Lisa's Looking Foward To #20 - July 2nd, 2019

Back to joining up with the Waiting on Wednesday Posts, and the Can't Wait Wednesday posts hosted by Wishful Endings.  This week there are four on my list.

From my ARC list for July 2nd:

The movie is a classic, and so of course I would love to see how this book turns out.

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

Oscar winning writer-director Guillermo del Toro and New York Times bestselling author Cornelia Funke come together to transform del Toro’s hit movie Pan’s Labyrinth into an epic and dark fantasy novel for readers of all ages, complete with gorgeous and haunting illustrations.

This book is not for the faint of heart or weak in spirit. It’s not for skeptics who don’t believe in fairy tales and the powerful forces of good. It’s only for brave and intrepid souls like you, who will stare down evil in all its forms.

Inspired by the critically acclaimed film written and directed by Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro and reimagined by New York Times bestselling author Cornelia Funke, this haunting tale takes readers to a darkly magical and war-torn world filled with richly drawn characters like trickster fauns, murderous men, child-eating monsters, courageous rebels, and a long-lost princess hoping to be reunited with her family.

Perfect for fans of the movie and readers who are new to del Toro’s visionary work, this atmospheric and absorbing novel is a portal to another universe where there is no wall between the real and the imagined. A daring, unforgettable collaboration between two brilliant storytellers.

Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE. 

I really like circus stories, although I feel that maybe teens today aren't as into them as I wish they were.  Plus I like the historical aspect of this one.

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

A stunning, multigenerational story about two teenagers: Victoria, who joins the circus in 1965, and her granddaughter, Callie, who leaves the circus fifty years later.

In 1965 seventeen-year-old Victoria, having just escaped an unstable home, flees to the ultimate place for dreamers and runaways--the circus. Specifically, the VanDrexel Family Circus where, among the lion tamers, roustabouts, and trapeze artists, Victoria hopes to start a better life.

Fifty years later, Victoria's sixteen-year-old granddaughter Callie is thriving. A gifted and focused tightrope walker with dreams of being a VanDrexel high wire legend just like her grandmother, Callie can't imagine herself anywhere but the circus. But when Callie's mother accepts her dream job at an animal sanctuary in Florida just months after Victoria's death, Callie is forced to leave her lifelong home behind.

Feeling unmoored and out of her element, Callie pores over memorabilia from her family's days on the road, including a box that belonged to Victoria when she was Callie's age. In the box, Callie finds notes that Victoria wrote to herself with tips and tricks for navigating her new world. Inspired by this piece of her grandmother's life, Callie decides to use Victoria's circus prowess to navigate the uncharted waters of public high school.

Across generations, Victoria and Callie embrace the challenges of starting over, letting go, and finding new families in unexpected places.

Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE.

A female Doogie Howser #ownvoices story that sounds like fun!

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

The youngest doctor in America, an Indian-American teen makes her rounds―and falls head over heels―in the contemporary romantic comedy Symptoms of a Heartbreak.

Fresh from med school, sixteen-year-old medical prodigy Saira arrives for her first day at her new job: treating children with cancer. She’s always had to balance family and friendships with her celebrity as the Girl Genius―but she’s never had to prove herself to skeptical adult co-workers while adjusting to real life-and-death stakes. And working in the same hospital as her mother certainly isn’t making things any easier.

But life gets complicated when Saira finds herself falling in love with a patient: a cute teen boy who’s been diagnosed with cancer. And when she risks her brand new career to try to improve his chances, it could cost her everything.

It turns out “heartbreak” is the one thing she still doesn’t know how to treat.

In her solo debut, Sona Charaipotra brings us a compelling #ownvoices protagonist who’s not afraid to chase what she wants. Symptoms of a Heartbreak goes from romantic comedy highs to tearjerker lows and is the ultimate cure-all for young adult readers needing an infusion of something heartfelt.

Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE. 

Gotta love the cover, and sounds like a good mystery!

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:


Remy Tsai used to know how her story would turn out. But now, she doesn’t even know what tomorrow will look like.

She was happy once. Remy had her boyfriend Jack, and Elise, her best friend—her soulmate—who understood her better than anyone else in the world.

But now Jack is dead, shot through the chest—

And it was Elise who pulled the trigger.

Was it self-defense? Or something deeper, darker than anything Remy could have imagined? As the police investigate, Remy does the same, sifting through her own memories, looking for a scrap of truth that could save the friendship that means everything to her.

Told in alternating timelines, Thelma and Louise meets Gone Girl in this twisted psychological thriller about the dark side of obsessive friendship.

Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE.


Final Thoughts:
Have you read any of these yet?  Are they on your TBR?  And hey, while you're here, you should go try to win some of my ARCs from Cleaning Up My TBR Post HERE. The US only giveaway is open till Friday at midnight, and this week I added some 2019 ARCs that can be one of your two choices.

Review with Author Interview: By a Charm and a Curse by Jaime Questell

Book info:

Title:  By a Charm and a Curse
Author:  Jaime Questell
Genre:  YA contemporary Fantasy with magical realism
Release Date:  February 6th, 2018
Publisher:  Entangled Teen
Source:  Egalley from publisher
My rating:  4.5 stars

Synopsis:
Le Grand’s Carnival Fantastic isn’t like other traveling circuses. It’s bound by a charm, held together by a centuries-old curse, that protects its members from ever growing older or getting hurt. Emmaline King is drawn to the circus like a moth to a flame…and unwittingly recruited into its folds by a mysterious teen boy whose kiss is as cold as ice.

Forced to travel through Texas as the new Girl in the Box, Emmaline is completely trapped. Breaking the curse seems like her only chance at freedom, but with no curse, there’s no charm, either—dooming everyone who calls the Carnival Fantastic home. Including the boy she’s afraid she’s falling for.

Everything—including his life—could end with just one kiss.

My Review:
Personally, I loved this story.  I'm always a sucker for a good story that takes place in a carnival or circus.  This one hit all the points that I love about stories like this.  The characters were really great, I felt so much for Emma, and couldn't help but like Ben so much.  When I picked this one up, I hated whenever I had to put it down.  I mostly read during lunch breaks at school, so it made going back to work really hard.  I got swept into the mythology behind the curse and the charm.  I liked how there were people you would assume would be a problem with trying to break the curse, but they surprised you.  I loved how Sidney even became someone you empathized with, and wanted to see him get his true love finally.  And then there was all the horrible things those with the curse had to endure. The initial breaking to start the curse, followed by the coldness and twitching.  Not being able to feel anything.  Then the guilt of having to either do the same terrible thing to another innocent person in order to save yourself, or else having to be stuck with the curse yourself, not being able to go back to your own family.  Also the curse was related to the rest of the carnies "charm" and how much they were able to do as part of their amazing acts.  

I loved the connection to New Orleans.  And the story behind the curse was so good.  Solving the curse was a very heart-breaking solution, and it was easy to understand why Emma didn't want to do it the way it had to be done.  A great story, a book I will definitely be purchasing for my school library!

Now, my only issues.  First, the aerial family members that were the "bad guys" in the story.  I almost feel like I needed a little more reason for what they did.  For how evil they got at the end.  I didn't quite understand what their solution was with Ben and Emma.  My other thought is one I had about teens today.  I wonder, do teens today really know or get what a carnival or traveling circus show is?  I mean, Barnum and Baileys are going out of business, right?  So what circuses are there anymore?  And even as I was growing up, there weren't really the carnivals like this story is about.  The reason I began thinking about this, is that another of my favorite stories,  Girl on a Wire by Gwenda Bond, is about a circus, and I can barely get students to even look at it.  I guess I just wonder if carnivals or circuses mean the same to teens today as they did when I was growing up.  

Author Interview:

1.  What does your writing process look like? Do you know the whole story when you start?  Or do you just start writing and go with it (seat of the pants writing)?  If you plan it out, how do you do that?  Outline, notecards, post-it-notes, etc.? 

 I love outlining. Outlining helps me feel like I’m writing with purpose. Early in the process, I’ll do a super vague outline of plot points that  I know need to happen. And later in the process, when I’m stuck, I’ll do a micro outline, something meatier than an outline but without the emotion, metaphors, and dialogue that make it a real scene. That said, while I don’t always know exactly how thing will end when I start a draft, I do know the feeling I want to leave the reader with, which I think helps. So I usually know my beginning (though sometimes it takes fine-tuning to find the actual beginning), I know the ending note, and my billion outlines help me figure out the steps between.

2.  How do you come up with your ideas for your stories? 

 Music, as hokey as it might sound, is incredibly inspiring for me. CHARM was inspired by a song (Coin-Operated Boy by the Dresden Dolls), and I always make up a playlist for whatever I’m working on. Though I will say, I listened to my playlist for CHARM so much that now I skip those songs when they randomly pop up on my phone.

