In the Beginning: THE WINNER'S KISS First Lines Blog Tour + Giveaway

I feel an embarrassing happy flail coming on everyone. Today I have the absolute pleasure of participating in a very special blog tour. 6 days. 6 blogs. 6 lines from The Winner's Kiss, the third and final book in Marie Rutkoski's amazing Winner's Trilogy.

*FLAILS*

My love for this series defies description so I won't try to put it into words, but if you haven't had a chance to read The Winner's Curse and The Winner's Crime yet, I hope you run to your nearest bookstore or library and get them immediately!

And now, I bring you the 4th line of The Winner's Kiss tour:

*Jenny falls down dead of want and nerves*

Since one teaser surely won't be enough, be sure and check out all the below blogs for 5 additional lines (and go here for the official cover reveal!):

Tuesday, May 12th – Cuddlebuggery

Wednesday, May 13th – Love is Not a Triangle

Thursday, May 14th – The Book Rat

Friday, May 15th – Supernatural Snark

Saturday, May 16th – YA Bibliophile

Sunday, May 17th – Forever YA

• • • • • • • • • • • •

THE WINNER'S KISS

 

War has begun. Arin is in the thick of it, with the East as his ally and the empire as his enemy. He’s finally managed to dismiss the memory of Kestrel, even if he can’t quite forget her. Kestrel turned into someone he could no longer recognize: someone who cared more for the empire than for the lives of innocent people—and certainly more than she cared for him. At least, that’s what he thinks.



But far north lies a work camp where Kestrel is a prisoner. Can she manage to escape before she loses herself? As the war intensifies, both Kestrel and Arin discover unexpected roles in battle, terrible secrets, and a fragile hope. The world is changing. The East is pitted against the West, and Kestrel and Arin are caught between. In a game like this, can anybody really win?

Goodreads • Amazon
 

 
Find The Winner's Curse:

Amazon • B&N • Goodreads

Find The Winner's Crime:

Amazon • B&N • Goodreads

• • • • • • • • • •

MARIE RUTKOSKI

Marie Rutkoski is the author of the YA novel The Shadow Society, about a girl who discovers that she’s not human and that her kind are terrorists in an alternate world where the Great Chicago Fire never happened. The Shadow Society will be published October 30, 2012. Marie has also written the children’s fantasy series The Kronos Chronicles, including The Cabinet of Wonders, The Celestial Globe and The Jewel of the Kalderash. The Cabinet of Wonders, her debut novel, was named an Indie Next Kids’ List Great Read and a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year, among other honors.

Rutkoski grew up in Bolingbrook, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago), as the oldest of four children. She attended the University of Iowa. After graduating, she lived in Moscow and Prague. Upon receiving her Ph.D. from Harvard University, she held dual appointments as a lecturer there in both English and American Literature and Language, and History and Literature. Rutkoski is currently a professor at Brooklyn College, where she teaches Renaissance Drama, children’s literature and creative writing. She usually lives in New York City with her husband and two sons, but she and her family are now living in Paris for the 2012-2013 academic year. 

Website • Facebook • Twitter

• • • • • • • • • • •

GIVEAWAY

Thanks to the generosity of the Macmillan team, I have one copy of The Winner's Crime to give away on the blog today (please note: this is book 2 of the series). To enter, fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Giveaway is open to US addresses only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tuck Everlasting: 40th Anniversary Blog Tour

Today I’m thrilled to be a part of the promotional tour for the 40^th Anniversary Edition of Tuck Everlasting. Confession: I was not a big reader in school. I read what was assigned and not a page more because I found required reading to be an absolute chore; the fact that I was going to be tested on my ability to cough up the material in a final exam sucked all the fun out of the characters and story (Crime and Punishment haunts me still). There were very, VERY few books I read in middle and high school that had me reading ahead of what was assigned, but one such book was Tuck Everlasting, and it remains a favorite of mine to this day.

