrilled to share the news that Cora is going to be releasing several scenes from Garrick's point of view! *flails* Please excuse me while I die of excitement. She's planning on releasing the below four scenes periodically as pre-orders for her new release Faking It (which is also completely amazing, I highly recommend - comes out June 4th) reach certain numbers.

Scenes:
•       The One Where They Meet
•       The One Where They Meet…Again
•       The One Where He Changes His Mind
•       The One Where Bliss Gets Her Way

Um. Yes please! I need inside Garrick's head as soon as possible. The below widget will keep you all updated as to where the pre-orders stand and which of the above scenes will be released next. I hope you guys add Faking It to your lists!

2. HARPER IMPULSE

HarperTeen's new Impulse imprint might be one of my favorite things ever. Novellas don't always interest me, but I love that Harper and their various authors are releasing these little shorts that give us a look at a familiar world through a different character's eyes. Some of the novellas and short stories, of course, are new and completely unrelated to any full-length series, but I've found I've even enjoyed those as well. Below are the newest Impulse titles for May!

Allies: An Insignia Novella

In S. J. Kincaid’s fast-paced and humorous sci-fi Insignia trilogy, the earth is in the middle of World War III when teen gamer Tom Raines is recruited to train with other young cadets as a pivotal member of the elite combat corps, the Intrasolar Forces. At the Pentagonal Spire’s training academy, he makes the best friends of his life—fellow government weapons-in-training Wyatt Enslow, Vik Ashwan, and Yuri Sysevich.

In this 47-page prequel novella to the series, budding genius Wyatt Enslow—intensely loyal and hyperintelligent if occasionally, hilariously, socially awkward—takes center stage as S. J. Kincaid reveals Wyatt’s life before she found her place, and her own inner strength, among her devoted band of friends at the Spire.

Playing Keira

From a breakthrough voice in YA fiction comes a captivating digital-original 50-page short story starring a supporting character from the novel You Look Different in Real Life.

The premise was simple: Five kids living their real lives, with a new movie about them every five years. But that was before Keira's mother walked out and the cameras captured every heartbreaking detail for the world to see. Now Keira doesn't even know what "real life" means—she only knows how to pretend to be herself.

Then she meets Garrett on a bus to New York City. At first, Keira creates a fictional identity and enjoys the freedom of being someone totally different. But as their brief connection turns into something more, Keira starts to see what life could be like if she just stopped pretending and accepted the person she really is.

Jennifer Castle's pitch-perfect teen voices and sharp insights—together with a teaser to You Look Different in Real Life—make this story a must-read, especially for fans of Sarah Dessen.

You fan find the full list of available Impulse titles HERE.

3. THE QUILL AWARDS

Fashioned after The Oscars, The Quill Awards is an awards show for young adult books put together by a couple bloggers, with various categories and nominees as well as a coterie of twenty-one bloggers acting as The Academy and voting for the winners.

From the website:

A new type of award show exclusively to celebrate the last year in Young Adult fiction. It will boast all aspects of a traditional award show: awkward banter, fancy clothes, signature statuettes, and all other attributes we both love and mock. What makes this "new" is that this award show will not take place at some fancy venue, but rather it will be filmed at multiple dates in multiple locations, and then edited to form one cohesive show.

You can expect appearances from many of your favorite bloggers and authors, as well as industry professionals and maybe even some special guest entertainers. It will truly be a time to honor all aspects of the YA community. It will be quirky and homey, but hopefully also interesting and well done. The show will air late June/ early July at a date to be determined. The final list of nominees will be posted on April 26th. 
 
You fan find the full list of nominees and place your vote for the Countdown Award here.

Website • Twitter • YouTube

4. BEA

In a couple weeks I will be in NYC attending BookExpo America for the third time. I will be there with a ridiculous smile plastered on my face and my mom and mother-in-law in tow to help me master the BEA monster with our now finely-tuned divide and conquer technique. I cannot wait.

Danny and Pushy of Bewitched Bookworms and Hannah of The Irish Banana have put together some fantastic posts about what to expect if you're attending for the first time, so instead of a long rambling post of my own, I'm just going to link to their sites because they've got everything covered.

I hope to see many of you there!

5. LIFE WITH KEVIN

For the full story behind these little conversational snippets go HERE.

Kevin: I know what's going on.

Me: What, now?

Kevin: I know what's going on with the movies.

Me: I haven't the slightest inkling what you could be referring to.

Kevin: You think I haven't figured out that all three of the movies we've watched in the past couple days have had Jeremy Renner in them?

Me: Coincidence.

Kevin: Really. That's what you're going with?

Me: Yes. Maybe I just had an intense desire to watch movies about a SWAT team, a genetically enhanced badass specializing in badassery, and a sexy, leather-clad superhero who rocks a bow and arrow. You ever think of that?

Kevin: No. Want to know what I think?

Me: I'm not sure I do. I don't think I like where this is headed.

Kevin: What I think is that you've chosen Jeremy Renner as a real life version of one of your fictional men and now you're obsessing.

Me: LIES!

Kevin: We both know I'm right.

Me: Huh. I'm not sure if I love that you know me so well or if I find it irritating that there's absolutely no mystery left in our relationship.

Kevin: It wasn't exactly difficult to figure out. Nearly ninety percent of the time you don't have a clue what we're watching because you're reading, and then all of a sudden you want to watch three very specific movies all in one weekend. Kind of a tip-off.

Me: I think you're mistaken. Subtlety is one of my strong suits. I excel at it. EXCEL.

Kevin: Clearly. You've probably already gone to IMDB to cyber-stalk him and are currently considering going and buying any of his movies we don't already own.

Me: Dammit Kevin! That's it. I want a divorce. I need to be with someone less observant who doesn't call me out on my romantic fixations. I'm going to go and make a profile on Match.com immediately.

Kevin: Sounds good. Let me know what kind of interest you get.

Me: I suffer you to live.