Things of Awesome: October Edition

Hey Everybody!

It's been a little while since I've done one of these posts, but I've had some fun bookish things come across my desk recently and wanted to share them with all of you. I apologize for the lack of "Life with Kevin" in this month's Things of Awesome, I've had some very amusing conversations with him lately but just haven't had time to write them down. I promise I will though, and then you'll all get to see once again how ridiculous my marriage can be sometimes (it of course has everything to do with Kevin and absolutely nothing to do with me. Obviously:) And now on to the bookish goodies!

1. COVER REVEAL: AUTUMN ROSE
(releases January 28th from William Morrow/HarperCollins)

I was intrigued by the first book in this paranormal new adult series by Abigail Gibbs, Dark Heroine, so I'm excited to see where things go now that we're following Autumn Rose rather than Kaspar and Violet.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Books-A-Million | iBookstore | Image Map

In book two of her breathtakingly magical series, Abigail Gibbs draws us even further into the dangerous and romantic world of the Dark Heroines.

Autumn Rose lives in a sleepy seaside town in the southwest of England, but buried deep under the surface of her quiet life are dark secrets. Her grandmother is dead, murdered eighteen months before, and the whirling social scene of London in which she was brought up is a world away. Even worse, at her new school she is shunned and condemned-all because of the swirling marks on her skin that prevent her from blending in the crowd.

But the appearance of a handsome young man at her school-who has the same curious markings as Autumn Rose-sends her world into turmoil. Suddenly the marks are cool and Autumn is thrust into the limelight, but her sudden popularity brings danger as her secrets threaten to come to light. Plus, there is the fact that Autumn keeps dreaming of a human girl who is about to be seduced by a very dark Prince… and Autumn must figure out how to save her before it is too late.

2. DARK DAYS TOUR

This Tuesday, October 8th, HarperTeen's Dark Days tour is stopping at Books & Co in Dayton, Ohio. Young adult authors Rae Carson (The Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy), Amelia Kahaney (The Brokenhearted), and Mindy McGinnis (Not a Drop to Drink) will all be present to answer questions and sign their books, so I hope if any of you are in the Dayton area you'll be able to come by and say hi! I'll be there in all my socially awkward glory and will be doing a full recap when I get back.

If you can't make the Dayton event, Dark Days is continuing on to Cincinnati on October 9th.

3. SWOON READS

I'm enormously excited about Swoon Reads (YAY ROMANCE!), a new community for YA lovers of all kinds that was recently launched by the amazing team behind Macmillan Children's Publishing. Given they'll be able to explain all the epicness that is this new endeavor better than I could, I'm just going to give it to you straight from their far more eloquent mouths:

Swoon Reads is a new YA romance community for writers and readers, but even more exciting is that it is a revolutionary new crowd sourced romance imprint that is dedicated to publishing books that capture the intensity and excitement of teen love.

So what does that mean?

Are you a writer and working on a YA romance novel? You can submit your manuscript to Swoon Reads. We accept from any genre: historical, adventure, paranormal, contemporary, etc.

As a reader, you can become intimately involved with the publishing process by reading, rating, and commenting on submissions. The manuscripts achieving the highest ratings by readers and the Swoon Reads editorial team will be published in both print and e-book formats. Some manuscripts have already been submitted and are generating great discussion!

Swoon Reads wants to give you the opportunity to see what goes on behind the publishing process and you get to decide what we publish!

Our motto is “Fall in Love with Falling in Love” and we hope you get a chance to explore the site, read some manuscripts, read the blog, and maybe even submit that YA romance manuscript that you’ve been working on ever so diligently.

Swoon Website • Blog • Twitter • Facebook • Pinterest

4. ARE YOU ALLEGIANT?

It's almost time everyone. Allegiant releases on October 22nd from Katherine Tegen Books, and as a way to tide you over in this home stretch, be sure and check out all the fun promotional graphics now available. 

You can also refresh your memories on all that happened in Insurgent with Epic Reads who is hosting a re-read this week. Get all the details HERE (scroll down to "other things to know", they should update the link for the Insurgent read-a-thon once it starts on Monday).

5. SOURCEBOOKS + WATTPAD

From Sourcebooks:

• Sourcebooks will edit and produce select new Wattpad-branded editions of YA stores into print and e-book platforms.  All of these new books will live under Sourcebooks Fire, our YA imprint.
 

Two titles scheduled for release in Winter/Spring 2014: My Life with the Walter Boys by Ali Novak, a contemporary romance that has garnered over 22 million reads on Wattpad; and The Cellar by Natasha Preston, a mystery-thriller that has been read over 6 million times.

