Spinning Starlight Blog Tour: Guest Post + Giveaway

Today I'm super excited to welcome author R.C. Lewis to the blog as part of the promotional tour for Spinning Starlight, a retelling of The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Andersen. There's little I love more than a fairytale retelling, so this book was destined for my must-have list before I even knew of its existence. Since my adoration of fairytales borders on excessive, I thought I'd ask R.C. what fairytales would most appeal to protagonist Liddi if she had nothing but time to read!

Liddi Jantzen’s Top Three Reading-Time Favorites

(First off, Liddi would be all about the audiobook, since her world went full-speed ahead on audio/video interface being the way to go ages back. But without further ado...)

#1 The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen

Obviously. Liddi would have oodles of sympathy for this character’s can’t-talk quandary. From firsthand experience, no less. She knows the frustration and fear that can come from not being able to communicate comfortably with those around her, especially total strangers in a strange land that defies all her prior experiences.

She would not be a fan of the ending.

#2 The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen

(Liddi doesn’t know about her own roots in Andersen’s work, so it’s amusing that she’s so partial to his work.)

Again, Liddi would very much identify with the main character in this story. She’s long felt like the odd-one-out among her brothers, and it has nothing to do with being the only girl. Everyone in her family has a spark of genius when it comes to improving old technologies or inventing new ones. Liddi’s competent enough skillwise, but the ideas just won’t come. She wonders if she’s somehow from the wrong “batch.”

#3 Constellation Myths—any and all

(This will keep her busy since the first two are relatively short.)

Liddi grows up with a low opinion of any kind of superstition, yet she can’t help being a stargazer like her late mother. Despite the interstellar distance they represent, looking at the stars makes her feel closer to something. Later, a new friend tells her stories of the constellations on another world, so after the events of Spinning Starlight, I think Liddi would be very interested in hearing such stories from other places and cultures.

Thanks so much for stopping by R.C.!

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SPINNING STARLIGHT

Sixteen-year-old heiress and paparazzi darling Liddi Jantzen hates the spotlight. But as the only daughter in the most powerful tech family in the galaxy, it's hard to escape it. So when a group of men show up at her house uninvited, she assumes it's just the usual media-grubs. That is, until shots are fired.

Liddi escapes, only to be pulled into an interplanetary conspiracy more complex than she ever could have imagined. Her older brothers have been caught as well, trapped in the conduits between the planets. And when their captor implants a device in Liddi's vocal cords to monitor her speech, their lives are in her hands: One word and her brothers are dead.

Desperate to save her family from a desolate future, Liddi travels to another world, where she meets the one person who might have the skills to help her bring her eight brothers home-a handsome dignitary named Tiav. But without her voice, Liddi must use every bit of her strength and wit to convince Tiav that her mission is true. With the tenuous balance of the planets deeply intertwined with her brothers' survival, just how much is Liddi willing to sacrifice to bring them back?

Haunting and mesmerizing, this retelling of Hans Christian Andersen'sThe Wild Swans strings the heart of the classic with a stunning, imaginative world as a star-crossed family fights for survival in this companion to Stitching Snow.

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R.C. LEWIS

R.C. Lewis teaches math to teenagers—sometimes in sign language, sometimes not—so whether she’s a science geek or a bookworm depends on when you look. That may explain why her characters don’t like to be pigeonholed. Coincidentally, R.C. enjoys reading about quantum physics and the identity issues of photons.

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GIVEAWAY

One lucky winner will receive a signed finished copy of SPINNING STARLIGHT. To enter, please fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Open to US addresses only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

  Be sure and check out all the participating blogs for more guest posts and interviews!
   
WEEK ONE

9/28/2015- Fangirlish- Interview  
9/29/2015- A Backwards Story- Review  
9/30/2015- Supernatural Snark- Guest Post   
10/1/2015- YaReads- Review  
10/2/2015- Two Chicks on Books- Interview

WEEK TWO

10/5/2015- Pandora's Books- Review

10/6/2015- Bookhounds ya- Guest Post

10/7/2015- Just Commonly- Review

10/8/2015- Mundie Moms- Interview

10/9/2015- Please Feed The Bookworm- Review

Review: Stitching Snow

STITCHING SNOW
R.C. Lewis
Young Adult/Fairy Tale Retelling
336 pages
Disney Hyperion
Available Now
Source: BEA

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Princess Snow is missing.

Her home planet is filled with violence and corruption at the hands of King Matthias and his wife as they attempt to punish her captors. The king will stop at nothing to get his beloved daughter back-but that's assuming she wants to return at all.

Essie has grown used to being cold. Temperatures on the planet Thanda are always sub-zero, and she fills her days with coding and repairs for the seven loyal drones that run the local mines.

When a mysterious young man named Dane crash-lands near her home, Essie agrees to help the pilot repair his ship. But soon she realizes that Dane's arrival was far from accidental, and she's pulled into the heart of a war she's risked everything to avoid.

MY THOUGHTS
Stitching Snow is a beautiful combination of serious and sweet, moments full of lightness and levity alternating with darkness and gravity to keep us riveted to the pages from beginning to end. Ms. Lewis’s version of Snow White is no damsel in distress, instead she's a young women with smarts, technological know-how, and an ability to fight down and dirty when the situation calls for it. In place of dwarfs Essie is surrounded by drones of her own making, each with a distinct personality (especially Dimwit and Cusser – both hilariously aptly named) that adds both poignancy and humor as Essie finds her way back home to reclaim and rebuild.

Essie is a joy of a heroine, the dark past that drove her to Thanda something that defines who’s she’s become but yet she never lets it be all that does so. She resolves to never go down without a fight, even if it’s one she knows she can’t win, and we can’t help but situate ourselves firmly in her corner and refuse to budge. When the truth about Dane is revealed, her anger matches our own, but instead of lashing out and seeking to cause the same harm his deception has caused her, she simply grants herself permission to feel as she does without taking those feelings out on anyone else. She’s understandably wary of Dane for majority of the book, but she doesn’t hold a grudge or allow herself to be so blinded by what he’s done to her that she can’t understand the why’s of his decisions, and thus the broken trust between them creates a stunningly tense foundation for their eventual romance.

The romance itself is exceedingly well done, moving at the perfect pace given trust is not an easy thing to rebuild once it’s been destroyed, and by the time Dane actually makes his first move our anger at him has receded along with Essie’s. Just when the two of them find themselves on more solid footing with one another however, they’re thrust back into the nightmare Essie escaped from all those years ago, facing monsters of the human variety who show us that a poisoned apple from an old hag is nothing compared to what the royal house of Windsong is capable of.
 
Overall, Ms. Lewis delights with her retelling of Snow White and her seven companions, giving us true villains to hate and flawed heroes to root for, all the while charming us with enough silly banter between Essie and her drones and romance between reluctant royals to keep the darkness from overwhelming. Entertaining every step of the way, Stitching Snow should be on everyone’s must-read list.

Rating: 4/5

Find R.C.

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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.