3.  How long have you been writing?  

Not quite ten years. I wrote a YA (that is SO bad I cannot even begin to explain it depths of its clichéd cheesiness) for fun and my best friend convinced me to join her critique group. After that, it became something I needed to do.

4.  What tips do you have for aspiring writers?  

I think that persistence and resilience is so important. My writing group critiqued that terrible YA within an inch of its life until I made it something better. And then I queried it and received over two hundred rejections. Then I wrote CHARM and got my fabulous agent, and after we polished that manuscript we sent it out and receved even more rejections. But it’s so important to not take those rejections personally or to let them discourage you. There’s almost always something to learn from a rejection, but you can’t let them drag you down.

5.  What are your favorite:

Books/authors/genres Too many! I love speculative fiction, fantasy, and thrillers. Right now my favorite authors are Leigh Bardugo (everything, just put it all in my grabby hands), Lisa Maxwell (The Last Magician is stunning), Nic Stone (Dear Martin wrecked me!), M.R. Carey (The Girl with All the Gifts, obviously, but Fellside was fab, too), Kelley Armstrong (her Casey Duncan series is awesome!), and Julie C. Dao (I will follow her to the ends of the earth after Forest of a Thousand Lanterns).

Movies/TV Shows How to Get Away with Murder is like a wacky, murdery rollercoaster that I never want to end and I have to watch Fresh Off the Boat, Black-ish, and Bob’s Burgers every week. I basically love almost all the Marvel films, but Captain America: The Winter Soldier is amazeballs. And I am a sucker for cooking competition shows like Top Chef, Chopped, and Cutthroat Kitchen.

Music I’m a little all over the place with my music, but one thing that it all has in common is that it has to be upbeat. My BFF jokes that I listen to all the upbeat stuff and she listens to all the quieter, sad stuff, and our tastes in music are each other’s kryptonite. My current faves are DNCE, Bruno Mars, Beth Ditto, Andra Day, and New Politics.

Food/Writing snack Sushi if I can get it, or if I’m limited to stuff that’s in the house, something that’s salty and sweet. I think I drive my family nuts with that combo, because I’m the only one who likes it and they’ll pick up some candy I bought and wind up disgusted with it. But hey, it’s a great way to keep my snacks safe!

About the Author:

JAIME QUESTELL grew up in Houston, Texas, where she escaped the heat and humidity by diving into stacks of Baby Sitter’s Club and Sweet Valley High books. She has been a book seller (fair warning: book lovers who become book sellers will give half their paychecks right back to their employers), a professional knitter, a semi-professional baker, and now works as a graphic designer in addition to writing. Currently, she lives in the suburbs with her family, one derpy dog, and one imperious cat. If she had her way, she’d have an army of corgis, like the Queen of England.  (From Goodreads)

 

Website:  http://jaimequestell.com 

 

Okay, I don't always come back and make anymore to my post at this point, but I have to point out how much I love what she says in her bio about how book lovers who become book sellers giving half their paychecks right back to their employers.  Yeah, that describes me at my bookstore job.  I pretty much work there so I can buy books, even though I really should be working there to pay off bills.  

 

  
 

Nerd Blast with Giveaway: Boneyard (Deadlands #3) by Seanan McGuire

Book info:

Title:  Boneyard  
Author:  Seanan McGuire
Series:   Deadlands #3  
Publisher: Tor Books
Release Date:  October 17th, 2017

Synopsis:

The newest book based on the hit Weird West RPG franchise Deadlands!

Step right up to see the oddities and marvels of The Blackstone Family Circus and Travelling Wonder Show! Gasp at pit wasps the size of a man’s forearm. Beware the pumpkin-headed corn stalker, lest it plant its roots in you!

Annie Pearl is the keeper of oddities, the mistress of monsters. Her unique collection of creatures is one of the circus’s star attractions, drawing wide-eyed crowds at every small frontier town they visit. But Annie is also a woman running from her past . . . and the mother of a mute young daughter, Adeline, whom she will do anything to protect.

Hoping to fill its coffers before winter sets in, the circus steers its wagons to The Clearing, a remote community deep in the Oregon wilderness, surrounded by an ominous dark wood. Word is that a traveling show can turn a tidy profit at The Clearing, but there are whispers, too, of unexplained disappearances that afflict one out of every four shows that pass through the town.

The Clearing has it secrets, and so does Annie. And it may take everything she has to save her daughter―and the circus―from both.

AMAZON | BARNES and NOBLE | BOOK DEPOSITORY

Praise for DEADLANDS Series

A gripping tale of the Weird West, set on the haunted frontier of DEADLANDS, the award-winning game from Pinnacle Entertainment Group.

