Merit Press Author Interview: Shana Silver + Giveaway

I am back today with another Merit Press post. This is one I am VERY excited about because we get to learn a little bit more about one of the authors and their book, as well as a GIVEAWAY for the book! Yay, everyone loves a giveaway!

I would love to introduce you to Shana Silver, author of Alice in Wonderland High, one of Merit Press' recent releases. 

I asked Shana some interview questions, and here are her responses (continue reading for the giveaway at the end of the post.)

1. How did you first think up the idea for Alice in Wonderland High? Is it something that just came to you, or did you take motivation from somewhere? 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has always been one of my favorite books. As part of a reading challenge, I decided to re-read it. At the same time, I was mulling a book idea involving extreme environmental activism but hadn't gotten very far plotting it. While I was re-reading the original book, I started to realize how many of the scenes and themes of the original aligned with my environmentalism idea. For example, in the original, Alice's main goal is to get inside a beautiful but forbidden garden. A few key scenes became obvious to me too, like how to re-imagine the baby turning into a pig after Alice rescues it. Maybe instead she has to dress a pig as a baby to rescue it. Stuff like that. Once I started plotting, it all fell into place! 

2. Did you base any of the characters in the book (personality, looks, etc.) off of yourself, family, or friends?

I wish I had a fun answer about this, but since this is a retelling, I mostly used the original characters personality traits as a basis for guiding these. I did sort of model Chess's appearance after Finn from the TV show GLEE, but very loosely. Really, the only Easter egg from my real life that made it into the book is the orange and navy sweater the college tour guide wears. That was the same shirt worn by tour guides at my alma matter. That said, in the book, Alice is extremely short, and while I'm not as short as her, I am only 5 feet, so I was able to draw from experience to describe her struggles with being vertically challenged. 

3. What was your favorite scene to write from the book?

My favorite scene to write from the book was actually the last scene I wrote in one of the later revisions. It's the scene where Alice calls Kingston for help in breaking and entering. I love the dynamic between the two of them in that scene, how they hate each other but also really need each other. I can't believe this scene didn't exist the entire time in the book! It was conceived as part of a revision request during querying to add more beats to the mystery plotline. 

4. What do you hope readers will get/achieve from reading your book? Is there an overall theme you hope that they take away from it? 

Honestly, I just hope they have fun while reading it and enjoy it! I guess if they want to take away something, maybe they should consider not doing ecotage? 

5. Do you have any favorite quotes from the book?

The first line of the book is a particular favorite of mine. It was originally buried in the middle of the first chapter until a critique partner pointed out it was the perfect starting place. I also love a few of the lines between Alice and Chess, particularly when one slips in something and the other withholds something the other wants to hear (trying to be vague here!).

6. Do you have any advice for other aspiring writers? 

Don't give up! I had a very long journey from first deciding I wanted to pursue publication to actually becoming published and it would not have happened if I had given up. To that end, my best advice is to continue writing. You can't publish a blank page.

GIVEAWAY! 

Merit Press is giving away TWO (2) copies of Alice in Wonderland High!

  a Rafflecopter giveaway

Merit Press: Recent Releases

Hey all, and welcome back to Merit Press July here on my blog! I am super excited to share lots of reviews, interviews, and giveaways in the next couple of weeks. I thought today I would share some information on some of the most recent YA books that Merit Press has published and released. That way, when giveaways pop up soon, you will know which books you REALLY want to win (hint: it will probably be all of them!).

We Will Be Crashing Shortly by Hollis Gillespie

Release Date: June 15, 2015

Page Count: 256

Synopsis:

April Mae Manning from Unaccompanied Minor is back, and back in trouble, but this time, she's run out of chances...

April Mae was raised on airplanes by her flight-attendant parents. But since her dad's death and her mom's remarriage to the nefarious pilot Ash Manning, April's been in nothing but danger: two airplane crashes; two car crashes; and now, as a student pilot, in an old plane crippled over the Caribbean. Can she survive, and save her friends, or is this the watery end to "Crash" Manning's story?