As part of the tour we’ve been asked to address a question posed by the book: What if you could live forever?

I’m going to tackle this question in two parts: The first, my answer to this question as it would have been in 7^th grade when I first read this book, and second, my answer now as an adult.

In 7^th grade, I can honestly say I would have opted to drink from the spring immediately (well, maybe postponed it for a few years until I was a touch older since you remain the age you are when you take that first sip) and live forever. When I was that age, it felt like the whole world was before me and there couldn’t possibly be enough days in a lifetime to do everything I wanted to do. My answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up?" changed weekly then, and I know my younger self would have done a happy dance at the thought of being able to be a vet, and then an Olympic equestrian showjumper, and then a movie star, and then an artist, and then whatever else struck my fancy instead of having to buckle down and focus one just one. I would never run out of time, so I could be any and all professions if I so chose.

And I could travel endlessly! I could visit places like this:

 And stay weeks or even years. Then I could move on to the next place:

And the next:

And stay there even longer (seriously, I could spend months getting lost in Catherine’s Palace)! Meet new people and do strange, wonderful new things without worrying about time or money, because when you live forever you have time to accumulate whatever funds you might need. Obviously.

Now though, my answer would be quite different. I wouldn’t drink from the spring if you paid me to. I think so much of the joy in life comes from the fact that our time is finite, and we experience certain things more profoundly given our chances of doing so again are unlikely. People say things are “once in a lifetime” experiences and all the more special as a result, and I can’t help but think they wouldn’t be as magical or memorable if you had hundreds of lifetimes to check things off a bucket list that is in fact not a bucket list at all. It would just be a list of things you'd undoubtedly have time to do.

After the changes I’ve made in my life this past year, starting a new business and taking my career in a direction that's better for both my creativity and my sanity, I’m finally more content and comfortable in my life than I have been in a long time. I have goals I want to achieve in the coming years, but I know the kind of person I am, and if I had all the time in the world to do them, they’d never get done ;-) Living forever would simply be a never-ending stretch of procrastination, and there's no fun to be had in that for me!

So to wrap this ramble up, if you asked the 7^th grade version of me to drink from the spring, she would have jumped on that without so much as a second thought, but adult me is happy with life just the way it is (except I wouldn't mind if Chris Hemsworth showed up on my doorstep tomorrow to profess his undying love for me. Just saying.) :-)

What do you guys think? Live forever or take this one life and make the most of it?

• • • • • • • • • • • •

TUCK EVERLASTING

Blessed with—or doomed to—eternal life after drinking from a magic spring, the Tuck family wanders about trying to live as inconspicuously and comfortably as they can. When ten-year-old Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret, the Tucks take her home and explain why living forever at one age is less of a blessing than it might seem. Complications arise when Winnie is followed by a stranger who wants to market the spring water for a fortune.

A brand-new introduction from Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked, and additional bonus materials make this special edition of Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting a must-have for lovers of the book and a great way to introduce a new generation to a classic.

The 40th Anniversary edition releases January 20th, be sure and preorder your copy!

Review: Adrenaline Crush

ADRENALINE CRUSH
Laurie Boyle Crompton
Contemporary Young Adult
192 pages
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Available Now
Source: ARC from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Seventeen-year-old Dyna comes from a family of risk takers and is an avid thrill-seeker herself, until the day she splinters her ankle in a terrible fall. Her whole life goes from mountain biking and rock climbing to sitting at home and attending group sessions at the bizarre alternative healing center that her hippie mother found. The boy who witnessed Dyna’s accident believes her injury is a wakeup call and he encourages her mild new lifestyle, but a young Afghanistan War veteran she meets at the healing center pushes her to start taking chances again. Forced to face the consequences of her daredevil impulses, Dyna finds herself in danger of risking the one thing she’s always treated with caution—her heart.