Excerpt:

-->

At the head of the wagon train was Nathanial Blackstone himself, owner of the show, reins in his hands as he guided his horses down the trail. Some people believed he never slept at all; that like his circus, he was a shark, and that if he stopped moving, he would die. Others knew that he was flesh and blood like any other man. A born showman, yes, who had no trouble encouraging his own mystique even among the people who worked for him, but still a man. He slept when the show was stopped. He slept in the early afternoons, when the crowds had yet to come in but the work of setting up had been finished. He slept in the space between sentences, where no one needed him to make their decisions for them, where, for good or ill, he could rest.

Rumor was he had a wife somewhere on the coast, in one of the green places where neither man nor beast came a-preying; that he had a child, or two, or as many as four, and that one day, when gray strands started to appear in that great black mustache of his, he’d be sending his trusted right hand to ride for Oregon and bring his eldest back to the show, ready to begin training his heir in the ways of the road.

Rumor also was that he was a clockwork man built by the master of another, fancier show, and that he’d run away from his creator the same way those occasional foundling children ran away from their creators, choosing freedom and uncertainty over captivity and a life where all their choices would come from someone else.

Nathanial Blackstone encouraged the rumors, all of them, no matter how ludicrous. If his people believed him to be a monster or a madman or a maestro, that could only enhance his reputation—and hence the reputation of the show as a whole—in the small towns they rolled through. Their route was a cartographer’s masterwork of trails, roads, and semisafe paths, all connecting the settlements they served. A circus’s map was one of its greatest treasures. Some of these routes, no other show in this part of the country knew. Without maps, the wagons couldn’t get place to place fast enough to make a profit.

Keep moving. Stay alive.

Copyright © 2017 by Seanan McGuire
 
About the Author:

Seanan McGuire was born in Martinez, California, and raised in a wide variety of locations, most of which boasted some sort of dangerous native wildlife. Despite her almost magnetic attraction to anything venomous, she somehow managed to survive long enough to acquire a typewriter, a reasonable grasp of the English language, and the desire to combine the two. The fact that she wasn't killed for using her typewriter at three o'clock in the morning is probably more impressive than her lack of death by spider-bite.

Often described as a vortex of the surreal, many of Seanan's anecdotes end with things like "and then we got the anti-venom" or "but it's okay, because it turned out the water wasn't that deep." She has yet to be defeated in a game of "Who here was bitten by the strangest thing?," and can be amused for hours by almost anything. "Almost anything" includes swamps, long walks, long walks in swamps, things that live in swamps, horror movies, strange noises, musical theater, reality TV, comic books, finding pennies on the street, and venomous reptiles. Seanan may be the only person on the planet who admits to using Kenneth Muir's Horror Films of the 1980s as a checklist.

Seanan is the author of the October Daye urban fantasies, the InCryptid urban fantasies, and several other works both stand-alone and in trilogies or duologies. In case that wasn't enough, she also writes under the pseudonym "Mira Grant." For details on her work as Mira, check out MiraGrant.com.

In her spare time, Seanan records CDs of her original filk music (see the Albums page for details). She is also a cartoonist, and draws an irregularly posted autobiographical web comic, "With Friends Like These...", as well as generating a truly ridiculous number of art cards. Surprisingly enough, she finds time to take multi-hour walks, blog regularly, watch a sickening amount of television, maintain her website, and go to pretty much any movie with the words "blood," "night," "terror," or "attack" in the title. Most people believe she doesn't sleep.

Seanan lives in an idiosyncratically designed labyrinth in the Pacific Northwest, which she shares with her cats, Alice and Thomas, a vast collection of creepy dolls and horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She has strongly-held and oft-expressed beliefs about the origins of the Black Death, the X-Men, and the need for chainsaws in daily life.

Years of writing blurbs for convention program books have fixed Seanan in the habit of writing all her bios in the third person, so as to sound marginally less dorky. Stress is on the "marginally." It probably doesn't help that she has so many hobbies.

Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot.

Photo Credit: Beckett Gladney

WEBSITE: http://seananmcguire.com/index.php
TWITTER: @seananmcguire
GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2860219.Seanan_McGuire
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/seananmcguire

Giveaway:

--Giveaway is open to International. | Must be 13+ to Enter

- 10 Winners will receive a Set Copy of Deadland Series (3 Books in Total) GHOSTWALKERS by Jonathan Maberry, THUNDER MOON RISING by Jeffrey J. Mariotte  and BONEYARD) by Seanan McGuire.