• Sourcebooks will be a prize sponsor for Wattpad’s 2013 Watty Awards and we’ll be developing channels for top Wattpad writers to have their stories be distributed into traditional retail outlets both in print and digitally

• Sourcebooks writers including CJ Lyons, Miranda Kenneally, Janet Gurtler, and Zoraida Cordova, among others, will be making exciting new stories available for free and engaging with readers on Wattpad! (Dates to come on their Wattpad debuts!)

Review: The Dark Heroine

THE DARK HEROINE: DINNER WITH A VAMPIRE
The Dark Heroine #1
Abigail Gibbs
Paranormal New Adult
549 pages
HarperCollins
Available March 5th
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
One moment can change your life forever...

For Violet Lee, a chance encounter on a darkened street draws her into a world beyond her wildest imaginings, a timeless place of vast elegance and immeasurable wealth – of beautiful mansions and lavish parties – where a decadent group of friends live for pleasure alone. A place from which there is no escape...no matter how hard Violet tries.

Yet all the riches in the world can’t mask the darkness that lies beneath the gilded surface, embodied in the charismatic but dangerous Kaspar Varn.

Violet and Kaspar surrender to a passion that transcends their separate worlds – but it’s a passion that comes at a price...

MY THOUGHTS
The Dark Heroine lives up to the adjective in its title, introducing us to a world where vampires are not the romantic heroes of recent fiction, but rather anti-heroes seemingly unconcerned with winning our affections in favor of unapologetically making us see who they truly are. Thus our relationship with Kaspar, his family, and his world is a fragile and unsettling one, often pushing the boundaries of our tolerance and challenging our capacity to forgive at every opportunity, but even as our hearts and minds struggle with what they can and cannot accept we find ourselves deeply intrigued. Ms. Gibbs is without a doubt a talented storyteller, impressing us with her ability to create such morally and romantically ambiguous characters and delighting us with her talent for making a 500+ page tale feel as though it's over in the blink of an eye.

Though this story alternates between Kaspar and Violet's point of views, it's Violet with whom we spend the most time, but despite our extended access to the inner workings of her mind, she remains a young woman we can't quite figure out. There are some behavioral inconsistencies for all the characters across the board, but given our ample time with Violet hers are the most pronounced for us, her thoughts and actions completely unpredictable in a way that keeps us at arms length as we fight to get a handle on who she is. While she deals with many of the difficult situations admirably given her young age, there are times when she either underreacts to situations we feel bear more of an emotional response from her, or overreacts to things we don't anticipate given her behavior up to that point. As a result, our relationship with her feels tenuous; a fragile string connecting us that's stretched unnervingly tight every time she reacts somewhat erratically, keeping us anxious that it will break without notice and leave us with nothing.

Kaspar is as much a puzzle to us as Violet is, his behavior throughout like a test Ms. Gibbs is administering to us readers to see who will stick with him long enough for his layers to be peeled back. He is generally unlikable from the very beginning and for much of the first hundred or so pages, making us think he's going to need every one of the remaining four hundred to reverse our current opinion, but the saving grace for us is Violet herself. She shares our instant dislike of him and all he represents, so we're able to find some comfort in the fact that she's not a girl pining for and mooning over a boy who treats her poorly. Ms. Gibbs does a beautiful job of slowly endearing Kaspar to us, though each moment of vulnerability is often accompanied by a reminder of how brutal he can be, and in the end he's someone who holds us transfixed even if a handful of niggling doubts about him remain.

A few of those doubts we have with regard to Kaspar are a result of questions we have about this world of vampires itself, some of the rules that govern their society and their method of feeding not entirely clear and thus coloring our perception of the characters themselves. For instance, Kaspar eventually reveals that they don't have to kill to feed (it's also made clear that they can feed on animals, bagged blood, or even other vampires), but they often do commit murder in the name of survival, leaving us to wonder how deep the pleasure of the kill is ingrained in them and even more so, how we feel about that given one such killer is our romantic lead. Overall though, this tale is quite entertaining, our issues with it actually a sign of our deep interest given they keep us thinking of Violet and Kaspar long after we finish reading, and Ms. Gibbs is certainly an author to watch for me moving forward.

Rating: 3.5-4 out of 5 (I'm giving a range because there are some days where the inconsistencies in the characters' behavior bothered me more than they did on others, but all in all, I'm excited to see what's to come in book two.)