Breaking the Rules Blog Tour: Letter from Katie McGarry + Giveaway

I'm ridiculously excited today to welcome author Katie McGarry back to the blog as part of the promotional tour for her newest release, Breaking the Rules. I fell madly in love with Echo and Noah (as so many did) back when I read Pushing the Limits, and I'm so thrilled Katie decided to give readers a chance to revisit the two of them. I have the pleasure of sharing with you today a very special letter from Katie to Echo and Noah, and I hope all of you are as moved by it as I was.

Dear Echo and Noah,
 
I want you to be happy.
 
I’m not sure I’ve written truer words. I want your happiness so much that at times it hurts. Why is this so important to me? Because combine the both of you together and you have me.
 
Not all of me, but parts of me. The parts that have been bleeding for so long that I wasn’t sure healing was even possible anymore.
 
All three of us understand what it means to hurt, to lose, to grieve, and to be let down. We don’t trust easily and we don’t love easily, but when we do trust and when we do love, we do it unconditionally and to a fault.
 
We would literally hand the clothes off our body, give our last dime to the people we love. But the truth is, because at times we are so closed off, we often have a very limited amount of people who we let completely in and, sometimes, that’s sad.
 
I should use “was” instead of “is”. It was sad because we’re healing. All three of us are. You two are learning not only how to love and trust each other and how to let other people into your world, but you are also teaching me how to love and trust beyond my normal scope.
 
You’re teaching me that there is room for forgiveness. You’re teaching me that it’s possible to set up boundaries with some people in your life, yet still have a relationship. You’re teaching me that it’s okay to take all the passion that’s inside me and let it soar into the world.
 
The two of you have made me brave and you’ve helped me figure out who I really am. You’ve made me comfortable in my own skin and you’ve made me see the talents that I always downplayed. You’ve made me feel like a teenager all over again with my husband and damn my heart still skips a beat when he smiles at me.
 
I love the two of you and I want your happiness. This is the reason why I wrote Breaking the Rules. It’s why I couldn’t keep it a short story and instead let it flow into a full length novel.
 
I wanted your happiness. No, I demanded your happiness and I can’t wait for everyone else to read how you two find yourselves and each other.
 

Love you forever,

Katie

 *Jenny wipes away tear* I couldn't love Echo, Noah or Katie more!

• • • • • • • • • • • 

BREAKING THE RULES

A summer road trip changes everything in this unforgettable new tale from acclaimed author Katie McGarry.

For new high school graduate Echo Emerson, a summer road trip out west with her boyfriend means getting away and forgetting what makes her so... different. It means seeing cool sights while selling her art at galleries along the way. And most of all, it means almost three months alone with Noah Hutchins, the hot, smart, soul-battered guy who’s never judged her. Echo and Noah share everything — except the one thing Echo’s just not ready for.

But when the source of Echo’s constant nightmares comes back into her life, she has to make some tough decisions about what she really wants — even as foster kid Noah’s search for his last remaining relatives forces them both to confront some serious truths about life, love, and themselves.

Now, with one week left before college orientation, jobs and real life, Echo must decide if Noah's more than the bad-boy fling everyone warned her he'd be. And the last leg of an amazing road trip will turn... seriously epic.

Goodreads • Amazon • B&N

Don't miss out on more amazing books by Katie McGarry!

Pushing the Limits: Goodreads | Amazon
Crossing the Line (e-novella): Goodreads | Amazon
Dare You To: Goodreads | Amazon
Crash Into You: Goodreads | Amazon
Red At Night (Harlequin More Than Words) eNovella - Free from Amazon
Take Me On: Goodreads | Amazon

 • • • • • • • • • • • 

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.

Website • Goodreads • Facebook • Twitter

• • • • • • • • • • •

GIVEAWAY
 

Katie is generously offering up a number of different prizes for this tour:

• Four lucky winners will each receive ONE signed copy of Katie’s print books: Pushing the Limits, Dare You To, Crash Into You and Take Me On
• One grand prize winner will receive a $100 gift card to Amazon, B&N or iTunes as well as a zodiac necklace.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Be sure and check out the rest of the participating blogs for more unique content from Katie!