ENDS: November 9, 2017

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Blog Tour - Review and Giveaway: Girl in the Shadows (Girl on a Wire #2) by Gwenda Bond

Girl in the Shadows
Gwenda Bond
(Girl on a Wire #2)
Published by: Skyscape
Publication date: July 5th 2016
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult

Eighteen-year-old Moira Mitchell grew up in the shadows of Vegas’s stage lights while her father’s career as a magician soared. More than anything, Moira wants to be a magician too, but her father is dead set against her pursuing magic.
When an invitation to join the Cirque American mistakenly falls into Moira’s possession, she takes action. Instead of giving the highly coveted invitation to its intended recipient, Raleigh, her father’s handsome and worldly former apprentice, Moira takes off to join the Cirque. If she can perform alongside its world-famous acts, she knows she’ll be able to convince her dad that magic is her future.
But when Moira arrives, things take on an intensity she can’t control as her stage magic suddenly feels like…real magic. To further distract her, Raleigh shows up none too pleased at Moira’s presence, all while the Cirque’s cocky and intriguing knife thrower, Dez, seems to have it out for her. As tensions mount and Moira’s abilities come into question, she must decide what’s real and what’s an illusion. If she doesn’t sort it out in time, she may forever remain a girl in the shadows.

Goodreads / Amazon

My Review:
I am so glad to get to be a part of this tour.  I have been a huge fan of Gwenda Bond since the first book of hers that I read, Blackwood.  And when I read the first book in her circus series, Girl on a Wire, I couldn't wait to get back to this world.  I don't know if there will be any more books in this series, but I can only say that I really hope so.  I love all the characters, both from the first book, who we get to see again in this book, as well as the new ones we follow in this one.  Now, you don't have to read the first one in order to read this one, but having read it, you will be really excited to see where those characters have gone on in this world.

What's great about this book is that the main character, Moira, is into magic, a part that you don't normally see women big in. But having been raised by a single father who is a magician, it is all she has known, and she has fallen in love with it.  When she runs off to try out for the circus with a stolen invitation, she tells her father she is checking out colleges.  Once at the circus, something strange happens.  Her magic tricks/sleights of hand, don't quite seem to go the way she wants them to. But as she was doing them, there was a strange heat/power that she felt in her hands.  And all of a sudden it seems that there might be actual magic, as the deck of cards have changed.  As she talked about them being a rainbow, or saw them as a rainbow in her mind, the backs of the cards change to rainbows.  One of the members of the circus, Nan Maroni, notices that there is actual magic.  And she speaks up for Moira, and then pulls her aside and fills her in on what Moira was never aware of before.  

So we get real magic, the coin is back from the last book in a new way.  I loved getting to spend time with Remy and Jules again.  And I kinda liked Dez, the love interest for Moira, even though there were times you weren't sure whether to trust him.  And his friend Brandon, man, I'd like to smack him.  Moira will also find out that she  needs to find her mother, it's the only way she can figure out what is going on with these magic powers she's developing.  But it will turn out that her mother may not be quite who she thought she was, and it may have been a good thing that her mother left.

Another great story, great characters, and some incredible magic tricks.  Especially the big one at the very end!  All I can say is if the author just happens to read my review, please, please, please give me more of this world!  Give Dita her own story maybe!  Or maybe Brandon could get a story so that I can like him a little better.  Oh yeah, and I love that the author had them stop in Kansas City for one of the stops.  If only a real circus like this would come here, I'd be there for sure!

Author Bio:
Gwenda Bond is the author of the young adult novels Lois Lane: Fallout and Girl on a Wire, among others. Lois Lane: Double Down and Girl in the Shadows, a companion novel to Girl on a Wire set in the Cirque American, are next up in 2016. She’s also hard at work on some secret projects you don’t know about yet.
Her nonfiction writing has appeared in Publishers Weekly, Locus Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. She has an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband, author Christopher Rowe. There are rumors she escaped from a screwball comedy, and she might have a journalism degree because of her childhood love of Lois Lane. Visit her online at www.gwendabond.com or @gwenda on Twitter.

Website / Goodreads / Twitter

GIVEAWAY!

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Cover Characteristic: Circus

The Cover Characteristic meme is hosted at  Sugar and Snark.   Here are the guidelines:

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite covers with that characteristic. If you want to join in and share your 5 favorite covers with the weeks particular characteristic, then just make a post, grab the meme picture (or make your own) and leave your URL in Linky (so we can visit).
You don’t even need to participate, just stopping by and saying hi would be great! Don’t forget to stop by the other participants!