Praise for Unaccompanied Minor: "A laugh-out-loud thriller about family court, money laundering and skyjacking" ~Kirkus Reviews

Crossing into Brooklyn by Mary Ann McGuigan

Release Date: July 18, 2015

Page Count: 224

Synopsis:
To Find Your Future, You Have to Face Your Past

At sixteen, Morgan Lindstrum has the life that every other girl wants--at least from the outside. A privileged only child, she has everything she could ever want, except her parents' attention. A Princeton physicist and a high-powered executive, they barely have any time for each other, much less for Morgan. Then her beloved grandfather dies, depriving Morgan of the only stable figure in her life. If that's not enough, she suddenly finds out he was never her grandfather at all. To find out the truth about her family, Morgan makes her way to Brooklyn, where she meets Terence Mulvaney, the Irish immigrant father who her mother disowned. Morgan wants answers; but instead of just satisfying her curiosity, Mulvaney shows her the people in his condemned tenement building, who are suffering and have nowhere to go. He challenges her to help them, by tearing away the veil of shame, and showing her wealthy parents and her advantaged circle of friends a world they don't want to know exists. The temptation to walk away from this ugly reality, as her mother did, is strong. But if she does, can Morgan ever really leave behind what she learned when she crossed into Brooklyn?

Alice in Wonderland High by Rachel Shane

Release Date: April 18, 2015

Page Count: 304

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Alice just can't find a way to be free. Her parents are environmental activists whose cringeworthy public protests might involve chaining themselves to a fence and pleading with passersby to “Save the World. Save Alice!” It’s not that Alice doesn’t believe there’s work to be done. But after a petition to start a farmers’ market meets with more snickers than signatures, she figures she should shut up instead of speak out. At least, that is, until she can find something that feels real. Then along comes Whitney Lapin, a girl who speaks in cryptic riddles and spends her free time turning abandoned warehouses into beautiful gardens. Charismatic Whitney leads Alice on a rabbit trail into the underground—a.k.a. secret society—of Wonderland High.

Curiouser and curiouser. Alice is in wonderland! Even though Whitney’s group of teenage environmental vigilantes operates on the wrong side of the law, with them, Alice is finally free to be herself. She stomps on her good-girl image by completing a series of environmental pranks to impress the new group: flooding the school and disguising a pig as a baby in order to smuggle it out of a testing facility. She wants to trust them, and she especially wants to trust (or maybe kiss) Chester Katz—a boy with a killer smile, a penchant for disappearing, and a secret that will really turn Alice’s world backwards. But then one of the young vigilantes tries to frame Alice for all the pranks, and she must figure out their secret before she ends up in front of a jury that’s screaming, “Off with her head!”

 

Perdita by Faith Gardner

Release Date: August 1, 2015

Page Count: 224

Synopsis: Granted, Arielle has a vast, excitable imagination. But she's not imagining how strange and out of control her life becomes after the death by drowning of her older sister's best friend, Perdita. Not only does this death echo the death of Arielle's own older brother, ten years before, it leads to dreams and visions in which Perdita seems to be reaching out to Arielle, asking for her help. The only other explanation—that Arielle's high-strung emotions have finally caused her to break with reality—is even more terrifying. A story that builds to greater and greater heights of suspicion and fear, Perdita is also a multi-layered literary achievement that leaves no emotion untouched.

 

Unlovely by Celeste Conway

Release Date: January 2, 2015

Page Count: 256

Synopsis: Accidents happen. But they happen more often when the beautiful ballet dancers return each summer to the island. When he hears the ruthless way that the loveliest dancer talks about boys getting what they deserve when they break girls' hearts, Harley, home for the summer after his first year of college, wonders if he's losing his mind. He knows for sure that he's losing his heart to this girl...But then, strange incidents start happening all over the island and Harley is caught between desire and fear: could he also be in danger of losing his life?

 

 

Merit Press Publishing - July Feature

In July I have decided to do something a little bit different on the blog, especially since I'm coming off a bit of a blogging hiatus. I have been working alongside Merit Press for several months now (maybe even close to a year!). I first read and reviewed one of their YA books for a tour, and then was contacted by Bethany and asked if I would like a hard copy of that book (obviously I said "Yes!" because I loved the book!). Since then, Bethany has been sending me copies of their newer releases, and they have been wonderful! So, with that, and being so thrilled with the company, I decided I would focus on them for the whole month of July!

What sorts of things will you see?

• Obviously there will be LOTS of reviews, as that is something that I like to focus on here on the blog. I have several of their newer releases that I have read and am ready to share some reviews with you (SPOILER: they're all amazing!). 
• Guest posts - The authors might share their own posts, and I will share some information about some of the awesome authors as well! 
• GIVEAWAYS - Want to read some of the books I review/talk about? Here is your chance! 
• LOTS of other fun posts! 