• Monday, December 1st - Book Rock Betty
• Tuesday, December 2nd - Page Turners Blog
• Wednesday, December 3rd - Fiktshun
• Thursday, December 4th - Refracted Light Reviews
• Friday, December 5th - Supernatural Snark
  
  

• Monday, December 8th - Xpresso Reads
• Tuesday, December 9th - Bewitched Bookworms
• Wednesday, December 10th - WhoRU Blog
• Thursday, December 11th - Swoony Boys Podcast
• Friday, December 12th - Mundie Moms

Interview and Giveaway: Katie McGarry + Crash Into You

It's an interview kind of week on the blog, and today I'm honored to have one of my very favorite authors stopping by to chat about her newest release. I've adored Katie McGarry since the first moment I met Noah and Echo in Pushing the Limits, and my love for her and her stories has only grown with each book she's written. I've been waiting patiently (sort of) for Isaiah's story since the first book, and Crash Into You is the best yet in my opinion, tugging away on my heartstrings with every page until it reduced me to a puddle of emotional goo. Awesome.

Given how much I loved this book, it's with no small amount of excitement that I welcome Katie McGarry back to the blog!

Your books are always written from the dual first-person perspectives of both the male and female protagonists, giving us a much-appreciated peek inside both of their heads. What's one book you've read that you wish had dual points of view so you could more closely examine another character's train of thought or their motivations?

I definitely would have loved to have been inside Edward’s head in the Twilight series. I’m definitely not the person to pull it off, but I think it would be great if someone did a retelling of Anne of Green Gables from Gilbert’s point of view.

Rachel is (understandably) a big fan of Isaiah's many and varied tattoos. If she were to get one for herself to represent the events of Crash Into You, what would it look like and how sexy would Isaiah find it?

I think Rachel would get a single flame. It’s something special to both her and Isaiah and I definitely believe that Isaiah would find it unbelievably sexy!

You clearly did a great deal of research on cars and racing for this book, what is one fun tidbit or piece of trivia you learned over the course of writing Rachel and Isaiah's story?

One day while I was researching Crash Into You, my car wouldn’t start. The good news: I was with guys who knew everything about cars. This one guy had me pop open the hood and he was trying a variety of things to figure out what was the problem. After a few minutes, he decided it was the battery.

He maneuvered his car around to jump the battery, but before he jumped it, he asked for a Coke. It was a hot day and I thought he was thirsty. When he was handed one, he opened it then poured it over my battery.

I was all freaking out and like, “What are you doing?”

“It’s acid,” he said. “Takes the grime off the battery which is keeping it from taking the spark.”

Me, “Oh.”

Guess what—it worked!

Let's say you are invited to conduct an exclusive interview with one character from any piece of young adult fiction. Who would sit atop your list and what's the first question you would ask them?

Definitely Ponyboy Curtis from The Outsiders. He’s one of my favorites!

Are you still close with your brothers and the guys you grew up with?

Just for fun: What are Isaiah and Rachel's thoughts on The Fast and the Furious films?

They absolutely love the first Fast and the Furious movie! In fact, they can watch the scene where Dom says, “Smoke him,” over and over again.

• • • • • • • • • • 

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.

Website • Goodreads • Facebook • Twitter

• • • • • • • • • • 

CRASH INTO YOU

The girl with straight As, designer clothes and the perfect life-that's who people expect Rachel Young to be. So the private-school junior keeps secrets from her wealthy parents and overbearing brothers...and she's just added two more to the list. One involves racing strangers down dark country roads in her Mustang GT. The other? Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Walker-a guy she has no business even talking to. But when the foster kid with the tattoos and intense gray eyes comes to her rescue, she can't get him out of her mind.

Isaiah has secrets, too. About where he lives, and how he really feels about Rachel. The last thing he needs is to get tangled up with a rich girl who wants to slum it on the south side for kicks-no matter how angelic she might look.

