Around The World ARC Tours Presents an early review of Take The Fall by Emily Hainsworth

Synopsis:

WHO KILLED GRETCHEN MEYER?

Fear grips the residents of Hidden Falls the night Sonia Feldman and her best friend, Gretchen Meyer, are attacked in the woods. Sonia was lucky to escape with her life, but Gretchen’s body is discovered at the bottom of a waterfall. Beautiful, popular, and seemingly untouchable, Gretchen can’t be gone. Even as Sonia struggles with guilt and confusion over having survived, the whole town is looking to her for information…could she have seen something that will lead the police to the killer?

At the top of the list of suspects is Gretchen’s ex-boyfriend—and Sonia’s longtime enemy—Marcus Perez. So when Marcus comes to Sonia for help clearing his name, she agrees, hoping to find evidence the police need to prove he’s the killer. But as Gretchen’s many secrets emerge and the suspects add up, Sonia feels less sure of Marcus’s involvement, and more afraid for herself. Could Marcus, the artist, the screwup, the boy she might be falling for have attacked her? Killed her best friend? And if it wasn’t him in the woods that night…who could it have been?

Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15782557-take-the-fall

Review:

Good Lord this book was amazing so amazing! I can't explain to you how much I loved this book so much! If you like suspense you will love this book. It is for you because from page one to the end you are sitting on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next.

In this story we meet Sonia and her best friend Gretchen. They do everything together. So when they are invited to a party they decide to go. What happens after the party is where the suspense begins. They are in the woods laughing and talking and having fun when something comes out of the blue and attacks them. Sonia runs for her life and is attacked from behind but makes it out of the woods alive.

She runs into her family diner when she screams for help and her family comes out and helps her. The police come over to her and ask her what happened but she can't remember because they were in the woods and fine one moment then the next they were being attacked.This is where the story starts to get good because Sonia will have to remember what happened to her and Gretchen in the woods.

Sonia and Gretchen's ex-boyfriend Marcus will have to piece together what happened and work together when they hate each other. But what will happen? Will they find the killer? Will they be able to work together and put aside thier differences?

This is a must must must read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

About The Author:

Emily Hainsworth was raised in Syracuse, New York, until she fell in love and fled its gray skies for the sunny Rocky Mountains. Before she started writing full time, she worked as a turndown maid at a fancy golf club, scooped poop at a dog boarding kennel, worked retail in an upscale pet boutique, and owned a dog grooming business. 

She currently resides in Denver with her family. Emily's debut novel, THROUGH TO YOU, a romantic sci-fi thriller, was published in 2012 by Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. 

It was on the Fall 2012 Kids Indie Next List, received a starred review from VOYA magazine, was translated into nine languages, and was optioned for film by Paramount Pictures. 

Her second novel, TAKE THE FALL, is a suspenseful YA thriller about a girl trying to understand why she escaped murder when her best friend didn’t. Available 2.16.2016.

Around The World ARC Tours Presents The Word for Yes by Claire Needell Early Review

Synopsis:

After their parents’ divorce, Jan, Erika, and Melanie have to get used to the new world order: a father who’s moved to another continent and a mother who throws herself into moving on. Jan, off at her first semester of college, has plenty to worry about, including an outspoken roommate who’s kind of “out there” and an increasingly depressed and troubled long-distance boyfriend. Her younger sisters, left at home in New York City, and dealing with all the pressures of life in high school, aren’t exactly close. Erika is serious and feels awkward and uncomfortable in crowds, though her beauty tends to attract attention. Melanie is socially savvy and just wants to go out—to concerts, to parties, wherever—with her friends. The gap between all three girls widens as each day passes.

Then, at a party full of blurred lines and blurred memories, everything changes. Starting that night, where there should be words, there is only angry, scared silence.

And in the aftermath, Jan, Erika, and Melanie will have to work hard to reconnect and help one another heal.

At once touching and raw, Claire Needell’s first novel is an honest look at the love and conflicts among sisters and friends, and how these relationships can hold us together—and tear us apart. 

Goodreads:

  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25613939-the-word-for-yes?ac=1&from_search=1

Review:

This book broke my heart. I mean in a good way because I have an older sister and I can't imagine going through what those sisters went through. I mean I laughed and I cried and I had to put the book down because I just couldn't handle one of the topics raised in the book.

***Please beware that this book has Date Rape in it***

In this story we meet three sisters Jan, Erika, and Melanie. They come from a divorced family. The mother is a little off because she is looking for love in the wrong way and the father has moved away and wants nothing to do with his old life. Instead choosing to move on with his new life.

Jan is in college enjoying her freshman year. She is trying to move on with her life and not focus on her parents. While Erika and Melanie are left at home stuck in high school. Erika is the serious sister but Melanie is the wild social savvy one. She loves to do things on a whim and she decides she needs to go to this party.