I am so excited to share this wonderful publishing company with you guys! If there is anything you would like to see this month, let me know! Any questions you would like some of the authors to answer? Leave them in a comment below!

Happy July!

Review: Who R U Really? by Margo Kelly

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Publisher: Merit Press
Publication Date: September 18th, 2014
Page Count: 239
Format: Hardback
Source: via the publisher (thank you!)

Goodreads Synopsis: Thea's overprotective parents are driving her insane. They invade her privacy, ask too many questions, and restrict her online time so severely that Thea feels she has no life at all. When she discovers a new role-playing game online, Thea breaks the rules by staying up late to play. She's living a double life: on one hand, the obedient daughter; on the other, a girl slipping deeper into darkness. In the world of the game, Thea falls under the spell of Kit, an older boy whose smarts and savvy can't defeat his loneliness and near-suicidal despair. As Kit draws soft-hearted Thea into his drama, she creates a full plate of cover stories for her parents and then even her friends.

Soon, Thea is all alone in the dark world with Kit, who worries her more and more, but also seems to be the only person who really "gets" her. Is he frightening, the way he seems sometimes, or only terribly sad? Should Thea fear Kit, or pity him? And now, Kit wants to come out of the screen and bring Thea into his real-life world. As much as she suspects that this is wrong, Thea is powerless to resist Kit's allure, and hurtles toward the same dark fate her parents feared most. Ripped from a true-life story of Internet stalking, Who R U Really? will excite you and scare you, as Thea's life spins out of control.

GOODREADS . AMAZON . B&N

Review: I am back with another review (finally!). My hands are freezing at the moment, because our house is freezing, so it feels a bit odd to type at the moment, but the show must go on! This was another book I was sent from Merit Press (if you know nothing about this publishing company and the books they put out, definitely check out their website. They publish AWESOME YA books). When this book arrived in the mail, I had never heard of it before, but I was very excited to read it after reading the synopsis. It seemed like it would be a good thriller, and I have not read many of those. Besides, I think that it's great to finally have a YA book talking about an online relationship - as I teach middle school, I know that this is starting to become a very common/very scary thing with our teens, and it's great that someone is finally talking about it!

I really enjoyed this book, so much so that I read it in one sitting because I could not manage to put it down. I had to know what happened next, and it was written so well that I just flew through it. It's always great to find one sitting books, and if you're someone that enjoys those as well, you should definitely check this one out. It helped that the whole thing was incredibly realistic, which is so important when dealing with a real-life problem like Internet relationships. 

Thea was a wonderful main character in the fact that she made some really, really bad choices at some points throughout the novel; just like your average teen would. Having very strict parents, she decides that she needs to defy their rules in order to have any sort of independence at all, which is how she ends up playing a new computer game at night, and eventually meets Kit. I do think that there are parents out there like Thea's, but hers were incredibly over the top. They could go into her room without knocking to see what she was looking at online, they made her share their email address so they could see all the emails that she sent back and forth, and they could check her text messages whenever they wanted to. While I understand parents wanting to keep their children safe, I do think that it was all their rules that ended up pushing Thea to start lying and breaking their rules. I suppose that was probably the whole point of the book, though. 

It was interesting to see Thea deal with things as the book progressed. She definitely grew as a character, and since I grew attached to her pretty quickly, it was easy to cheer for her at the end when she finally started making good decisions for herself. She was not the only great character, though. I love that even the supporting characters had their own stories; her best friend Janie, for instance, was a favorite of mine. I also loved Thea's mother, and the relationship that the two of them had. My mother has always been my best friend, so it is always nice to see a good mother-daughter dynamic in a YA book. It's not something that we get to see often since parents tend to be left out or part of the problem, so it was nice to see that change here, even if it took some time and development. 

There were really only a couple things in this book that I was not as thrilled with, though they did not take away from how great the book was. At one point, it did get a little too judgmental and "preachy" when a friend talked about how you could never be close to or trust someone you meet online. As book bloggers, a lot of us know that this is not true at all, and I do think some young readers might be a little turned off of the book by this part. Luckily, it was not a large part of the book. My only other issue with the book was the ending, and the fact that it came way too soon without all of the closure that I would have liked after getting attached to the characters. Everything else about the book was great and wonderfully written, and then the ending seemed far too sudden.

