Book Tour – Story-eyed Reviews

The Edge of Anything

April 9, 2020April 29, 2020 A Morrow

Len is a loner teen photographer haunted by a past that’s stagnated her work and left her terrified she’s losing her mind. Sage is a high school volleyball star desperate to find a way around her sudden medical disqualification. Both girls need college scholarships. After a chance encounter, the two develop an unlikely friendship that enables them to begin facing their inner demons.

But both Len and Sage are keeping secrets that, left hidden, could cost them everything, maybe even their lives.

Set in the North Carolina mountains, this dynamic #ownvoices novel explores grief, mental health, and the transformative power of friendship.

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I don’t read a lot of Contemporary. Don’t get me wrong, I still have favorites in the genre and enjoy it a lot, but— I tend to prefer more escapist stories. Stories of magical worlds and distant lands; The Edge of Anything by Nora Shalaway somehow captures those things anyway, even in a simple story about friendship. I really enjoyed this book.

For starters, the characters grew to close to my heart so quickly. This story is about grief, disillusionment, and the big, afraid feeling that we all have to face as we grow up. Len and Sage, the two girls in this book who’s friendship transforms their lives, both had to face those fears too. And they do it with such relatability. These girls have secrets and inner demons aplenty, but they find something unique in each other. If you’ve ever had that close friend who understands a mysterious, unnoticed part of you, then you’ll recognize this story. And the magnetism of that feeling too.

The plot didn’t really matter to me that much, I’ll be honest. I liked that their struggles seemed down to earth and relatable, very common to so many teens in the world, while also having just enough drama to keep things interesting. This story is certainly character driven though, and the story benefits so greatly from the author writing through that lens.

I genuinely loved this. It made me feel less alone and more forgiving toward— well, humanity, really. Things in the world are so tense and complicated right now, a stress that I think we all feel, and this book highlights those things that become important in a crisis. The things that are always important but that we don’t always pay attention to. I recommend it. I hope you enjoy it.

Nora Shalaway Carpenter holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Before she wrote books, she served as associate editor of Wonderful West Virginia magazine and has been a Certified Yoga Teacher since 2012. Originally from rural West Virginia, she currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her husband, three young children, and one not-so-young dog. Learn more at www.noracarpenterwrites.com or follow her on Instagram @noracarpenterwrites and Twitter @norawritesbooks.

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Book Tour, Reviews

All Your Twisted Secrets

March 23, 2020March 23, 2020 A Morrow

This thrilling debut, reminiscent of new fan favorites like One of Us Is Lying and the beloved classics by Agatha Christie, will leave readers guessing until the explosive ending.

Welcome to dinner, and again, congratulations on being selected. Now you must do the selecting.

What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill … or else everyone dies.

Amber Prescott is determined to get her classmates and herself out of the room alive, but that might be easier said than done. No one knows how they’re all connected or who would want them dead. As they retrace the events over the past year that might have triggered their captor’s ultimatum, it becomes clear that everyone is hiding something. And with the clock ticking down, confusion turns into fear, and fear morphs into panic as they race to answer the biggest question: Who will they choose to die?

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Daaaaaaaamn. These YA contemporary thrillers keep getting more and more wild. Fictional teenagers just get crazier and crazier. But I also had a ton of fun reading about it and I think you will too.

All Your Twisted Secrets is the next in a new trend of teen-oriented murder mysteries in YA fiction. Recent successful titles in this genre have been One of Us is Lying and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and, let me be the first to tell you, if you liked either of those titles then this one is going to be right up your alley. This book is readable, quick, full of fun-to-follow characters, and just as twisted as the title suggests.

The one thing I liked about this book that others might complain of is the characters. They were so…young. And I loved them for it. A lot of times in novels like this, the author tries to portray them as much older than they are, whether that be in their logic or decision-making, it always feels a little stilted. One of the highlights, in my opinion, of these characters is just how…teenage they are. They’re dumb and impulsive, they care about things that shouldn’t be prioritized, and they are campy as hell: but they were fun to read about. They made me think about being a teen again too and all of the dumb things I thought and did then. Only…without the murder, thankfully.