Erika and Melanie end up at the same party and things go south for one of them and when the dust settles the girls are left to fight through this situation together. They will have to fight to stay together and remain sisters and let bygones be bygones. 

What happens? Will the sisters be able to fight together instead of against each other?

About Author:

Claire Needell is a graduate of Brown’s MFA Program, a middle school teacher, and the author of two books of poetry. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times Sunday Review.

Around The World ARC Tours Presents Rebel Bully Geek Pariah by Erin Jade Lange Early Review

Synopsis:

"The Breakfast Club" gets a modern, high-stakes reboot in this story of four very different teens and a night that changes them forever. 

The Rebel: Once popular, Andi is now a dreadlocked, tattooed wild child.

The Bully: York torments everyone who crosses his path, especially his younger brother.

The Geek: Tired of being bullied, Boston is obsessed with getting into an Ivy League college. 

The Pariah: Choosing to be invisible has always worked for Sam . . . until tonight. 

When Andi, York, Boston, and Sam find themselves hiding in the woods after a party gets busted by the cops, they hop into the nearest car they see and take off—the first decision of many in a night that will change their lives forever. By the light of day, these four would never be caught dead together, but when their getaway takes a dangerously unpredictable turn, sticking together could be the only way to survive. 

With cinematic storytelling and compelling emotional depth, critically acclaimed author Erin Jade Lange takes readers on literary thrill ride.

Goodreads: 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25582820-rebel-bully-geek-pariah?ac=1&from_search=1

Review:

What to say about this book? There is so much to say because so many things are going on and so much happening. I love stories like this because there is so much going on that you are not sure where one story ends and the other story begins.

You get to meet four different teens in this story. Andi who is the rebel. York is the bully. Boston is the geek. Sam is the pariah. Okay what the heck do these four teens have in common? They are completely different from one another but one thing will bond them together forever. 

The teens go to a party when the police come and they decide to run into the woods together. Once on the other side of the woods the teens get into the first car they see and take off. As the night proceeds the teens get a glimpse of what happens when you make the wrong decision. By the morning they will need each other and have a lot in common with each other.

About Author:

Erin writes facts by day and fiction by night. As a journalist, she is inspired by current events and real-world issues and uses her writing to explore how those issues impact teenagers.

She is an only child, so she spent a lot of time entertaining herself as a kid. This required her to rely heavily on her own imagination, which is probably why she became a writer.

Erin grew up in the cornfields of northern Illinois, along the Mississippi River in one of the few places it flows east to west. She now lives in the sunshine of Arizona and will forever be torn between her love of rivers and her love of the desert.

Around The World ARC Tours Presents Behold the Bones (Beware the Wild #2) by Natalie C. Parker Early Review

Synopsis:

Candace “Candy” Pickens has been obsessed with the swamp lore of her tiny Louisiana town for . . . forever. Name any ghostly swamp figure and Candy will recite the entire tale in a way that will curl your toes and send chills up your spine.

That doesn’t mean Candy’s a believer, however. Even though she and her friends entered the swamp at the start of summer and left it changed, Candy’s the only one who can’t see or feel the magical swamp Shine. She’s also the only one who can’t see the ghosts that have been showing up and spooking everyone in town ever since. So Candy concentrates on other things—real things. Like fighting with her mother and plotting her escape from her crazy town.

But ghosts aren’t the only newcomers in Sticks, Louisiana. The King family arrives like a hurricane: in a blur and unwanted—at least by Candy. Mr. King is intent on filming the rumored ghostly activity for his hit TV show, Local Haunts. And while Candy can’t ignore how attracted she is to eighteen-year-old Gage King and how much his sister, Nova, wants to be friends, she’s still suspicious of the King family.

As Candy tries to figure out why the Kings are really in town and why the swamp that had previously cast her aside now seems to be invading every crack in her logical, cynical mind, she stumbles across the one piece of swamp lore she didn’t know. It’s a tale that’s more truth than myth, and may have all the answers . . . and its roots are in Candy’s own family tree.

Goodreads: 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25742635-behold-the-bones?ac=1&from_search=1

Review:

Oh man I do not know where to start with this review because I don't want to spoil it but there is so much in this book from suspense to folk lore.

We meet Candy and her friends who live in a small town steeped in folk lore and stories that may or may not be true. See Candy has been obsessed with the swamp lore of her tiny town. Then one day her friends decide to enter the swamp and when they come out everyone is different when they come out except Candy. Candy can't see anything her friends see and she is frustrated because she has never been able to see anything and she wonders why.

So all Candy can do is think about the day she can leave her small town and start a new normal life somewhere else. Then one day a new family comes to town and the town is turned upside down and all Candy can think about is why are the new comers here in her town looking for the ghosts and things she can't see. What is she missing here? She starts to investigate the new family and what she finds she does not like. What could it be? And will it change her life.........