Overall, I think that this book was a wonderful, thrilling YA read. It's different than anything that I have read lately, and I think that made it even more enjoyable for me. It was impossible to put down, and it definitely had me wondering what was going to happen next. I would definitely recommend this book to any YA fans out there.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Stacking the Shelves [25]

I am joining in on Stacking The Shelves, a weekly meme hosted over at Tynga's Reviews. It is an easy way to share what books you picked up that week, and to see what other people have picked up to read themselves.

How to Participate?

• Create your own Stacking The Shelves post. You can use my official graphic or your own, but please link back to Tynga’s Reviews so more people can join the fun!
• You can set your post any way you want, simple book list, covers, pictures, vlog, sky is the limit!
• I am posting Stacking The Shelves on Saturdays, but feel free to post yours any day that fits you.
• Visit Tynga’s Reviews on Saturday and add your link so others can visit you!
  

THIS WEEK: 

Sorry I was so bad about posting this week! I really had intended to get several reviews up (which will now be up starting tomorrow, I swear!), but life got in the way. We had something every night this week, including spending Thursday night buying my husband a new car. I'm sure you guys know how long that can take! I am hoping to post every day in November, though, starting with this post tonight! I have made it a personal challenge and intend to stick with it!

Anyway, I didn't buy any books this week as we were so busy and had to worry about paying for other things. I did receive some books in the mail from Merit Press, though. I asked for four books that have already been published, and was pleasantly surprised when they were all sent to me! Can't wait to read them! Thanks again, Merit Press!

The After Girls by Leah Konen

Ella, Astrid, and Sydney were planning the perfect summer after high school graduation. But when Astrid commits suicide in a lonely cabin, the other girls' worlds are shattered. How could their best friend have done this--to herself and to them? They knew everything about Astrid. Shouldn't they have seen this coming? Couldn't they have saved her?

As Ella hunts for the truth, and Sydney tries to dull the pain, a chilling message from Astrid leaves them wondering whether their beloved friend is communicating from the after life. The girls embark on a journey to uncover Astrid's dark secrets. The answers to those questions--questions they never dreamed of asking--will change their lives forever.

 Screwed by Laurie Plissner 

Flattered by the attentions of Nick, the cutest guy in school, seventeen-year-old Grace Warren, captain of the math team, lets down her guard and gets pregnant the night she loses her virginity. Hopeful that Nick will drop to one knee and propose when she breaks the baby news to him, Grace is heartbroken - Nick wants nothing to do with her. Her best friend, Jennifer, thinks she should get an abortion, but Grace is certain that her morally upright parents will insist that she keep the baby. After she comes clean to her super-religious, strait-laced parents, they surprise her by insisting that she terminate the pregnancy to avoid humiliating the family. But when she sees the fetus on the ultrasound, she decides she can't get rid of it. Deciding to save the tiny life growing inside of her, Grace must face the consequences of being that girl - the good girl who got knocked up.

 Exposure by Kim Askew & Amy Helmes

Double, double, toil and trouble. Sometimes, the quest for high school royalty can be deadly! In this emotionally-charged twist on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a self-conscious shutterbug named Skye Kingston navigates a treacherous school year in Alaska fraught with unspoken secrets and tragic twists of fate. Along the way she encounters three strangely prophetic BFFs; one social-climbing, sociopathic cheerleader; and a heart-stopping hottie named Craig McKenzie: the man who would be Prom King. Can Skye save the boy she loves — and herself — before they get caught in the crosshairs?

 Poor Little Dead Girls by Lizzie Friend

Perfect people aren't just born. They're made.

The first time she is blindfolded and kidnapped, star-athlete and posh boarding school newbie Sadie is terrified. She wakes up in a dark room surrounded by hushed whispers, hooded strangers, and a mysterious voice whispering not-so-sweet nothings in her ear.

But once the robes come off, she realizes it’s just an elaborate prank designed to induct her into the group that’s been pulling the strings at Keating Hall for generations. The circle has it all--incredible connections; fabulous parties; and, of course, an in with the brother society’s gorgeous pledges.

The instant popularity is enough to make Sadie forget about the unexplained marks on her body, the creepy ceremonial rituals, and the incident that befell one of her teammates the year before. So the next time Sadie is kidnapped, she isn’t scared, but she should be. The worst of Keating Hall is yet to come.

What did you add to your shelves this week?