Blog Tour: Irresistible - A Guest Post from Liz Bankes

It's fair to say that this has been the year of rather steamy reads - they have been very popular and many of us have decided to branch out into this growing genre.

Unfortunately, it seemed as though the slightly younger audience had been forgotten about... that is until now! Liz Bankes has released a fantastically sexy new book, aimed at the Young Adult audience, which I'm very excited about. 

To get a taste of this new book, Liz Bankes has very kindly provided us with a guest post, telling us who she would cast as the main characters in her story... enjoy!

Casting the Irresistible girls 

In the tradition of Dawson’s Creek and many high school movies, I am going to be lenient with age and allow people in their twenties to play sixteen-year-olds. 

Mia is spending her summer waitressing and dreaming of travelling. She’s been enjoying getting to know funny workmate Dan, but can’t get bad boy Jamie out of her head. 

Played by Kathryn Prescott

Kathryn Prescott played Emily in Skins so I picked her because I think she is awesome and was part of one of my fave tv couples ever, Naomi and Emily. I also think that she could pull off Mia’s mixture of shyness whilst having a dry sense of humour and being fun. 

Gabi is Mia’s best friend. She is massive in terms of personality and boobs, a bit mad and very loyal. 

Played by Chelsee Healy

Chelsee played schoolgirl Janeece on Waterloo Road and I think she would have right combination of bubbliness, ditziness and fierce loyalty to play Gabi. She then went on Strictly Come Dancing, which Gabi would definitely do, if only to meet famous people. 

Beautiful, privileged and a bit frightening, Cleo is Jamie’s girlfriend. 

Played by Jessica Szohr 

Jessica, who plays Vanessa in Gossip Girl, has the exotic, stunning look I imagined for Cleo. She’s also spent enough time around Blair and Serena to learn about being a bitch. And she went out with Chuck Bass in real life so knows how to handle her bad boys. 

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Irresistible is by Liz Bankes and published by Piccadilly Press. The book will be published in print on 25th April 2013, but is available in eBook format now!  

Blog Tour - Neptune's Tears

Hello!

I know a lot of you showed interest when I was reading Neptune's Tears and wanted to find out more about the book. I had the good luck to be offered a place in the blog tour for this book and I hope that this furthers your interest in what looks to be a very interesting series with a great idea behind it.

Susan has kindly taken some time from her schedule to write a guest post, exclusively for this blog. Hopefully you'll learn something new and be encouraged to give Neptune's Tears a try.

Enjoy! 

A Guest Post from Susan Waggoner

Titles are important to me. As a reader, I like books with alluring titles and books that follow the old-fashioned tradition of giving chapters titles as well.  To me, these are little messages from the author, the place where he or she steps away from the narrative and sends a note directly to the reader.  As a writer, titles act as a kind of compass, pointing the way through the unknown wilderness of the story.

The day I started writing Zee’s story, I knew exactly how it should begin.  I had a strong mental image of this young, competent girl swinging self-confidently into A&E, eager to use her empath skills to help others. Of course, I had to invent some patients for her, and all of a sudden Ellie Hart appeared on the page.  Like Zee, she arrived as a fully formed character, someone who was a kindred spirit for Zee but who was much older and wiser.

Before I knew it, the story of Mrs. Hart’s diamonds - famously called Neptune’s Tears - unfolded and I realised that the diamonds embodied a major theme of the book.  Namely that the things we do in life can have unpredictable and even unfavourable consequences, but that doesn’t mean we should fear the future or stop exploring its possibilities.  This theme surfaces in Zee’s own life several times and will continue to guide and inspire her as the story continues in Starlight’s Edge.

I also enjoyed giving each chapter a title, a habit leftover from being a big Nancy Drew fan when I was young. It gives each chapter an individual identity and helps me to keep my focus while I write.  I hope each one is as an invitation to the reader, something that says “Come on, let’s see what happens next!”

For every writer, the fun part of writing a book is seeing the cover for the first time.  We are lucky to have so many talented designers in publishing and I am always awed and delighted at the work they produce. Aside from loving the starlit, luminous blue background of the Neptune’s Tears cover, the aspect I like the most is the skyline silhouette. This is because, although the skyline is clearly borrowed from the future, I can also see bits and pieces of the London I know and love, a city of which one never tires.

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Thank you so much to Susan for providing this guest post, and also to Piccadilly Press.

If this has made you interested, why don't you...

Check out my review of Neptunes Tears

AND

follow the rest of the blog tour! 