I don’t know how to talk about the story too much without giving anything away. I guessed the ending but I think only because I’ve read so many of these YA mysteries lately, and still I got details wrong. I generally don’t like guessing an ending, but this time I didn’t mind it so much. The devil was in the details and I think the author did a good job of wrapping things up satisfactorily and having enough twists and turns along the way.

Ultimately, if this is your type of book: go for it. You will love it and you won’t be able to put it down. If not? That’s okay. But All Your Twisted Secrets is a solid new entry into the world of teen murder and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

I’m Diana Urban, and I write dark, twisty thrillers for teens including All Your Twisted Secrets (HarperTeen, March 17th 2020). When I’m not torturing fictional characters, I’m a marketing manager at BookBub, a leading book discovery platform. Outside the bookish world, I live with my husband and cat in Boston, and enjoy reading, video games, fawning over cute animals, and looking at the beach from a safe distance.

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Book Tour, Reviews

Witches of Ash and Ruin

March 20, 2020 A Morrow

Modern witchcraft blends with ancient Celtic mythology in an epic clash of witches and gods, perfect for fans of V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic trilogy and A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES.

Seventeen-year-old Dayna Walsh is struggling to cope with her somatic OCD; the aftermath of being outed as bisexual in her conservative Irish town; and the return of her long-absent mother, who barely seems like a parent. But all that really matters to her is ascending and finally, finally becoming a full witch-plans that are complicated when another coven, rumored to have a sordid history with black magic, arrives in town with premonitions of death. Dayna immediately finds herself at odds with the bewitchingly frustrating Meiner King, the granddaughter of their coven leader.

And then a witch turns up murdered at a local sacred site, along with the blood symbol of the Butcher of Manchester-an infamous serial killer whose trail has long gone cold. The killer’s motives are enmeshed in a complex web of witches and gods, and Dayna and Meiner soon find themselves at the center of it all. If they don’t stop the Butcher, one of them will be next.

With razor-sharp prose and achingly real characters, E. Latimer crafts a sweeping, mesmerizing story of dark magic and brutal mythology set against a backdrop of contemporary Ireland that’s impossible to put down.

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So let’s start off simple: I enjoyed the hell out of this book. Old Irish magic, Queer and witchy characters, serial killers, dark turns and twists: Witches of Ash and Ruin had so much to offer and did not disappoint. If YA and dark fantasy are up your alley, then you will not want to miss this new debut.

The first thing I noticed and loved about this book was the irreverent and witchy vibe of the story. Even in the writing, Latimer does a spectacular job of infusing that dark, eerie, and still somehow sarcastic feeling into every sentence and atmosphere. She uses the backdrop of Ireland, with all of its ancient myths and history, to great effect that I thought highlighted some of the most interesting aspects of Irish folklore. The world she built isn’t campy or flashy, it is subtle and shifting and magical and full of hidden secrets and clues. The atmosphere, the writing, and the setting work together in a beautiful triad to support this twisted story.

All of that would be nothing, however, if the characters weren’t just as nuanced, interesting, and relatable. I love, love, love seeing more and more Queer, female stories in fiction, especially YA, but these girls were also just– fun to get to know. They’re sarcastic and snarky, smart and crafty, and so much more than “pretty young girls.” These girls are powerful, and it felt so good to read about young girls who stood so well in their power. They were also relatable as hell and reminded me of myself as a teen girl, albeit with a little more agency. And magic.

What I also enjoyed about this book was the delicate balance it was able to find between dark topics of magic and murder and a lighter, softer side of its central story. It’s almost part coming-of-age story, in that the character’s lives are given just as much significance and page-time as the mystery. I liked getting to know the main character’s insecurities, her struggles with OCD, her questions and difficulties with sexuality. Their families and friends weren’t absent, like in many lazier stories, and instead they had– lives. It was nice. In the midst of a dark and gritty murder mystery, these scenes balanced out the weight and tone of the book nicely.