MY THOUGHTS
Coming in at under two hundred pages, Adrenaline Crush is a quick read, granting us a few short months in Dyna’s life before we reach the back cover and return to our reality. Shorter novels and novellas can sometimes be trickier reads simply from the standpoint that our time with characters and story is more limited, preventing us from connecting as thoroughly as we might like. Though that is certainly not the case across the board, it is unfortunately the case with Adrenaline Crush, Dyna’s journey toward physical and mental healing after her injury one we can’t help but want to explore in more detail, peeling back layers we instead gloss right over in favor of keeping forward plot momentum.

Dyna herself is a character who will perhaps go over better with a crowd closer to her age, her desire to show off in front of a cute boy driving her to make a decision that ultimately lands her in the hospital something that will likely cause older readers like myself to shake their heads in dismay. Her internal commentary in the opening chapter is slightly off putting as well, her bike ride that fateful afternoon consisting mainly of a search for a “fling” with a  “plaything” to save her from boredom. Said commentary also includes a fairy healthy appreciation for herself and her adrenaline-fueled talents, causing her to come across as immature and creating a greater character/reader gap than we had hoped for when cracking the spine.

It’s important to note that Dyna is not a terrible character in any way though, and it’s clear that the Dyna of the opening chapters is meant to leave room for growth over the course of our time with her. She continues to read a bit younger throughout however, and those who abhor cheating in any way, shape or form, should know to expect it as the bond between Dyna and Pierce starts to show her what’s missing from her relationship with boyfriend Jay. Overall, Adrenaline Crush has a great deal of potential in terms of message, Dyna’s attempts to rediscover who she is after her accident something of import, we simply aren’t given the opportunity to dig deeply into her life and fully invest in her road to recovery.

Rating: 3/5
 

Find Laurie

Website • 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.

Review: My Last Kiss

MY LAST KISS
Bethany Neal
Paranormal Young Adult
368 pages
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Available June 10th
Source: ARC from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
What if your last kiss was with the wrong boy?

Cassidy Haines remembers her first kiss vividly. It was on the old covered bridge the summer before her freshman year with her boyfriend of three years, Ethan Keys. But her last kiss--the one she shared with someone at her seventeenth birthday party the night she died--is a blur. Cassidy is trapped in the living world, not only mourning the loss of her human body, but left with the grim suspicion that her untimely death wasn't a suicide as everyone assumes. She can't remember anything from the weeks leading up to her birthday and she's worried that she may have betrayed her boyfriend.

If Cassidy is to uncover the truth about that fateful night and make amends with the only boy she'll ever love, she must face her past and all the decisions she made--good and bad--that led to her last kiss.

MY THOUGHTS
My Last Kiss is a story that has those of us who abhor cheating in all its various forms nervous from the moment we crack the spine, wondering if we’ll be able to connect with Cassidy or understand the whys of her disloyalty enough to forgive her. Though her reasons for turning to someone other than Ethan in the weeks leading up to her death are perhaps not quite as strong as we might like, through the piecing together of her splintered memories it’s easy for us to see how what started out as simple comfort suddenly became quicksand, pulling her down and trapping her in a lie that forced her to become the type of young woman she never dreamed she’d be.

Aiding us in our mission to withhold judgment and attempt to get to know Cassidy through our anger at her unfaithfulness is the fact that Cassidy, post-death, is as disappointed in herself as we are. As she slowly relives small fragments both from when she was younger as well as just before her death, she sees herself from the very perspective we see her–as an outsider bearing witness to the heightened emotion of the moment rather than living it–and is therefore able to acknowledge the role she played in her untimely demise. She doesn’t make excuses for herself or rationalize her behavior, instead she recognizes her mistakes and the hurt she caused in a way she didn’t or couldn’t as it was actually happening. We then find our ire simply cannot maintain its strength in the face of her clear remorse and desire to fix as much as she can in the time she has left.

