Happy Monday and Happy New Year! We’re kicking off the new year with three giveaways and some exciting interviews on the weekend. Don’t forget to check out all the new releases and enter to win below!
Happy Reading,
Shelly, Sam, Jocelyn, Martina, Erin, Susan, Michelle, Laura, Anisaa, and Kristin
YA BOOK GIVEAWAYS THIS WEEK
Because of the Sun
by Jenny Torres Sanchez
Hardcover Giveaway
U.S. Only
Delacorte Press
Released 1/3/2017
From the backyards of suburban Florida to the parched desert of New Mexico, Because of the Sun explores the complexity of family, the saving grace of friendship, and the healing that can begin when the truth is brought to light.
Dani Falls learned to tolerate her existence in suburban Florida with her brash and seemingly unloving mother by embracing the philosophy Why care? It will only hurt. So when her mother is killed in a sudden and violent manner, Dani goes into an even deeper protection mode, total numbness. It’s the only way she can go on.
But when Dani chooses The Stranger by Albert Camus as summer reading for school, it feels like fate. The main character’s alienation after his mother’s death mirrors her own.
Dani’s life is thrown into further turmoil when she is sent to New Mexico to live with an aunt she never knew she had. The awkwardness between them is palpable. To escape, Dani takes long walks in the merciless heat. One day, she meets Paulo, who understands how much Dani is hurting. Although she is hesitant at first, a mutual trust and affection develop between Dani and Paulo, and Dani begins to heal. And as she and her aunt begin to connect, Dani learns about her mother’s past. Forgiving isn’t easy, but maybe it’s the only way to move forward.
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Because of the Sun?
I think my favorite thing about this book is that it reads a bit dreamlike. I really wanted to capture a kind of hallucinatory feel in this story, not only to capture the idea of the sun and the intense heat and the unforgiving but beautiful New Mexican desert. But also, to blur the line between the past and the present, between ourselves and others, because all of us really are connected in so many ways we don’t clearly see.
And then there’s this idea that so much depends on things we simply have no control over. This is particularly true for teenagers. Teens often have things shoved at them that they don’t directly play a role in, and they simply have to deal with it. So there’s this sense of feeling powerless, of having no control in their own lives. And that’s confusing and hard to deal with. Sometimes I think teens who feel like they don’t know why things are they way they are, why they are dealing with the things they are dealing with, why they are feeling the way they are feeling, they’re just kind of living on this blurry line, between now and later. Between knowing and not knowing, jaded and hopeful. Like Dani, they’re trying to figure it out. But in the meantime, maybe life feels both normal and bizarre to them, kind of like a dream.
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Life in a Fishbowl
by Len Vlahos
Hardcover Giveaway
U.S. Only
Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Released 1/3/2017
Fifteen-year-old Jackie Stone is a prisoner in her own house. Everything she says and does 24/7 is being taped and broadcast to every television in America. Why? Because her dad is dying of a brain tumor and he has auctioned his life on eBay to the highest bidder: a ruthless TV reality show executive at ATN.
Gone is her mom’s attention and cooking and parent-teacher conferences. Gone is her sister’s trust ever since she’s been dazzled by the cameras and new-found infamy. Gone is her privacy. Gone is the whole family’s dignity as ATN twists their words and makes a public mockery of their lives on Life and Death. But most of all, Jackie fears that one day very soon her father will just be . . . gone. Armed only with her ingenuity and the power of the internet, Jackie is determined to end the show and reclaim all of their lives, even in death.
Told through multiple points of view–including her dad’s tumor–acclaimed author Len Vlahos deftly explores what it really means to live in this brilliantly written tragicomedy.
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Life in a Fishbowl?
This is a tough question to answer, but I think my favorite thing is the character Glio. Glio is an anthropomorphized high grade glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor.
The story’s protagonist, 15 year-old Jackie Stone, has her world shattered when she learns that her father (Jared) has a fatal, inoperable brain tumor. Then her shattered world is turned upside down when her dad, not thinking clearly, puts his actual life for sale on eBay to raise money for his family. The story follows the bidders on Jared’s life, as well as Jackie’s efforts, along with friends, to save her father’s dignity.
While this is not really a cancer book — it’s more of a dark comedy about the clashing of old media and new, and about the power of familial love –the tumor is an important character in the narrative. Glio, is slowly devouring Jared’s memories, and becomes more Jared than Jared.