Overall, I highly recommend Witches of Ash and Ruin to anyone looking for an awesome new YA fantasy. It’s great mental health and LGBTQ+ representation, plus a whole lot of magic, murder, and fun! The story was readable and I loved the twists along the way. Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think!

E. Latimer is a fantasy writer from Victoria, BC. Her middle grade novel, The Strange and Deadly Portraits of Bryony Gray was published by Tundra Books, and was recently nominated for the Red Maple Fiction Award.

In her spare time, she writes books, makes silly vlogs with the Word Nerds about writing, and reads excessively.

Her latest novel, Witches of Ash and Ruin, will be released Spring/Summer 2020 from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

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Book Tour, Reviews

The Deep

March 14, 2020 A Morrow

Someone, or something, is haunting the Titanic.

This is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the passengers of the ship from the moment they set sail: mysterious disappearances, sudden deaths. Now suspended in an eerie, unsettling twilight zone during the four days of the liner’s illustrious maiden voyage, a number of the passengers – including millionaires Madeleine Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, the maid Annie Hebbley and Mark Fletcher – are convinced that something sinister is going on . . . And then, as the world knows, disaster strikes.

Years later and the world is at war. And a survivor of that fateful night, Annie, is working as a nurse on the sixth voyage of the Titanic’s sister ship, the Britannic, now refitted as a hospital ship. Plagued by the demons of her doomed first and near fatal journey across the Atlantic, Annie comes across an unconscious soldier she recognises while doing her rounds. It is the young man Mark. And she is convinced that he did not – could not – have survived the sinking of the Titanic . . .

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So, full disclosure, I wanted to be on this book tour so badly. I’m a big fan of Alma Katsu. If you’ve hung around here long enough, you’ve probably seen me mention her writing once or twice, but if not then I am excited to introduce the two of you. Readers, meet Alma Katsu: the absolute master of historical horror fiction.

I read The Hunger, my debut into Katsu’s work, a couple of years ago and have been a fan ever since. The Hunger follows The Donner Party on their doomed journey, while adding an entirely new facet to the mystery along the way. I was riveted throughout the whole thing. This being said, I had a lot of high hopes for The Deep once I got my hands on it.

The Deep may follow a different time and story than her first novel, but they share so many of Katsu’s strengths: research, creativity, and the spookiest atmosphere. The Deep re-examines the story of the Titanic and Britannic and Katsu does what she does best from page one: uses history to infuse life, color, and delicious fear into her incredible stories. I never know how she is going to twist a story or tease out its secrets, but the way she writes about these historical moments always surprises and delights me.

This book is also told in two parallel storylines, and in this case I enjoyed that a lot. Watching and waiting for things to happen in one story, only to know that they were going to rear their ugly head again years later in the other, created a sense of tension that I think a lot of writers yearn for. The Deep isn’t “scary,” per se, but what Katsu does here is to create a cold, foggy, unsettling atmosphere that both the characters and the reader must traverse with only faith to guide them.

Another thing that I always appreciate about Alma Katsu is that, despite writing in time periods where diversity was even more of a challenge than now, she manages to make room for it in her novels all the same. Whether its diversity of color, class, or faith, Katsu’s characters range between them and I appreciate the spectrum of views that are provided in her stories. I like reading a historical piece that doesn’t ignore that humanity is not a monolith. She does this so well and I think it bears special mention, because that can’t be easy.

The Deep is a great read and I highly recommend it to all of you. It was an eerie, slow-burn of a novel, and also a fascinating and creative new take on a story that we’ve all heard before. I will continue to check out Katsu’s work as she writes more, and I recommend you keep an eye on her too. Her work is only getting better.

“A ship so massive, and here we are, trapped on it, nowhere to run.” She shivered “One is always trapped within oneself though.”