The mystery aspect of the story keeps us turning the pages with increasing speed, eager to see what bit of information the next chapter will provide for us that we can file away as a brushstroke on the canvas in our minds that holds the half-formed painting of Cassidy’s last moments. While the final reveal of who was with Cassidy seconds before her death doesn’t come as a jaw-dropping surprise given Cassidy from page one understands she knew her attacker even if the specifics are blurry, the thrill lies much more in all we learn about who she was along the way rather than who was responsible for giving her a helping hand over the bridge’s railing.

Though there’s certainly a romantic aspect to this story, those readers who typically shy away from ghost stories with prominent romances for their sheer lack of believability shouldn’t discount My Last Kiss. It’s more a tale of a young girl who held something solid in her palms one minute only to have it turn to sand and slip through her fingers the next, each chapter helping both her and us as readers understand the choices she made and how they led her to a place where the only person who can see her is the one she hurt the most. There are certainly moments where pre-death Cassidy and post-death Cassidy have us wanting to shake her until the whole truth spills from her lips, but overall My Last Kiss is a truly entertaining read with a beautifully bittersweet ending.

Rating: 4/5
 

Find Bethany:

Website • Facebook • Instagram • Twitter • Goodreads • Amazon • B&N

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.

If you haven't had a chance yet, be sure and check out my character interview with Ethan!

My Last Kiss Blog Tour: Character Interview

I'm very excited today to be a part of the promotional tour for Bethany Neal's upcoming young adult release, My Last Kiss. I really enjoyed this one (my review will be up later this week) and was thrilled to get the opportunity to interview Ethan, main character Cassidy's boyfriend. Be sure and check the bottom of the post for a list of participating blogs so you don't miss out on any reviews, interviews or guest posts, and welcome to Supernatural Snark Ethan!

In her ghostly form, Cassidy is able to picture where she wants to be and then show up there. If you had the same ability (but maybe with a longer range so you could travel anywhere in the world), where’s the first place you’d go?

A secluded island paradise somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. Turquoise water, warm sunshine to soak in, and nobody but me for miles. I could use some alone time after the last few weeks I’ve had. 

Though things between you and Cassi unraveled a bit in the weeks leading up to her death, the two of you had a really beautiful relationship. Aside from that first night on the bridge when you were fourteen, what’s your favorite Cassi moment?

Oh, man, picking one favorite feels impossible. Every moment with her—even the boring ones in Spanish class or waiting in line for lunch—seem like the glue that holds me together. There was this one time though when I surprised her at a dance competition. It was the first time I’d ever seen her dance. Like for real dance with toe shoes and tights, the whole deal. She took my breath away. I know that’s cheesy to say, but whatever. She honestly did and I don’t think I’ve recovered since.

Your reaction to seeing Cassi as a ghost was relatively mild and you seemed to accept her as real fairly quickly. If your roles were reversed, what do you think Cassi’s reaction to your ghost would have been?

Denial. Cassi is a champion at carrying on with life as if nothing is wrong when the world is crumbling around her. It usually works to her benefit, but not always. I guess, you all know that pretty well by now, but I’m certain she’d convince herself I was real the same way I did with her.

By the way, I didn’t accept her as a ghost so much as in my sleep-deprived brain I thought the twenty straight hours of begging and praying had paid off. I chose to believe she was real and there for me because if I didn’t I wouldn’t have survived.

One of the staples of high school is voting people into various categories like “Best Smile” or “Most Likely to Succeed” before everyone goes off to college. To help those who have yet to meet you, Cassi, or your friends, please assign each of them an appropriate yearbook superlative so we might get to know them better.

“Most Misunderstood” Cassidy Haines
“Biggest Player” Mica Torrez
“Most Likely to Rule the World” Aimee Coutier
“Most Likely to Get Teachers to Adjust Her Grades” Madison Scott
“Most Likely to Ask You to Cover For Him While He Skips Class” Caleb Turner
“Most Likely to Be a Contestant on The Bachelorette…and Lose” Drew Ridelle

What’s one thing your relationship with Cassi has taught you about yourself?