NATALIE C. PARKER 

Natalie is the author of Beware the Wild and Behold the Bones (due out from HarperTeen February 23, 2016), as well as the editor of the forthcoming young adult anthology, Triangles: The Points of Love. She is the founder of Madcap Retreats, an organization offering a yearly calendar writing retreats and workshops for writers in all stages of their careers. In her not-so-spare time, she is a grant coordinator for the University of Kansas, where she runs writing workshops for tribal college students in STEM disciplines. 

Around The World ARC Tours Presents Away We Go by Emil Ostrovski Early Review

Synopsis:

KIRKUS - "Intellectual boys' boarding school story meets near-future dystopia in this end-times tale...the imminent apocalypse serves primarily to accelerate the claustrophobic immediacy of boarding school angst. Noah and his friends form loving, believably complex relationships, caroming from suicidal ideation to conspiracy theory to a quest for the sacred in mundane death. Lovers of self-consciously witty nihilist profundities will be thrilled..."

Westing is not your typical school. For starters, you have to have one very important quality in order to be admitted—you have to be dying. Every student at Westing has been diagnosed with PPV, or the Peter Pan Virus. No one is expected to live to graduation.

What do you do when you go to a school where no one has a future? Noah Falls, his girlfriend Alice, and his best friend Marty spend their time drinking, making out, and playing video games on awaywego.com. But when an older boy named Zach (who Noah may or may not be in love with) invites Noah and Marty to join his secret Polo Club, the lives of both boys change as they struggle to find meaning in their shortened existence.

With an innovative format that includes interstitial documents, such as flyers, postcards, and handwritten notes, Away We Go is a funny, honest look at first love and tragic heartbreak. For fans of Grasshopper Jungle and Noggin. 

Goodreads: 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25679389-away-we-go?ac=1&from_search=1

Review:

First I have to start out by saying I liked this book but I didn't like some parts to it. I have read a lot of books this year but this one stands out in so many ways both good and bad. The setting is in a Boarding School for kids. What these kids are allowed to do and how they are allowed to act was a little strange for me when I was reading. The one thing that stood out for me was one of the main characters had some issues and he dealt with them as being simple.

In this story we meet best friends Noah, Alice, and Marty. They are attending this exclusive Boarding School for kids who have a virus. They live their lives day to day and have no ambitions to do anything. Their day consists of mundane things like video games and hanging with friends. Then things change one night for them when an older boy Zach invites them to be a part of his secret club.

Once they join this club things change and they have to decide what they are willing to do and willing to believe. What will they do? Stay in the group or leave it and try to move on with their lives?

About Author:

I'm twenty-five.

Rather than give you a witty, self-deprecating account of the trials and tribulations of my twenty-five year old, suburban, upper-middle class, went-to-a-girl's-liberal-arts-college life, I'll admit that I haven't really done anything much worth reading about.

So in lieu of providing you with my biography, I will recommend that you read Desmond Tutu's. Here.

Why Desmond Tutu?

Well, I've always liked his name.

Around The World ARC Tours Presents The Mystery of Hollow Places by Rebecca Podos Early Review

Synopsis:

All Imogene Scott knows of her mother is the bedtime story her father told her as a child. It's the story of how her parents met: he, a forensic pathologist, she, a mysterious woman who came to identify a body. A woman who left Imogene and her father when she was a baby, a woman who was always possessed by a powerful loneliness, a woman who many referred to as troubled waters.

When Imogene is seventeen, her father, now a famous author of medical mysteries, strikes out in the middle of the night and doesn't come back. Neither Imogene's stepmother nor the police know where he could've gone, but Imogene is convinced he's looking for her mother. She decides to put to use the skills she's gleaned from a lifetime of her father's books to track down a woman she's never known, in order to find him and, perhaps, the answer to the question she's carried with her for her entire life.

Rebecca Podos' debut is a powerful, affecting story of the pieces of ourselves that remain mysteries even to us - the desperate search through empty spaces for something to hold on to. 

Goodreads:

  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22811780-the-mystery-of-hollow-places?ac=1&from_search=1

Review:

This book was amazing I mean just amazing for me to read. I started it and could not put it down. It is full of mystery and surprises and secrets that I did not know what happened until the end and then I was like holy moses is that the end? I wanted more. I wanted to keep turning pages until I had my fair share of the main character Imogene.

In this story we get to meet Imogene Scott. She lives with her father and loves to hear the stories he tells about her mother. Her mother is no where to be found but her father tells her stories of her mother to keep her alive in Imogene's mind.

Now 17 years old Imogene and her famous father are living the high life until one night he disappears and no one knows where he has gone. Her step mother has no idea and the police certainly do not have any ideas of where he has gone. But Imogene thinks something differently and decides she has to find her mother in order to find her father.

