In My Mailbox 126

This meme was started by the fabulous Kristi who was inspired by Alea. Check out their blogs for more information. All summaries are from the book jackets unless otherwise stated.

As I had a blog tour stop for David Massey’s Torn last Sunday, this is my post for the last two weeks.

For review:

Beautiful Disaster – Jamie McGuire

GOOD GIRL

Abby Abernathy doesn’t drink or swear and she works hard. Abby believes she has buried her dark past, but when she arrives at college, her dreams of a new beginning are quickly challenged by the university’s walking one-night stand.

BAD BOY

Travis Maddox, sexy, built, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby needs – and wants – to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight club, and his days as the notorious college Lothario.

IMMINENT DISASTER?

Intrigued by Abby’s resistance ot his charms, Tracvis tricks her into his life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain celibate for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time.

OR THE START OF SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL?

Eiither way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match. Or that this is the start of an obsessive, intense relationship that will lead them both into unimaginable territory...

I’m both curious and wary of reading this, but we shall see! Thanks, S&S!

When It Happens to You – Molly Ringwald

When...

betrayal comes it take smany forms. A husband’s betrayal of a wife, a mother’s betrayal of her son, a woman betrayed by the loss of her soulmate.

When it...

          comes it will take you by surprise. But it will happen. And...

When it happens...

          everything will change. You may not know it now but...

When it happens to you...

          you will understand.

Thanks, S&S! I loved Molly in The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles so I’m looking forward to reading this.

Revived – Cat Patrick

The world fades to nothing, and before I have the chance to think another thought...I’m dead.

My name is Daisy West  and my whole life is a lie.

I have died five times. I’ve been Revived five times. With each revival comes a new name, a new town...a new life.

But this time I won’t let myself die. This time, I’ve found a love that I can’t let go. This time, I’m going to make my life my own.

Thanks, Electric Monkey!

Sophie 

Blog Tour: Interview with Cora Harrison (Debutantes)

I’m pleased to welcome Cora Harrison to So Many Books, So Little Time as part of her blog tour for Debutantes, published by Pan Macmillan on August 2^nd.

1.    Is there a specific time or place you do your best writing in?

Yes, I am a morning person, and that means that I usually do my best writing first thing in the morning. I get up, shower, dress and take my dog Lily for a run in the fields around my cottage. And then I have my breakfast, take an apple, go into my study, switch on the computer and start work while munching my apple. By the time the apple is finished and Lily is eating the core, I am well into my story. I try to do about 2000 words in the morning.

2.    If you were only allowed to take three books to a desert island, what would they be? Why?

I think that I would have to take very thick and large books as I am a very fast reader. So I would take the collected works of Shakespeare – lot of reading in them! Then for my second choice I would take my favourite Dickens book which is ‘Bleak House’ – I could read that hundreds of times and still find new things to pause over – and the third book would be the Oxford book of poetry – by the time I got to the end of that it would be time to start all over again..

3.    Is there a novel you wish you’d written?

Harry Potter.

4.    What is it about the 1920s that made you want to write in that era?

Well, that’s an easy question – The poet Wordsworth says: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!’

 It was a wonderful time for young people who suddenly had their own style of dressing, their own music, jazz, and their own amusements which older people very much disapproved of.

5.    Which of the Derrington girls did you enjoy writing about the most?

I think I enjoyed Rose the most as she is very witty and very funny and I loved making up the humorous newspaper headlines that she invented.

6.    Do you have an interest in photography and film-making like Daisy?

I have a great ambition to make a film and nowadays that is so much easier with digital cameras. I don’t think I would have been very good with dark rooms and dipping film into chemicals.

7.    Are you working on anything at the moment? Can you tell me anything about it?

I would like to pick up the lives of Violet, Poppy, Daisy and Rose a year later and see how everything is working out for them. Will Violet become a film star? Will Daisy achieve her dream to make a famous film? What about Poppy, and her friend Baz? How will things work out for them? And Rose? Will she really become a writer, or is it just a childish dream which she will grow out of? And what about the fortunes of the Derrington family? Will the Earl’s money troubles come to a head? And if so, what will happen to the family home and estate, the beautiful Beech Grove Manor?

Thank you to Cora and Macmillan for providing me with a review copy and organising the interview. Read my review for a taste of Debutantes.