There’s more than one way to love somebody and there’s an infinite number of reasons to love. I had no idea I was capable of loving someone while simultaneously hating them.

If a book about Cassi’s life in the weeks leading up to her death and just after was titled My Last Kiss, what would the title of a book about your life during that time be?

I’d title my book My First Last Chance. Or The Day My Heart Was Torn Out of My Chest and Replaced by the World’s Hottest Ghost then Torn Out Again, but I think the first one is more catchy.

If someone were to ask Cassi to describe you, what three words do you think might show up in that description, and would you agree with her assessment?

Forgiving, loyal, and clueless. I agree with the first two, but the last isn’t entirely true. I knew our relationship was about to change. I just had no idea how drastically.

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions Ethan!

• • • • • • • • • • • 

MY LAST KISS

What if your last kiss was with the wrong boy?

Cassidy Haines remembers her first kiss vividly. It was on the old covered bridge the summer before her freshman year with her boyfriend of three years, Ethan Keys. But her last kiss--the one she shared with someone at her seventeenth birthday party the night she died--is a blur. Cassidy is trapped in the living world, not only mourning the loss of her human body, but left with the grim suspicion that her untimely death wasn't a suicide as everyone assumes. She can't remember anything from the weeks leading up to her birthday and she's worried that she may have betrayed her boyfriend.

If Cassidy is to uncover the truth about that fateful night and make amends with the only boy she'll ever love, she must face her past and all the decisions she made–good and bad–that led to her last kiss.

Goodreads • Amazon • B&N

• • • • • • • • • •

BETHANY NEAL

Bethany Neal writes YA novels with a little dark side and a lot of kissing from her Ann Arbor, Michigan home. The things she is obsessed with include, but are not limited to: nail polish, ginormous rings, pigs, dream analysis, memorizing song lyrics, pickles, dessert, predestined love, not growing up, sour gummy candies, music videos, Halloween, and fictional boys who play guitar.

MY LAST KISS is her first novel.

Website • Facebook • Instagram • Twitter

• • • • • • • • • • •

BLOG TOUR

Below are this week's tour stops, don't forget to stop by and check them out! The full list of participating blogs is available at The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club.

JUNE 2ND

Michelle & Leslie's Book Picks - Musical Inspiration

Miss-Page Turner's City of Books - Behind the Pages

Book Sp(l)ot Reviews – Review

Stay Bookish - Review

JUNE 3RD

Supernatural Snark - Character Interview

Conversations of a Reading Addict – Review

Istyria book blog – Review

Divergent Gryffindor - Review

JUNE 4TH

The Hiding Spot – Q&A

Reader Girls - Ghostly "Rules"

Library of a Book Witch - Review

JUNE 5TH

Book Addicts Guide - Open Interview

Anna Reads - First Fictional Crush 

Reading is My Treasure – Review

A Backwards Story – Review

JUNE 6th

Lady's Book Stuff – Playlist revealed

Book Munchies – Review

Paper Cuts – Review

A Dream Within A Dream - Review

Review: The Winner's Curse

THE WINNER'S CURSE
Winner's Trilogy #1
Marie Rutkoski
Young Adult/Dystopian/Historical
355 pages
Farrar Straus Giroux
Available March 4th
Source: ARC from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Winning what you want may cost you everything you love

As a general’s daughter in a vast empire that revels in war and enslaves those it conquers, seventeen-year-old Kestrel has two choices: she can join the military or get married. But Kestrel has other intentions.

One day, she is startled to find a kindred spirit in a young slave up for auction. Arin’s eyes seem to defy everything and everyone. Following her instinct, Kestrel buys him—with unexpected consequences. It’s not long before she has to hide her growing love for Arin.

But he, too, has a secret, and Kestrel quickly learns that the price she paid for a fellow human is much higher than she ever could have imagined.