Writing Glio was both a challenge and a delight, and I think (hope) gives the book something unique.
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The Truth of Right Now
by Kara Lee Corthron
Hardcover Giveaway
U.S. Only
Simon Pulse
Released 1/3/2017
Two isolated teens struggle against their complicated lives to find a true connection in this heartwrenching debut novel about first love and the wreckage of growing up.
Lily is returning to her privileged Manhattan high school after a harrowing end to her sophomore year and it’s not pretty. She hates chemistry and her spiteful lab partner, her friends are either not speaking to her or suffocating her with concerned glances, and nothing seems to give her joy anymore. Worst of all, she can’t escape her own thoughts about what drove her away from everyone in the first place.
Enter Dari (short for Dariomauritius), the artistic and mysterious transfer student, adept at cutting class. Not that he’d rather be at home with his domineering Trinidadian father. Dari is everything that Lily needs: bright, creative, honest, and unpredictable. And in a school where no one really stands out, Dari finds Lily’s sensitivity and openness magnetic. Their attraction ignites immediately, and for the first time in what feels like forever, Lily and Dari find happiness in each other.
In twenty-first-century New York City, the fact that Lily is white and Dari is black shouldn’t matter that much, but nothing’s as simple as it seems. When tragedy becomes reality, can friendship survive even if romance cannot?
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MORE YOUNG ADULT FICTION IN STORES NEXT WEEK WITH AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
Wayfarer
by Alexandra Bracken
Hardcover
Disney-Hyperion
Released 1/3/2017
All Etta Spencer wanted was to make her violin debut when she was thrust into a treacherous world where the struggle for power could alter history. After losing the one thing that would have allowed her to protect the Timeline, and the one person worth fighting for, Etta awakens alone in an unknown place and time, exposed to the threat of the two groups who would rather see her dead than succeed. When help arrives, it comes from the last person Etta ever expected—Julian Ironwood, the Grand Master’s heir who has long been presumed dead, and whose dangerous alliance with a man from Etta’s past could put them both at risk.
Meanwhile, Nicholas and Sophia are racing through time in order to locate Etta and the missing astrolabe with Ironwood travelers hot on their trail. They cross paths with a mercenary-for-hire, a cheeky girl named Li Min who quickly develops a flirtation with Sophia. But as the three of them attempt to evade their pursuers, Nicholas soon realizes that one of his companions may have ulterior motives.
As Etta and Nicholas fight to make their way back to one another, from Imperial Russia to the Vatican catacombs, time is rapidly shifting and changing into something unrecognizable… and might just run out on both of them.
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Wayfarer?
Now that’s a good question! My usual answer to this holds true, though: it’s the characters. PASSENGER was so focused on Etta and Nicholas and their relationship, it was really a cocoon of two. To have them separated in this book gave me the chance to expand the cast and pair Etta and Nicholas up with characters who are pretty much their opposites. Etta travels with a certain someone who, yes, is still alive as we discovered at the end of PASSENGER, and as much as she’s a responsible, dependable human… her traveling companion is not. The dynamic between Nicholas and Sophia was extra fun to write–I really love the dynamic of people starting off as enemies and slowly working through their issues to respect and depend on one another.
There are also a lot of secondary characters I was bummed to only be able to spend a book with: Li Min, the Belladonna, Henry Hemlock, even Etta’s mother, Rose. There were so many different stories and directions to go in, but I was grateful for the opportunity to shine the light on each one of them.
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MORE YOUNG ADULT NOVELS NEW IN STORES NEXT WEEK
Almost Autumn
by Marianne Kaurin and Rosie Hedger
Hardcover
Arthur A. Levine Books
Released 1/3/2017
It’s October 1942, in Oslo, Norway. Fifteen-year-old Ilse Stern is waiting to meet boy-next-door Hermann Rod for their first date. She was beginning to think he’d never ask her; she’s had a crush on him for as long as she can remember.
But Hermann won’t be able to make it tonight. What Ilse doesn’t know is that Hermann is secretly working in the Resistance, helping Norwegian Jews flee the country to escape the Nazis. The work is exhausting and unpredictable, full of late nights and code words and lies to Hermann’s parents, to his boss… to Ilse.
