Character Interview + Giveaway: Jamie from Tighter

I'm thrilled to be joined today by Jamie from Adele Griffin's paranormal young adult novel TIGHTER! She's going to answer just a couple questions about her experiences at Skylark and her ability to see things other people can't. If you're interested, you can read my review of TIGHTER here.

If you could go back and change anything that happened with Sean Ryan now that you know the outcome, what would you change?

I’d request a transfer to Ms. Delgado’s chemistry class. Otherwise it would all happen exactly the same. I believe in fate.

Isa seems like a pretty easy to care for little girl and she’s almost always happy just being in your company. Which of Isa’s fun made up games is your favorite? Your least favorite?

Isa is easy, as it all goes like that Frank Sinatra song: I Did It My Way. Otherwise she can be a nightmare. I loved messing around in the kitchen with her since it bugged Connie. We made molten center brownies to die for. I am totally not into her love of Movie Musicals, especially Annie.

You can sense when there’s a presence nearby, can you describe for us what it feels like physically when you instinctively know they’re there?

Sure. It’s very physical and very, very intimate. Like being kissed on the mouth, or having someone lick up the back of your neck. Hard to ignore.

If you could ask the ghosts of Peter and Jessie one question about their deaths, what would it be?

Of course one of those deaths intrigues me more. I would ask: when did you know? The moment? The moment before the moment? Your whole, entire life? When?

You enjoy reading nursery rhymes and poetry, is there one rhyme or poem in particular that is a favorite?

You know I like Billy Collins, since he is someone whose poems aren’t riddles to me. Here’s a poem he wrote about teaching poetry.

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski_across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do_is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Do you think if Isa was in need of an au pair again you would consider taking the job?

Oh, gosh. It will probably be a very, very long time before I think I am ready to care for another human life other than my own.

Your summer at Skylark was intense and revealing, is there one moment you will remember more than others?

That I survived it at all is amazing. And Sebastian. Always Sebastian.

If we asked Sebastian to describe you in just a few words, what do you think he would say?

Smartest, sexiest girl he ever met? Kidding. I’m crossing my fingers that he would just say I’m worth a trip down to Maplewood, NJ.

Thanks so much for stopping by Jamie! For more information on TIGHTER and Adele Griffin, you can find her here:

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GIVEAWAY

It's been a giveaway kind of week this week! A huge thank you to all the fabulous people who have donated books and prizes to the blog these past several days, and a special thank you today to Teen Book Scene and Adele Griffin for offering up a copy of TIGHTER to one winner! To enter, just leave a comment with a valid email address so I can contact you if you win. Contest is open to US and Canadian residents only and will run through midnight EST on June 10th after which time a winner will be chosen by Random.org and announced on the blog. Good luck everyone!

Review: Tighter

TIGHTER
Adele Griffin
Paranormal Young Adult
208 Pages
Knopf Books for Young Readers
Available Now
Received for review via Teen Book Scene

THE STORY
A series of unfortunate events have caused Jamie's life to begin spiraling out of control. The combination of a broken heart and a physical injury have led to an addiction to prescription drugs, and in an effort to get Jamie interested in life again, her mother gets her a job as an au pair on the tiny island of Little Bly.

Though it's not ideal, Jamie enjoys spending time with Isa, at least until she begins to hear rumors that she bears a striking resemblance to Isa's former au pair Jessie. Turns out Jessie and her boyfriend Peter died in a plane crash the summer before, and Jamie realizes they haven't quite yet left Little Bly or Skylark house.

Jamie can sense Peter's presence and he's not the least bit restful. He enjoys disrupting and defiling the house, and Jamie decides to dig into his and Jessie's pasts to help figure out why the events of the previous summer happened the way they did, but in doing so opens herself up for ghostly scrutiny in return.

MY THOUGHTS
Tighter is one of those stories that creeps along, events unfolding with a deliberate slowness that causes our bodies to wind up and coil like a spring, just waiting for the moment when we'll be startled into sudden movement. For the duration of this tale we are deliciously tense–though our tenseness is strictly anticipatory rather than derived from a great deal of action or intensity–and we absorb every tiny detail about Jamie and Skylark in search of information that might ease our sense of foreboding. While Jamie's story is slow moving, it is never boring; instead we are kept on high alert as separate incidents and situations begin to fit together and paint a larger picture we are positively desperate to see in its entirety by the end.

Though many aspects of the story cause our exhalations to come in rapid succession and our muscles to ache from the strain of clenching them, there are a few small aspects that are a touch disappointing after all is revealed. For much of the book our attention is drawn to the physical similarities between previous au pair Jessie and current au pair Jamie, leading us to believe there is some significance in this detail or some link between the two young women that is perhaps contributory to Jamie's ability to see the spirits of both Jessie and Peter. However, when all is said and done we find their eerily similar appearance is mere coincidence and is unrelated to the greater picture. We spend so much time hearing about their looks and learning about Jessie as Jamie conducts her informal investigation that we're sure we must be in store for some shocking revelation only to have our sought-after connection between the two women fade to nothingness with the turn of the last few pages.

Tighter does end with a twist that causes us to mentally replay the entire story in an attempt to catch the moments that ought to have tipped us off as to the ending, but once our initial awe passes we realize this particular twist is something we've seen before. All the accumulated tension and anticipation of some disturbing ghostly encounter slowly drains from us rather than exploding outward with the force of our discovery, taking with it the last of our strength and leaving us feeling just a bit unsatisfied. Tighter is certainly a quick and entertaining read, we just can't help but want a more disquieting and memorable conclusion to a tale that's kept us taut with awareness and apprehension the entire time.

Rating: 3.5/5