The next stop is @  I Want To Read That

Neptune's Tears (Timedance #1)

Neptune's Tears by Susan Waggoner

Paperback, 224 pages

Expected publication: September 2012 by Picadilly Press

My shelves: arc-or-review, blog-tour, books-i-own, dystopian, read-in-2012, sci-fi, series-or-companions, to-be-reviewed, young-adult

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Description via Goodreads:

It is love against the odds. There is his word, and there is hers. How can they feel so connected?

It is 2218 and Zee McAdams is in her second year as a healing empath at a busy London hospital. When a mysterious young man arrives for treatment, Zee's hard won calm is pierced. She will need all her courage if she's to follow her heart.

Especially when David reveals a devastating secret.

Buy this book:

The Book Depository / Amazon (US/INT) / Amazon UK

My thanks go to Picadilly Press for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review.

Neptune's Tears is the first book in the Timedance series by Susan Waggoner. It's set in 2218 and follows a young empath in a London hospital. For such a quick read, the pages inside this book contain a lot. The story mainly revolves around Zee's career as an empath, her powers related to this and her romance with a boy, David, who one day appears at her hospital.

Zee was a very decent, relatable character. I liked what we got to know about her and particularly admired her for her love of her job and the care she wanted to give to the people around her. I thought Zee's job was really interesting and it was the best, most interesting part of the book for me - I look forward to learning more about her work in the next book. David, her love interest was mysterious and  likeable even though we didn't really get to know all that much about him until the end. The thing that makes me somewhat undecided about  the characters inside this book is that there is a huge case of instalove. As soon as Zee meets David in hospital, they are in love. I really dislike instalove, but I realise that in the case of this book, instant attraction and love seems to be somewhat the norm and part of being an empath. The characters also needed this instant love in order for the book to progress as quickly as it did. It wasn't a major problem for me as it's something to do with Zee being an empath, but I still couldn't bring myself to like or accept the fact - it felt too rushed.

As I mentioned, a lot of things happen in this book. I seemed to speed through this story - it's definitely easy to read and a page-turner and I think even the most reluctant reader would find it difficult not to rush through this one! There isn't a dull moment in this book, something is always happening or something being revealed. Though the pace was good as it left no time for boredom, I do think things could've been slowed down a little more so that they could be developed or elaborated upon. I don't want to include any spoilers, but the huge revelation at the end has made me very excited for the next book - the plot has huge potential.

Neptune's Tears has a lot of good ideas behind it - it's clear that Waggoner's imagination is certainly not dull! For the most part, this was a very enjoyable, captivating story and I am looking forward to reading all of the drama in the next instalment! 

Interested in learning more about Neptune's Tears? Follow the UK blog tour!

I'll Be There

The unmissable read of 2012

Some of you may know that last year I read and loved Holly Goldberg Sloan's I'll Be There. It was pretty difficult to get hold of in the UK, but I can now announce that Piccadilly Press will be publishing the book in paperback on 24th May 2012. It really was one of my great 2011 discoveries and I hope that for many of you, it'll be a great 2012 discovery! I wrote a short five star (!!!) review when I first read the book, so here it is:

"This was fantastic! I'll be there is written in a unique and effective way. It's very hard to believe that this is Sloan's debut novel. The book explores the lives of several people, mainly the Border, Bell and Ellis families and how they all come together over the disapperance of the two Border children, Sam and Riddle and their abusive father, Clarence. Sam and Riddle are both very strong characters with distinct personalities, especially Riddle. In fact, I found most of the personalities to be strong and unique and seeing how everyone interacted together was very interesting. It was really fascinating to see how everybody developed, in themselves and also in their relationships with others as events unfolded. Although I didn't feel as though there were many cliffhangers despite the rather eventful incident in the forest, I felt as though there was a slight sense of suspense throughout the whole thing which made me want to keep on reading. I loved how everything was wrapped up at the end and I'm glad that we got to see everyones outcome. With it's fantastic characters and great storytelling, this is a book I'd recommend."

It's pretty difficult to get a five star review out of me, but this one managed with ease! I'm not the only one to think it was awesome, either. Gayle Foreman is quoted saying:

 "Heartbreaking, suspenseful, life-affirming, magical: I'll Be There is all of those things. Mere description doesn't do this book justice. Only reading it does".

I totally agree with her too, this is a book that you have to read to truly experience. For all of you who love contemporary, this is quite different and very enjoyable. I know that a lot of you will really love this one and as I said in my review, this is a book I'd recommend - Go and pre-order it now!

Click here to purchase the book with

free worldwide shipping!