And as life under German occupation becomes even more difficult, particularly for Jewish families like the Sterns, the choices made become more important by the hour: To speak up or to look away? To stay or to flee? To act now or wait one more day?
In this internationally acclaimed debut, Marianne Kaurin recreates the atmosphere of secrecy and uncertainty in World War II Norway in a moving story of sorrow, chance, and first love.
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Flower
by Shea Olsen and Elizabeth Craft
Hardcover
Harlequin Teen
Released 1/3/2017
These are the things that I’ve always wanted:
To get the top grades in my class.
To make my grandmother proud.
And most of all, proof that I could succeed where the rest of my family had not: a Stanford acceptance letter, early admission.
My mother and my sister were obsessed with boys and love and sex. So obsessed that they lost sight of their futures, of what they wanted. And in the end, they lost everything.
I’ll never let a boy distract me. I promised my grandmother that.
But that was before Tate.
Before the biggest pop star on the planet took an interest in me.
Before private planes and secret dates and lyrics meant for me alone.
There’s so much I don’t know. Like why he left music. Where he goes when we’re not together. What dark past he’s hiding. But when we kiss, the future feels far away. And now…I’m not sure what I want.
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Flying Lessons & Other Stories
by Ellen Oh
Hardcover
Crown Books for Young Readers
Released 1/3/2017
Whether it is basketball dreams, family fiascos, first crushes, or new neighborhoods, this bold anthology—written by the best children’s authors—celebrates the uniqueness and universality in all of us.
In a partnership with We Need Diverse Books, industry giants Kwame Alexander, Soman Chainani, Matt de la Peña, Tim Federle, Grace Lin, Meg Medina, Walter Dean Myers, Tim Tingle, and Jacqueline Woodson join newcomer Kelly J. Baptist in a story collection that is as humorous as it is heartfelt. This impressive group of authors has earned among them every major award in children’s publishing and popularity as New York Times bestsellers.
From these distinguished authors come ten distinct and vibrant stories.
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Freeks
by Amanda Hocking
Hardcover
St. Martin’s Griffin
Released 1/3/2017
Welcome to Gideon Davorin’s Traveling Sideshow, where necromancy, magical visions, and pyrokinesis are more than just part of the act…
Mara has always longed for a normal life in a normal town where no one has the ability to levitate or predict the future. Instead, she roams from place to place, cleaning the tiger cage while her friends perform supernatural feats every night.
When the struggling sideshow is miraculously offered the money they need if they set up camp in Caudry, Louisiana, Mara meets local-boy Gabe … and a normal life has never been more appealing.
But before long, performers begin disappearing and bodes are found mauled by an invisible beast. Mara realizes that there’s a sinister presence lurking in the town with its sights set on getting rid of the sideshow freeks. In order to unravel the truth before the attacker kills everyone Mara holds dear, she has seven days to take control of a power she didn’t know she was capable of—one that could change her future forever.
Bestselling author Amanda Hocking draws readers inside the dark and mysterious world of Freeks.
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Lost Girls
by Merrie Destefano
Paperback
Entangled: Teen
Released 1/3/2017
Yesterday, Rachel went to sleep listening to Taylor Swift, curled up in her grammy’s quilt, worrying about geometry. Today, she woke up in a ditch, bloodied, bruised, and missing a year of her life.
She doesn’t recognize the person she’s become: she’s popular. She wears nothing but black.
Black to cover the blood.
And she can fight.
Tell no one.
She’s not the only girl to go missing within the last year…but she’s the only girl to come back. She desperately wants to unravel what happened to her, to try and recover the rest of the Lost Girls.
But the more she discovers, the more her memories return. And as much as her new life scares her, it calls to her. Seductively. The good girl gone bad, sex, drugs, and raves, and something darker …something she still craves—the rush of the fight, the thrill of the win—something she can’t resist, that might still get her killed…
The only rule is: There are no rules.
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The Book Jumper
by Mechthild Gläser
Hardcover
Feiwel & Friends
Released 1/3/2017
Amy Lennox doesn’t know quite what to expect when she and her mother pick up and leave Germany for Scotland, heading to her mother’s childhood home of Lennox House on the island of Stormsay.
Amy’s grandmother, Lady Mairead, insists that Amy must read while she resides at Lennox House—but not in the usual way. It turns out that Amy is a book jumper, able to leap into a story and interact with the world inside. As thrilling as Amy’s new power is, it also brings danger—someone is stealing from the books she visits, and that person may be after her life. Teaming up with fellow book jumper Will, Amy vows to get to the bottom of the thefts—at whatever the cost.