But when their shared love of street racing puts both their lives in jeopardy, they have six weeks to come up with a way out. Six weeks to discover just how far they'll go to save each other

Releases November 26th from HarlequinTEEN

Goodreads • Amazon • HarlequinTEEN

• • • • • • • • • • 

GIVEAWAY

Thanks to the amazing Katie McGarry, I have one ARC of Crash Into You to give away on the blog today. To enter, please just fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Giveaway is open to US residents only.

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Review: Dare You To

DARE YOU TO
Pushing the Limits #2
Katie McGarry
Contemporary Young Adult
462 pages
Harlequin Teen
Available May 28th
Source: Received from publisher via NetGalley

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
If anyone knew the truth about Beth Risk's home life, they'd send her mother to jail and seventeen-year-old Beth who knows where. So she protects her mom at all costs. Until the day her uncle swoops in and forces Beth to choose between her mom's freedom and her own happiness. That's how Beth finds herself living with an aunt who doesn't want her and going to a school that doesn't understand her. At all. Except for the one guy who shouldn't get her, but does....

Ryan Stone is the town golden boy, a popular baseball star jock-with secrets he can't tell anyone. Not even the friends he shares everything with, including the constant dares to do crazy things. The craziest? Asking out the Skater girl who couldn't be less interested in him.

But what begins as a dare becomes an intense attraction neither Ryan nor Beth expected. Suddenly, the boy with the flawless image risks his dreams-and his life-for the girl he loves, and the girl who won't let anyone get too close is daring herself to want it all....

MY THOUGHTS
Dare You To is a stunning follow up to Pushing the Limits, Ms. McGarry's ability to pair life's darker moments with its achingly beautiful ones something that profoundly resonates, leaving us thoroughly exhausted after the emotional wringer she drags us through but pleased beyond measure by the time we emerge on the other side. One of the highlights of Ms. McGarry's storytelling is the visceral quality to the love between characters, the relationships neither a sudden magical cure-all for the problems in their lives nor a means by which they are able to eradicate all fears and doubts, ridding their worlds of darkness and pain. The love between these pages doesn't seek to smooth out all the sharp edges, but it does give them a soft place to land, preventing those fragile points from shattering on impact. There's nothing instant or simple about Ryan and Beth's relationship, it's hard work and it hurts at times, but we can't help but revel in the realism and the acknowledgement that love isn't always epic, sometimes it's gritty and scary and all the more affecting for it.

Beth is a young woman whom if we saw only from the outside without any access to her chaotic mind and turbulent emotions we might not like at all, her attitude and anger creating a wall of broken glass around her, cutting anyone who dares step too close. We do have access to her though, and as a result, we see the vulnerability behind the bluster, and though we know she would hate us for it, we can't help but want to wrap our arms around her and hold tight. Her life has taught her that she's worthless, that her value is only measured by her past, her family and her mistakes, and so her ability to trust is non-existent and makes her relationship with Ryan difficult at every turn. For Beth, Doubt is a many-tentacled monster; as soon as she escapes the grip of one arm and takes a few hesitant steps toward freedom, another arm swoops in and wraps her up tight, and though we want to rage against that monster for her, screaming at her to recognize her own worth, we know it's a battle she has to fight herself.

Ryan is at first glance the opposite to Beth in every possible way, but as we spend more time with him we come to see he has his own monster to fight. As Beth battles expectations of failure, Ryan battles expectations of success, something that sounds like it should be far easier but proves to be equally challenging and demoralizing. He stumbles and makes mistakes as Beth does, but through Beth he learns to fight back, to make his voice heard amidst the compliments and accolades that mask dictation on how to live his life, and in doing so he also teaches Beth that not every battle is one worth winning. Sometimes winning comes in the form of letting go; lessons both Ryan and Beth learn as they find a safe landing in one another.

Overall, Dare You To is everything we hope it will be when we break the spine, Ryan and Beth a painfully striking couple who embed themselves so deeply under our skin we're positive we'll find evidence of their presence when we next look in the mirror, their pain and their joy lingering with us long after their story comes to a close.

