Thanks so much everyone who stopped by! YASH is over for now and winners have been chosen–see you next time!
Sixteen-year-old Tatum Elsea is bracing for the worst summer of her life. After being falsely accused of a crime, she’s stuck under stepmother-imposed house arrest and her BFF’s gone ghost. Tatum fills her newfound free time with community service by day and working at her covert graphic design business at night (which includes trading emails with a cute cello-playing client).
When Tatum discovers she’s not the only one in the house keeping secrets, she finds she has the chance to make amends with her family and friends. Equipped with a new perspective, and assisted by her feisty step-abuela/fairy-godmother, Tatum is ready to start fresh and maybe even get her happy ending along the way.
A modern play on the Cinderella story arc, IT STARTED WITH GOODBYE shows us that sometimes going after what you want means breaking the rules.
Welcome to YA Scavenger Hunt!
This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors…and a chance to win some awesome prizes! At this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize–one lucky winner will receive one book from each author on the hunt in my team! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 72 hours!
(PS – all the way at the bottom is a special giveaway just from me, so make sure you read everything.)
Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. There are eight contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the BLUE TEAM–but there is also a red team, an orange team, a gold team, a green team, a teal team, a blue team, a purple team, and a pink team for a chance to win a whole different set of books!
If you’d like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.
Today, I am hosting Jennifer Honeybourn on my website for the YA Scavenger Hunt!
Sixteen-year-old Quinn Hardwick’s having a rough summer. Her beloved grandmother has been put into a nursing home, her dad’s gambling addiction has flared back up, and now her worst enemy is back in town: Wesley James, former childhood friend and life ruiner.
So when Wesley is hired to work with her at Tudor Tymes, a medieval England-themed restaurant, the last thing Quinn’s going to do is forgive and forget. She’s determined to remove him from her life and even the score for once and for all—by getting him fired.
But getting rid of Wesley isn’t as easy as she’d hoped. When Quinn finds herself falling for him, she has to decide what she wants more: to get even, or to get the boy.
Fancasting Wesley James Ruined My Life
When I read a book, I always think about who I would want to see play the main characters in a movie adaptation. I have an eight year old daughter and in our house the TV is often turned to the Disney Channel, so it’s probably not a huge surprise that, in my head, the characters in the YA books I read often look exactly like Disney Channel stars.
When it comes to my own novel, WESLEY JAMES RUINED MY LIFE, I’ve always pictured Quinn as Dove Cameron, the adorable star of The Descendants and Liv and Maddie. Dove not only looks like Quinn (to me), but I can totally see her pulling off Quinn’s revenge plot against Wesley.
For Wesley, I imagine Ross Lynch, of Teen Beach Movie and Austin & Ally. Ross and Wesley share the same shaggy blonde hair and laid-back attitude. All Ross needs is a pirate costume and he’d become the picture-perfect Wesley.
So what are some of your favorite fancasts? I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below. And head over to @Honeybourn to enter to win a signed copy of WESLEY JAMES RUINED MY LIFE.
Add up all the favorite numbers of the authors on the blue team and you’ll have all the secret code to enter for the grand prize!
Patty Blount
Andddddd before you go, leave a comment below for a chance to win an ARC of my 2018 book EVERYWHERE YOU WANT TO BE – US only please. Winner will be chosen October 9.
From author Christina June comes Everywhere You Want to Be, a modern tale inspired by the classic Red Riding Hood story.
Matilda Castillo has always followed the rules, but when she gets injured senior year, she’s sure her dreams of becoming a contemporary dancer have slipped away. So when Tilly gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend the summer with a New York dance troupe, nothing can stop her from saying yes–not her mother, not her fears of the big city, and not the commitment she made to Georgetown. Tilly’s mother allows her to go on two conditions: one, Tilly will regularly visit her abuela in New Jersey, and two, after the summer, she’ll give up dancing and go off to college.