Sophie

Blog Tour: Katie McGarry's 5 Favourite Books to Movies

Katie McGarry’s fantastic debut, Pushing the Limits, has been one of my favourite reads so far this year so I’m very excited to host Katie as part of her UK blog tour. She’s here to share her top five favourite book-to-film adaptations.

“The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

The Stand by Stephen King (technically this was a miniseries)

Any of the books from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King

The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

If Pushing the Limits was to make it on the big screen, have you got any preferences about who would play the main characters?

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been able to pick anyone to play Echo or Noah, but it is so much fun to see who my readers think should play them.”

Thank you to Katie and to Mira INK/Midas PR for providing me with a review copy and organising a guest post for the tour.

Sophie

Torn - David Massey

Torn – David Massey

Pages: 259

Publisher: Chicken House

Release Date: 2^nd August 2012

Edition: UK paperback, review copy

Afghanistan. In the heat and dust, young British army medic Elinor Neilson watches an Afghan girl walk into a hail of bullets.

But when she runs to help, Ellie finds her gone. Who is she? What happened to her? What Ellie discovers leads her to question everything she believes in – even her feelings for the American lieutenant who takes her side...

I had incredibly high hopes for David Massey’s debut, but there was something about Torn that just didn’t quite hit the spot for me.

Torn started slowly which was surprising and David Massey’s throws us straight into Ellie’s first day as an army medic in Afghanistan. He took the time to evoke the smothering heat and constant threat of the base and Ellie’s already fairly fragile mental state was quickly established. She was terrified of getting something wrong; putting other people in danger and that maybe they weren’t helping at all the fragile situation in Afghanistan at all. I could almost feel the paranoia and brokenness of some the soldiers on Ellie’s base emanating from the pages, especially Heidi.

Even though this was beautifully done and I loved the strength of the setting, it set a pace that made it a little difficult to move on through the novel. Even when the attacks and gun fights that peppered Torn began and had heart-rending consequences didn’t increase the tempo of the novel. For me, it didn’t really get going until the Americans arrived and a frisson of sexual tension sparked between Ben, the lieutenant, and Ellie. I was a little bit worried that that was what made me interested in the novel...but it was.

The burgeoning feelings between Ellie and Ben added a spark of electricity into an already taut situation and I flew through the rest of the pages after that, dying to know how their relationship would evolve. From the beginning, both Ben and Ellie and the reader know that anything between them wouldn’t be allowed, and would just generally be a bad idea, but I was dying for them to finally kiss! Right up until the last page, I didn’t know what was going to happen to them and I loved not knowing whether the girl would get the boy – it’s rather rare in YA.

On to a more serious topic, the war. Before beginning Torn, I was worried that it would be a little too political for me, and I was right. I really have no interest in politics and I rarely take notice of the news because it’s so depressing (I realise that makes me sound very uninformed and whatnot, but oh well) so I didn’t really know the situation of the Afghan war and had to pay rather close attention to all of the tidbits of information passed between the soldiers. I have to admit that this clouded my interest in the novel slightly and it was only the human interest aspects of Torn that really caught my attention, and my emotions.

The presence of the little girl in the blue dress at each event of a death in the novel was haunting and creepy and I worried that Torn might end up having a supernatural edge. Thankfully, her story remained fairly cloudy and I’ve chosen to eschew all other-worldly explanations as that would have disappointed me quite a lot. The story that had most impact on me was of course that of Husna, especially in how he connected with Ellie. His story was heart-breaking and I can’t imagine the pain and struggles that he lived through. The way that his broken English perfectly captured the sound of his voice for me made me love him even more. I thought it was a brilliantly handled story arc.

Although I had some reservations of Torn, I ended up enjoy it and I look forward to reading more from David Massey.

For my 2012 Debut Author Challenge and 2012 Contemporary YA Challenge

Thank you to Chicken House for providing me with a review copy.

Sophie 

Blog Tour: The Image that Inspired Torn by David Massey

As part of the blog tour for David Massey's debut novel, Torn, a story of a nineteen-year-old Ellie who is embarking on her first tour of Afghanistan as a medic, I have something very special for you.


David recorded a video talking about the haunting image that inspired Torn. Enjoy!


https://www.yousendit.com/download/QlVnNHAwMVhmVFl3anNUQw

A huge thank you to David for a fantastic video and Chicken House for asking me to be a part of the tour.


Sophie