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The Cursed Queen
by Sarah Fine
Hardcover
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Released 1/3/2017
Ansa has always been a fighter.
As a child, she fought the invaders who murdered her parents and snatched her as a raid prize. She fought for her place next to Thyra, the daughter of the Krigere Chieftain. She fought for her status as a warrior in her tribe: blood and victory are her way of life. But the day the Krigere cross the great lake and threaten the witch queen of the Kupari, everything changes.
Cursed by the queen with fire and ice, Ansa is forced to fight against an invisible enemy—the dark magic that has embedded itself deep in her bones. The more she tries to hide it, the more dangerous it becomes. And with the Krigere numbers decimated and the tribe under threat from the traitorous brother of the dead Chieftain, Ansa is torn between her loyalty to the Krigere, her love for Thyra, and her own survival instincts.
With her world in chaos and each side wanting to claim her for their own, only one thing is certain: unless Ansa can control the terrible magic inside her, everything she’s fought for will be destroyed.
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The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett
by Chelsea Sedoti
Hardcover
Sourcebooks Fire
Released 1/3/2017
Hawthorn wasn’t trying to insert herself into a missing person’s investigation. Or maybe she was. But that’s only because Lizzie Lovett’s disappearance is the one fascinating mystery their sleepy town has ever had. Bad things don’t happen to popular girls like Lizzie Lovett, and Hawthorn is convinced she’ll turn up at any moment–which means the time for speculation is now.
So Hawthorn comes up with her own theory for Lizzie’s disappearance. A theory way too absurd to take seriously … at first. The more Hawthorn talks, the more she believes. And what better way to collect evidence than to immerse herself in Lizzie’s life? Like getting a job at the diner where Lizzie worked and hanging out with Lizzie’s boyfriend. After all, it’s not as if he killed her–or did he?
Told with a unique voice that is both hilarious and heart-wrenching, Hawthorn’s quest for proof may uncover the greatest truth is within herself.
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The X-Files Origins: Agent of Chaos
by Kami Garcia
Hardcover
Imprint
Released 1/3/2017
How did Fox Mulder become a believer? How did Dana Scully become a skeptic? The X-Files Origins has the answers.
The X-Files Origins: Agent of Chaos explores the teen years of Fox Mulder, the beloved character depicted in the cult-favorite TV show The X-Files. His story is set in the spring of 1979, when serial murder, the occult, and government conspiracy were highlighted in the news.
The book will follow Mulder as he experiences life-changing events that set him on the path to becoming an FBI agent.
Don’t miss The X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate, by Jonathan Maberry, about 15-year-old Dana Scully.
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The X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate
by Jonathan Maberry
Hardcover
Imprint
Released 1/3/2017
How did Fox Mulder become a believer? How did Dana Scully become a skeptic? The X-Files Origins has the answers in this young adult origin story.
The X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate will explore the teen years of Dana Scully, the beloved character depicted in the cult-favorite TV show The X-Files. Her story is set in the spring of 1979, when serial murder, the occult, and government conspiracy were highlighted in the news.
The book will follow Scully as she experiences life-changing events that set her on the path to becoming an FBI agent.
Don’t miss The X-Files Origins: Agent of Chaos, by Kami Garcia, about 17-year-old Fox Mulder.
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Whenever I’m With You
by Lydia Sharp
Hardcover
Scholastic Press
Released 1/3/2017
After Gabi’s parents’ divorce, she moves from California to Alaska with her dad. At first, it feels like banishment—until she meets Kai. He welcomes her into his life, sharing his family, his friends, and his warmth. But as winter approaches, Kai pulls away for seemingly no reason at all. He’s quiet, withdrawn. Then one day, he disappears.
Kai’s twin brother, Hunter, believes Kai is retracing their missing father’s steps in the wilderness north of Anchorage. There’s a blizzard on the way, and Kai is alone out there. Gabi’s frustration over his emotional distance quickly turns to serious concern. This is the boy who saved her from the dark. She can’t lose him to it.
So Gabi and Hunter agree to head out together on a wild journey north—a trip that will challenge them physically and emotionally, as they try to convince the boy they love to return home.
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