Set in a richly imagined new world, The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski is a story of deadly games where everything is at stake, and the gamble is whether you will keep your head or lose your heart.

MY THOUGHTS
The Winner’s Curse is one of those stories we read with great speed, turning the pages as quickly as possible to see how everything plays out, but it’s the hours, days and weeks following the flip of the final page that make us realize just how thoroughly tangled we are in the lives of Kestrel and Arin. Despite the backdrop of war as an empire seeks to expand, this is a quieter tale, the words layered with meaning and heavy with feeling, set in a beautiful arrangement that has the romantic in us smiling wistfully while our hearts simultaneously bleed from a thousand small cuts stealthily delivered as the forbidden and the impossible dance to a dangerous tune.

The romance between Kestrel and Arin is not one of bold gestures and impassioned speeches; not one that has us using and discarding highlighters at an unprecedented pace for all the heartbreakingly gorgeous sentiments given life through words, instead it's one of fragile whispers and haunting possibility. The two of them are would-be lovers standing on opposite sides of a frozen lake, and with every step they take toward the other a crack in the ice beneath their feet widens, forcing them to stay apart and keep their weight distributed rather than give in to temptation, meet in the middle, and risk falling through. Their relationship is one that keeps us up at night, analyzing every small gesture and look given we know them both to be skilled in the art of deception, searching for the truth hiding in and between their lies. Often we see what we want to see rather than what’s actually there, but the beauty of the two of them is that every once in a while, out of the corner of our eyes, we could swear we see love trying to grow underneath the crushing weight of their opposing forces.

What is so intriguing about the story itself above and beyond the romance between Kestrel and Arin is the way Ms. Rutkoski is able to make us root for both sides equally, not wanting to see either group enslave the other but yet understanding the desire to rule as easily as we understand the need to fight back. The tide of power shifts and rolls like water in a roughened sea as this story progresses, and we are swept along with it, as fascinatingly conflicted as both Kestrel and Arin are by the constant flux in our emotional reaction. We can never truly choose a side and so we remain on edge throughout, both anticipating and fearing the moment when a clear winner might emerge and help us finally figure out on which side of the line we stand.

We’re left, not necessarily reeling per se, but with hearts bearing definitive finger-shaped bruises courtesy of the shared grip Arin and Kestrel have on them, their fate something we know we'll learn of only through an epic journey over an extended period of time. The ending of this series is no doubt one worth waiting for though, and this first installment is a book destined for the favorites shelf where it will never have time to collect dust for constantly being taken down and re-read.

Rating: 4.5/5

Find Marie:

Website • Facebook • Twitter • Amazon • Goodreads

*If you didn't get a chance yet, check out Marie's guest post where she talks about Kestrel's father and the research she did for the battle scenes!

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.

Waiting on Wednesday: Tumble & Fall

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking The Spine and is a fun way to see what books other bloggers just can't wait to get their hands on!

TUMBLE & FALL

Alexandra Coutts

Young Adult

Releases September 17th

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

 

A novel about the end of days full of surprising beginnings

The world is living in the shadow of oncoming disaster. An asteroid is set to strike the earth in just one week’s time; catastrophe is unavoidable. The question isn’t how to save the world—the question is, what to do with the time that's left? Against this stark backdrop, three island teens wrestle with intertwining stories of love, friendship and family—all with the ultimate stakes at hand.

Alexandra Coutts's TUMBLE & FALL is a powerful story of courage, love, and hope at the end of the world.

First of all, hello gorgeous cover! Because I'm easily won over by good design, the cover alone is enough to have this book on my must-read list, but I also really like the idea of a story set pre-apocalypse rather than post. Sure, it sounds like a little bit of a downer with the impending death of the entire world, but I've always been intrigued by stories that create contrasts - light amidst the dark, beauty amidst the ugliness - and this definitely seems like it fits that bill. I can't wait!