Putting everything she knows about her mother and every knowledge she learned from her father she sets out to find her father. Will her memories of her fathers stories help her out or will she never find her father or mother.

About Author:

Rebecca Podos' debut YA novel, THE MYSTERY OF HOLLOW PLACES, is forthcoming from Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins) on 1/26/16. Rebecca is a graduate of the Writing, Literature and Publishing program at Emerson College, where she won the M.F.A. Award for Best Thesis. Her fiction has been published in Glimmer Train, Glyph, CAJE, Paper Darts, Bellows American Review, andSmokelong Quarterly. Past Awards include the Helman Award for Short Fiction, the David Dornstein Memorial Creative Writing Prize for Young Adult Writers, and the Hillerman-McGarrity Scholarship for Creative Writing. She works as a YA and MG agent at the Rees Literary Agency in Boston.

She's represented by the excellent Lana Popovic.

Around The World ARC Tours Presents Reign of Shadows by Sophie Jordan Early Review

Synopsis:

Seventeen years ago, an eclipse cloaked the kingdom of Relhok in perpetual darkness. In the chaos, an evil chancellor murdered the king and queen and seized their throne. Luna, Relhok’s lost princess, has been hiding in a tower ever since. Luna’s survival depends on the world believing she is dead.

But that doesn’t stop Luna from wanting more. When she meets Fowler, a mysterious archer braving the woods outside her tower, Luna is drawn to him despite the risk. When the tower is attacked, Luna and Fowler escape together. But this world of darkness is more treacherous than Luna ever realized.

With every threat stacked against them, Luna and Fowler find solace in each other. But with secrets still unspoken between them, falling in love might be their most dangerous journey yet.

With lush writing and a star–crossed romance, Reign of Shadows is Sophie Jordan at her best. 

Goodreads:

  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24657660-reign-of-shadows?ac=1&from_search=1

Review:

Okay I love remakes of children's stories but this one takes the cake on a retelling of a favorite story of mine growing up.

In Reign Of Shadows we get to meet Luna a Princess who is hiding because her family was murdered. 17 years later she is still in hiding but wants more out of life. Even though she needs people to think she is dead she is tired of being alone in the woods by herself.

Then one day she sees a young guy in the woods and she is interested in who he is and where he comes from. Soon she finds out what his name is when there is another disaster to the tower. She and Fowler escape from the tower but when Luna makes it outside into the dark world she is not sure she should have left the tower. As Luna struggles with her fears she gets closer to Fowler but will secrets and lies keep them from becoming more than friends.....

About Author:

Sophie Jordan took her adolescent daydreaming one step further and penned her first historical romance in the back of her high school Spanish class. This passion led her to pursue a degree in English and History.

A brief stint in law school taught her that case law was not nearly as interesting as literature - teaching English seemed the natural recourse. After several years teaching high school students to love Antigone, Sophie resigned with the birth of her first child and decided it was time to pursue the long-held dream of writing.

In less than three years, her first book, Once Upon A Wedding Night, a 2006 Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Nominee for Best First Historical, hit book shelves. Her second novel, Too Wicked To Tame, released in March 2007 with a bang, landing on the USA Today Bestseller's List. 

Cover Reveal For Adios By Bethany Lopez

~ COVER REVEAL ~

Title: Adios

Series: Stories about Melissa, book 6

Author: Bethany Lopez

Genre: Contemporary Young Adult

Cover Design: Makeready Designs

Release Date: Dec 16, 2015

Junior year is halfway over and Melissa is thrilled to be going with Jess, Jimmy, and Brian to Cabo San Lucas for Spring Break. Things at home haven't been great, and she could use the break that the sun and sand of Mexico is sure to bring. But things don't go as planned and the perfect vacation changes things for Melissa and her friends. Will the damage done be permanent and will life at home ever get back to the way it used to be?

Goodreads

Special Pre-order Price - $.99

Amazon 

iBooks 

Nook 

Kobo

Smashwords

If you haven't read the other books in this YA series, now's the perfect time to get caught up!

~ SERIES SALE ~

The Stories about Melissa series is a coming of age series that follows Melissa, her family, and her friends. Similar to Sweet Valley High, each book is novella length. There will be eight books in the series.

Stories about Melissa reading order:

Ta Ta for Now! (Book 1, FREE)

Amazon

Barnes & Noble 

iBooks 

Smashwords 

Kobo 

xoxoxo (Book 2, 99cents)

Amazon Barnes & Noble iBooks Smashwords Kobo 

Ciao (Book 3, 99cents) 

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble 

iBooks 

Smashwords

Kobo 

TTYL (Book 4, 99cents) 

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble 

iBooks

Smashwords 

Kobo 

With Love (Book 5, 99cents) 

Amazon

iBooks

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Smashwords