Armed with her red vintage sunglasses and her pros and cons lists, Tilly strikes out, determined to turn a summer job into a career–and figure out how to break it to her mother later. Along the way she meets new friends … and new enemies. Tilly isn’t the only one desperate to dance, and fellow troupe member Sabrina Wolfrik intends to succeed at any cost. But despite dodging sabotage and blackmail attempts from Sabrina, Tilly can’t help but fall in love with the city, especially since Paolo, a handsome musician from her past, is also calling New York home for the summer.
As the weeks wind down and the competition with Sabrina heats up, Tilly’s future is on the line. She must decide whether to follow her mother’s dream of college or leap into the unknown to pursue her own dreams.
christinajune.com 
Thank you for the giveaway! I always love participating in YASH!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yay YASH!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
thank you for the chance!!! It sounds really good!!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re my last stop for this YASH! It’s been so much fun! Great giveaway!
LikeLike
Your book sounds so amazing! Thanks for being a part of YASH, and I’m definitely adding your books to my TBR list! I just love modern takes on fairytales, so I can’t wait to read your books!
LikeLike
Your book sounds really good!!
LikeLike
Oooh, inspired by Red Riding Hood! I can’t wait to read Everywhere You Want to Be!
LikeLike
Thank you for being a part of YASH, and I am super excited for your book!
LikeLike
Yay!! so excited to read the new book!!!
LikeLike
I’m really jealous of the winner. Not gonna lie. I was praying for this one. Dancing is my heart and soul. I freaked when I read had dancing elements in it-one of my favs is Someday Dancer which is this beautiful book about a girl who wants to be a dancer, so she travels to NYC to be a ballerina (never had a day of training in her life) and ends up joining Martha Graham’s company. Almost anything with dancing, and I’m a goner! It has always been one of the foundations of my soul-looking back, all my show and tells, my improv monologue in high school, my special projects, my essays- they’ve always been about dance, anytime we could choose a topic. I remember, I’d have dance class on a day I was flying back home from whereever, and I made dad take me straight from the airport to dance class. There was a storm one time, and I had a prior engagement, but I made dad traverse the storm so I could have that 20 minutes of dance class left. In college, even though I was a theatre major, everyone equated me with dancing. I ASM’d the college dance show 4 out of my 6 semesters in college. I will never be a professional, I’m pretty horrible, not even a bit flexible, but dance is my life. And it’s really funny because Matilda got injured her senior year and so did I-I was on a golf cart with my friend Ben, and I took a turn to fast, and I ran my leg into a tree (twice). I had a bruise bigger than a softball on the back of my leg, and I had an abrasion from my knee down my leg to my toes. I was also in 2 plays and a musical. God was with me, because I should have broken my leg, but in the end, I could just barely walk, and every day we’d change bandages, and even though they were non-stick, whatever was forming of the scab would peel away and it was so painful. And I remember getting on taht stage to rehearse, I could barely walk, and my teachers would have to fight me to make me sit down and rest. And at the end of the year, one girl came up to me and told me how inspiring it was to see me so dedicated, because I could barely walk. But to me it was like, “no, world, you wont take away my dancing.” So I can’t wait to read Everywhere You Want To Be. And props for making it Little Red Riding Hood. She’s not one of my favs, but Cinderella is (It Started With Goodbye sounds AMAZING and I can’t wait to read that too. I read Geekerella this summer, and I fell in love with Cinderella variations, despite not liking the actual fairytale. (A Cinderella Story has also always been a favorite)). So I can’t wait to see how you pull this one off too! I think it’s so creative. I never thought of Red Riding Hood as this “various paths you can take” kind of fork in the road (Uh oh, I wonder who the wolf is *chews nails*). I can’t wait to see where you go with the book (I for one, hopes she chooses dance. Although maybe she can have both college AND dance). And I love that it sounds like you’ve taken the fairytales, made them your own and spiced them up!
LikeLike