This week was really hard!  I could only find three that I consider circus vs. carnival.  So I also have two that I didn't read, but are on my to-read list.

To-read circus books:  

  And the books I've read:

  And my favorite, from the books I have read:

So, those are my circus covers.  Can you think of any you've read that are your favorites?  I do have The  Night Circus on my TBR list, but I figured other people probably would pick it, so I left it off. 

Waiting on Wednesday: Girl in the Shadows (Girl on a Wire #2) by Gwenda Bond

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases that we're eagerly awaiting.  This week I've picked a book that is by a favorite author of mine. An author that I think deserves some extra love as she doesn't seem to be as well-known as I think she should be, because I just love her writing.  The first book in this series, which I was so glad to see there was going to be more, was called Girl on a Wire, and I really loved the characters and can't wait for more of the world, and hopefully some more of those characters along with these new ones.  Here's the blurb for this new book from Goodreads:

Eighteen-year-old Moira Mitchell grew up in the shadows of Vegas’s stage lights while her father’s career as a magician soared. More than anything, Moira wants to be a magician too, but her father is dead set against her pursuing magic.

When an invitation to join the Cirque American mistakenly falls into Moira’s possession, she takes action. Instead of giving the highly coveted invitation to its intended recipient, Raleigh, her father’s handsome and worldly former apprentice, Moira takes off to join the Cirque. If she can perform alongside its world-famous acts, she knows she’ll be able to convince her dad that magic is her future.

But when Moira arrives, things take on an intensity she can’t control as her stage magic suddenly feels like…real magic. To further distract her, Raleigh shows up none too pleased at Moira’s presence, all while the Cirque’s cocky and intriguing knife thrower, Dez, seems to have it out for her. As tensions mount and Moira’s abilities come into question, she must decide what’s real and what’s an illusion. If she doesn’t sort it out in time, she may forever remain a girl in the shadows.

I loved reading about the world of the circus.  Especially as when I was a kid and went to the circus I always used to dream about being a trapeze artist.  Coming from a family that had spent their whole life as part of the circus.  So that's what I'm excited about this week. What book are you eagerly awaiting? 

Promo Post: The Wanderers by Kate Ormand

The Wanderers
by Kate Ormand
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Release Date: September 1st 2015
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal

Synopsis:

A Unique Twist on Shape-Shifters with Fast-Paced Action, Thrilling Adventure, Mystery, and a Bit of Romance

Flo lives an eccentric life—she travels with a popular circus in which the main acts star orphaned children with secret shape-shifting abilities. Once Flo turns sixteen, she must perform, but she’s not ready. While practicing jumping a flaming hurdle in a clearing beside the circus, she spots a dark figure in the trees and fears he saw her shift. The news sends the circus into a panic.

In Flo’s world, shifters are unknown to humans with the exception of a secret organization—the EOS, referred to as “hunters.” Hunters capture and kill. They send some shifters to labs for observation and testing—testing they don’t often survive—and deem others useless, a danger to society, and eliminate them. To avoid discovery, shifters travel in packs, constantly moving and keeping themselves hidden. Up until now, the circus was the perfect disguise.

Believing she has brought attention to the group, Flo feels dread and anxiety, causing her to make a mistake during her performance in front of the audience—a mistake that triggers a violent attack from the hunters.

Flo manages to flee the torched circus grounds with Jett, the bear shifter who loves her; the annoying elephant triplets; and a bratty tiger named Pru. Together they begin a new journey, alone in a world they don’t understand and don’t know how to navigate. On the run, they unravel secrets and lies that surround the circus and their lives—secrets and lies that all point to the unthinkable: Have they been betrayed by the people they trusted most?

Follow the The Wanderers by Kate Ormand Blog Tour and don't miss anything! Click on the banner to see the tour schedule.

KATE ORMAND is a YA writer represented by Isabel Atherton at Creative Authors Ltd. She lives in the UK with her family, her partner, and a cocker spaniel called Freddie. She recently graduated from university with a first class BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art Painting. It was during this course that Kate discovered her love of reading YA books, prompting her to try a new creative angle and experiment with writing. Kate is also a member of an online group of published writers and illustrators called Author Allsorts. And she writes children’s picture books under the name Kate Louise. 

You can see more about Kate and her writing by visiting her website (www.kateormand.wordpress.com) or on Twitter (@kateormand).

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