”I know firsthand how easy it is for this kind of thing to happen in a confined space with few distractions. Someone gives voice to a concern and before long, it’s on everyone’s lips. Paranoia is itself a kind of contagion.”

“But these are no guests, only survivors, each with a story tucked inside their bandages—wounds, pains, visions of shrapnel, explosions, and terrors she can’t fathom.”

“For all that was said about the Titanic, how superior it was, how well designed, how glorious and noble – as though it were a person, with a person’s traits – it would do nothing to save them. The Titanic was indifferent to the humans crawling on its decks and would willingly sacrifice them to the sea.”

Alma Katsu is the author of The Hunger, a reimagining of the story of the Donner Party with a horror twist. The Hunger made NPR’s list of the 100 Best Horror Stories, was named one of the best novels of 2018 by the Observer, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s Books (and more), and was nominated for a Stoker and Locus Award for best horror novel.

The Taker, her debut novel, has been compared to the early works of Anne Rice and Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander for combining historical, the supernatural, and fantasy into one story. The Taker was named a Top Ten Debut Novel of 2011 by Booklist, was nominated for a Goodreads Readers Choice award, and has been published in over 10 languages. It is the first in an award-winning trilogy that includes The Reckoning and The Descent.

Ms. Katsu lives outside of Washington DC with her husband, musician Bruce Katsu. In addition to her novels, she has been a signature reviewer for Publishers Weekly, and a contributor to the Huffington Post. She is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Program and Brandeis University, where she studied with novelist John Irving. She also is an alumni of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

Prior to publication of her first novel, Ms. Katsu had a long career in intelligence, working for several US agencies and a think tank. She currently is a consultant on emerging technologies. Additional information can be found on Wikipedia and in this interview with Ozy.com.

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Book Tour, Reviews

The Degenerates

March 13, 2020 A Morrow

In the tradition of Girl, Interrupted, this fiery historical novel follows four young women in the early 20th century whose lives intersect when they are locked up by a world that took the poor, the disabled, the marginalized—and institutionalized them for life.

The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded is not a happy place. The young women who are already there certainly don’t think so. Not Maxine, who is doing everything she can to protect her younger sister Rose in an institution where vicious attendants and bullying older girls treat them as the morons, imbeciles, and idiots the doctors have deemed them to be. Not Alice, either, who was left there when her brother couldn’t bring himself to support a sister with a club foot. And not London, who has just been dragged there from the best foster situation she’s ever had, thanks to one unexpected, life altering moment. Each girl is determined to change her fate, no matter what it takes.

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When I read the synopsis of The Degenerates by J. Albert Mann, I knew that I had to read it. I have always been fascinated by the periods in our nation’s history when people were shunted and hidden away like this. Especially for it to be children. Given I tend to dive into dark topics anyway, this seemed right up my alley. And I’m happy to report that I was exceedingly pleased with the journey.

The Degenerates is a great story with both heartbreaking and beautiful moments. The topics themselves can be dark: mental illness, disfiguration, society and the burden of shame in the 1900s. But what Mann does so well is give each one of these issues a face and a name. These four girls, and points of view, are varied in their “illnesses,” and each holds their own voices and secrets. But throughout the book, they each also hold a lesson for us: that every one of us is human, no matter how different.

My favorite thing about this book is simple: Mann’s writing is immersive, emotional, and easy to read, all at once. Her writing infuses life into the history and people she writes about in such a personal way that I felt like I was in the story myself, living alongside, and sometimes within, these four, lost, young girls.

Overall, The Degenerates was a moving, intelligent, emotional, and powerful read. I enjoyed every page of it and I felt like it moved along at a pace that was both fun and dwelt just long enough in the hard places. Mann does a terrific job of bringing a period and place to life that I don’t see much of in literature, especially YA, and I commend her for that. I’ll be looking for her next work in the future.

