The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant: Excerpt + Giveaway

Today I'm excited to be part of the promotional tour for Joanna Wiebe's debut young adult novel, The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant. I have an excerpt to share with you all today, but it's not just any excerpt. Joanna is a big fan of what is called the Page 99 Test, so today we thought we'd see how her book fares when put to the challenge. Here's a quick explanation of what exactly the Page 99 Test is for those who are unfamiliar with it (you can read more about it on the website):

The Page 99 Test is simple: After reading page 99, would you WANT to turn the page?

There's a fantastic tour-wide giveaway as well, so be sure and check out the bottom of the post for all the details as well as a full list of participating blogs, but first I give you page 99 of The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant:


...friends? I’m just supposed to be this pathetic excuse for a teenager. In our stupid house. With our stupid fancy clothes.”

“I love your clothes! You’re lucky.”

“Lucky?” She shakes her head. “Try bought and paid for.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know, paid to lease the island to Villie and look the other way.” She waves her hand in the direction of the magnificent homes on the hillside. “As if getting the finer things in life washes away the need for an actual life.”

“What do you mean, look the other way?”

Pausing, Molly searches my face. Then she slides down, resting her head against me, fakes a yawn, and closes her eyes. “I’m just exaggerating. Blame the Devil’s Apple again. Forget I said anything.”

As if I could forget! I sit up straight, and her head bounces off my shoulder. She’s frowning when she looks up at me.

“Look the other way? Look away from what exactly, Molly?”

But Mr. Watso’s voice sails through the air before she can answer.

“My grandfather first welcomed the people of Cania to this island and signed the pact that would allow them access to this majestic land,” he bellows. “Even as our village shrinks around us, as the young wisely abandon this place, we who remain must never forget the necessity of this pact that spared the lives of so many casualties of war and, when the whales were denied us, saved our people from starvation. That pact remains intact with our enduring silence.”

Whoops and chants rise up around him, stretching across the ring of fire and through the smoke, into the murky darkness that hides me and Molly from sight.

“What’s he talking about?” I ask, talking through my thoughts. Torches begin to sizzle in the water as the festival winds down. “Pilot said that the school’s got a code of secrecy, but I assumed...

• • • • • • • • • • 

THE UNSEEMLY EDUCATION OF ANNE MERCHANT

After her mother’s death, 16-year-old art prodigy Anne Merchant moves from sunny California to the cold woodlands of Wormwood Island, Maine for what is supposed to be a fresh start. She is the newest student of Cania Christy, an elite boarding school that is as filled with secrets as it is with the world’s most privileged—and competitive—teens.

From the first day of school, Anne finds herself thrust into the Big V competition, an intense race to the top of the class. With enviable talents, she quickly becomes the enemy of every junior seeking the Big V—especially Harper, the presumed frontrunner.

Like every student, she is assigned a guardian, and a unique mission. Anne’s assignment is to “look deeper.” Anne is determined to succeed, and won’t let anything —not even her distractingly beautiful neighbor Ben—get in the way. But the deeper she looks the more questions arise, and the more she is forced to reexamine all of her assumptions—about the school, her classmates and even herself.

As layers of secrecy deepen, Anne leans on the friendship of Molly, a lifelong islander, and Pilot, the only junior not competing for the Big V, to make sense of this cloak-and-dagger world. But when people start disappearing, Anne uncovers a stunning truth that she must face head on—before she and everyone she loves is destroyed by it.

Goodreads • Amazon • B&N • BenBella • BooksAMillion
Chapters/Indigo • IndieBound

• • • • • • • • • • 

JOANNA WIEBE

By day, Joanna is a copywriter and the co-founder of CopyHackers.com and Page99Test.com, a critique site for published and unpublished writers. As an undergraduate student, Joanna won several academic awards for excellence in creative writing: Canada's James Patrick Folinsbee Prize, which she won twice, as well as the Godfrey Prize.

After graduating, she lived for a year on the remote northern island of Hokkaido, Japan, which is the inspiration for the verdant Wormwood Island of the V Trilogy. She holds a BA in Honors English and an MA in Communications from the University of Alberta and lives with her partner Lance in Victoria, British Columbia.

The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant is her first novel and the first installment in the V Trilogy.

Website • Facebook • Twitter • Goodreads

• • • • • • • • • •

GIVEAWAY

There's a very exciting giveaway as part of the promotional tour, with 15 finished copies of The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant up for grabs. Please enter via the Rafflecopter form below. Giveaway is open to US/Canada.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Monday, January 6th -Refracted Light Reviews
Tuesday, January 7th –  Dee’s Reads
Wednesday, January 8th – The YA Bookworm Blogger
Thursday, January 9th – Book Swoon
Friday, January 10th – Parajunkee

Monday, January 13th – Curling Up with a Good Book
Tuesday, January 14th - Bewitched Bookworms
Wednesday, January 15th – Such A Novel Idea
Thursday, January 16th – The Story Siren
Friday, January 17th – Book Whales

Monday, January 20th - Jump Into Books
Tuesday, January 21st – Supernatural Snark 
Wednesday, January 22nd – Donnie Darko Girl 
Thursday, January 23rd – Reading and Writing Urban Fantasy
Friday, January 24th – Literary Me