Rating: 5/5
 

Find Katie

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.

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 + Giveaway: Pushing the Limits

PUSHING THE LIMITS

Katie McGarry
Contemporary Young Adult
384 pages
Harlequin Teen
Releases July 31st
Gifted from Bailey at IB Book Blogging
Read as part of the All Male Review Challenge

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

No one knows what happened the night Echo Emerson went from popular girl with jock boyfriend to gossiped-about outsider with "freaky" scars on her arms. Even Echo can't remember the whole truth of that horrible night. All she knows is that she wants everything to go back to normal. But when Noah Hutchins, the smoking-hot, girl-using loner in the black leather jacket, explodes into her life with his tough attitude and surprising understanding, Echo's world shifts in ways she could never have imagined. They should have nothing in common. And with the secrets they both keep, being together is pretty much impossible.Yet the crazy attraction between them refuses to go away. And Echo has to ask herself just how far they can push the limits and what she'll risk for the one guy who might teach her how to love again.

MY THOUGHTS

From the outside, Pushing the Limits appears to be a story we’ve seen before. For all intents and purposes Echo is the good girl, excelling academically and thriving socially prior to the incident that scarred her arms, and Noah is the quintessential bad boy, getting high and sleeping around as he waits to graduate. Forced into regular meetings with one another through the school therapist, they both suddenly find themselves having feelings for someone who’d they never have imagined would fit with them so perfectly. It’s all very familiar, but starting with page one of Echo and Noah’s tale Ms. McGarry rips away every reservation we have concerning a less-than unique premise, gifting us with characters who have physical and emotional scars so painful we take note of nothing outside of our desire to see them navigate their way through their current darkness and find their way to happiness.

Echo should be a troubling character for us in terms of forming a bond with her, being the type of young woman who, should we simply list out some of her most obvious character traits, would frustrate us to no end. She succumbs to any and all authority figures, caving to their needs and wants and placing them above her own, and she allows her friends to push her into a skin that no longer fits the girl she’s become since the night of her scarring without a single audible word of protest. Despite her shortcomings however, our hearts are with her from the beginning, and she’s like a present Ms. McGarry hands us personally to unwrap – our relationship with her poignant and deeply valued as we slowly peel back the trappings hiding her from us chapter by chapter until we finally find the beauty waiting beneath as a reward for our efforts.

Noah is atypically typical, appearing to have all the traits of contemporary high school bad boys in books past, but as with Echo, his entire character resonates with us from the moment we meet him, all the elements we thought we recognized fading away to become a personality that feels distinctly Noah, and one that could never be mistaken for anyone else. His love for his brothers is endearing and heart-wrenching as we watch him struggle to come to terms with what he thinks is best for them and what realistically is best, and we want nothing more than for this tale to take on a sudden paranormal twist wherein the pieces of Noah’s world are suddenly and magically fused back together to give him the life he had before the death of his parents. While our minds might wish for a supernatural intervention of the happily-ever-after variety, the true beauty of this tale lies in its normalcy, and the knowledge that nothing and no one is going to save either Echo or Noah but themselves.

Ms. McGarry truly stuns with Pushing the Limits, creating a pair of individuals who hold us captivated from beginning to end and have our hearts bleeding out onto the pages, combining with the black ink to fuse a piece of us to Echo and Noah forever. Alongside Echo and Noah’s rough journey to building new lives out of the tatters of their old ones is a brief glimpse of the intriguing relationship between Noah’s friends Isaiah and Beth, and Ms. McGarry brilliantly ensures that we’ve seen just enough to have us fixated on when we’ll get their likely equally painful story in all its glorious detail. With this tale, Ms. McGarry has secured herself a place on my list of favorites for the foreseeable future.

Rating: 4.5/5

  GIVEAWAY

Thanks to the wonderful people at Media Masters Publicity and Harlequin Teen, I have one copy of Pushing the Limits to give away on the blog today! To enter, just fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Giveaway is open to US and Canadian residents only and will run through midnight on Friday, August 3rd after which time a winner will be chosen and emailed. Good luck everyone!

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