J. Albert Mann is the author of six novels for children, with S&S Atheneum Books for Young Readers set to publish her next work of historical fiction about the Eugenics Movement and the rise of institutionalism in the United States. She is also the author of short stories and poems for children featured in Highlights for Children, where she won the Highlights Fiction Award, as well as the Highlights Editors’ Choice Award. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and is the Director of the WNDB Internship Grant Committee.

Jennifer is represented by Kerry Sparks at Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency.

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Book Tour, Reviews

The Seventh Sun

February 13, 2020 A Morrow

The sun of the Chicome people has been destroyed six times. First by water, then by storm, fire, famine, sickness, and beasts. After each apocalypse, the creator goddess allowed one of her divine children to sacrifice themselves to save civilization. The gods paid their blood as the price for the lives of the people, and the people owed them blood in return.

Mayana is a noble descendant of the water goddess and can control water whenever her blood is spilled. She has always despised the brutal rituals of her people — especially sacrifices. She can’t even make it through a routine animal sacrifice without embarrassing her family. Prince Ahkin has always known he would be emperor, but he didn’t expect his father to die so suddenly. Now he must raise the sun in the sky each day and read the signs in the stars. But the stars now hint at impending chaos and the sun has begun setting earlier each evening. Ahkin fears he might not be strong enough to save his people from another apocalypse. And to add to his list of worries, he can’t truly become emperor until he selects a wife.

Mayana and six other noble daughters are sent to the palace to compete for Ahkin’s hand. She must prove she is a true daughter of water and face the others who have their own magical gifts from wielding the elements to the control of animals, plants and healing. And in a society centered on rigid rituals, Mayana must conceal her traitorous beliefs because if she doesn’t make Ahkin love her, she will become a ceremonial sacrifice to bless his marriage. But darker forces are at play and it won’t matter if Mayana loses if the world ends first…

Rich in imagination and romance, and based on the legends and history of the Aztec and Mayan people, The Seventh Sun brings to vivid life a world on the edge of apocalyptic disaster.

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The Seventh Sun by Lani Forbes is a rich, fictional exploration of a culture I don’t see written about often enough. It was descriptive, magical, and kept me reading the whole night through.

This story has so many things going for it: a solid plot, detail-oriented world building, and a religious and magical system that kept me fascinated. In fact, that was my favorite part: the descriptions. Forbes does such a masterful job of painting detailed picture after picture for her readers. Especially in an environment as lush and rich as this, her style pays off in spades.

The main character Mayana is an interesting one to tell her story. In a sometimes brutal and intense world, she is known as someone who is— well, innocent. She is kind and sympathetic and throughout her journey that both helps her and hinders her equally. While I didn’t always relate to her choices, I always understood where they came from and was persistently interested in what she would do next. In particular, her resolve to and kind heart kept me rooting for her until the very end.

The only spot that I wish would have been more fleshed out was the side characters. While still intriguing and interesting, there was so much more that I wanted to know about them. I feel as if I was told who they were more than I was shown who they were. Especially Mayana’s friend Yoli, someone who came off as this badass female warrior, but- lacked the moments in which I wanted to see her assert that personality.

The only exception here is Ahkin, the Prince. His personality is relatively prince-like in what you’d expect, but what I loved about how this character was written is that he was also written with doubt. Doubt that he can rule well, doubt that he’s doing the right thing, doubt that he is enough. This made him feel relatable and real and I enjoyed that the author brought that aspect to a character who could have been very two-dimensional.

The Seventh Sun by Lani Forbes was dark, fast-paced, and thoroughly entertaining. If you’re looking for something action-oriented, plot-driven, and flush with rich, descriptive details of a beautiful world, culture, and society, this is the book for you. Check this title out when it hits shelves soon!

Lani Forbes is the daughter of a librarian and an ex-drug smuggling surfer, which explains her passionate love of the ocean and books. A California native whose parents live in Mexico, she now resides in the Pacific Northwest where she stubbornly wears flip flops no matter how cold it gets. She teaches middle school math and science and proudly calls herself a nerd and Gryffindor. She is also an award-winning member of Romance Writers of America and the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

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