Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

March 27, 2013

Today I am here with a video review of Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire.



Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire
Released: August 14th 2012 (paperback edition, previously self-pub)
Series: Beautiful [Book One]
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 437
Source: Purchased
Buy it: Book Depository (free shipping) | Amazon

The new Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University's Walking One-Night Stand.

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby needs—and wants—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.



The Short
Beautiful Disaster was a really enjoyable read. I enjoyed the story, the characters and the romance - all of which kept me flipping those pages and wanting to read more. However, I did have a couple of issues with a particular event that happens towards the end of the book, as well as the actions of the main character. Unfortunately I grew to hate her... which isn't such a good thing. In the end, I began to like her again, though :)


The Long


The Good
Likeable characters (for the most part), gripping story and romance, tear-jerking moments.

The Bad
Aggravating main character, unrealistic "adventure".

Trailer Reveal Blast: The Flame in the Mist + GIVEAWAY!

March 24, 2013

There's evil-a coming from up on the hill
If the Mist doesn't get you, the Agromonds will.
   —From an old Anglavian rhyme




EXCERPT:

Thunder roared, and lightning speared down. In its brief flashes, Jemma could see more shadows gathering. They looked like pale Mordsprites, small, bedraggled, skeletal. She lengthened her stride, but the ground was slick and she slipped, slamming face down in black mud. Hauling herself to her feet yet again, she came face to face with one of the shadows.

It was not a Mordsprite at all, but the gray silhouette of a child, a sunken-cheeked, hollow-eyed boy of no more than five, his ragged arms reaching out to her through the Mist.

Jemma stood petrified, her heart pounding as he swayed closer, oblivious to the chaos raining down around him. Others closed in behind him, a straggling band of waifs, all moving in the same direction.

Toward her.

PRAISE:

"Fast, creepy fun. A bit of The Addams Family, a bit of dark fantasy, and a boatload of monsters and magic make this read a ghoulish delight." - Stefan Bachmann, author of The Peculiar


About The Flame in the Mist:


The sun never shines in the land of Anglavia. Its people live within a sinister mist created by their rulers, the cruel Agromond family. The Agromonds' control is absolute; no one dares defy them. But things are about to change, for the youngest of them is not like the others...

Fiery-headed Jemma has always felt like the family misfit, and is increasingly disturbed by the dark goings-on at Agromond Castle. The night before her thirteenth birthday, Jemma discovers the terrifying reason why: She is not who she thinks she is, and the Agromonds have a dreadful ritual planned for her birthday—a ritual that could kill her.

But saving her skin is just the first of Jemma's ordeals. Ghosts and outcasts, a pair of crystals, a mysterious book, an ancient Prophecy—all these gradually reveal the truth about her past, and a destiny far greater and more dangerous than any she could imagine.

With her trusted friend, Digby, and her two telepathic golden rats, Noodle and Pie, Jemma faces enemies both human and supernatural. But in the end, she and her untapped powers might be the only hope for a kingdom in peril.

About Kit


Kit Grindstaff was born near London, and grew up in the rolling countryside of England. After a brush with pop stardom (under her maiden name, Hain), she moved to New York and embarked on her successful career as a pop song writer. Kit now lives with her husband in the rolling countryside of Pennsylvania, where she still writes songs as well as children's books. The Flame In The Mist is her first novel. 

Find Kit:

Twitter:@kitgrindstaff


Buy Links:




GIVEAWAY TIME!

Kit will be giving away a $30 giftcard to Amazon or The Book Depository to one lucky winner! The giveaway is INTERNATIONAL and will be ending on April 6th.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Guest Post by Gareth Russell

March 1, 2013


“I’m sorry, but HOW can you think that?”: Writing so your characters seem real

Recently, I was clearing out a stack of papers from my study. They’d been buried at the bottom of a drawer for goodness knows how long. At the top was an essay on thirteenth-century Judaism that belonged to my university days and at the bottom was a set of notes, half-typed and half-scribbled, with the words “Character ideas” jotted across the top in black ink. In a much neater section of my bookshelves, I keep blue folders on every major character in my novels, “Popular” and “The Immaculate Deception.” Each folder has an information-pack on a different character – where they live in Belfast, their school house, their birthdays, what their parents do for a living, who their brothers and sisters are, what classes they’re taking, their favourite colour, favourite books, favourite type of food, what extra-curricular they do (if any) – and a stack of magazine articles that I’ve torn out and saved, because I think they’re relevant to that character and their interests. I therefore have all the notes I need for “Popular’s” characters and it was only out of curiosity that I took a look at these very messy pages of paper that I unearthed in my jihad against clutter. 

The “Character ideas” notes I found turned out to have been from four or five years ago, before I even started writing “Popular.” The page had all the original ideas for the novel’s characters, as they developed in my head. These notes reminded me that the character of Imogen had nearly been a brunette called Virginia; Carrie, Faith and Verity had all been suggested for the character that eventually became “Popular’s” ‘princess of pink’ - Kerry; Stewart had nearly been David; Blake had originally been called Andrew and he’d been Irish, not American. There had even been two extra girls in the novel’s main group of friends – a sarcastic blonde called Sarah-Louise and the prim and kind-hearted Natasha. They’d both been dropped, along with a central storyline of Meredith taking a protective interest in a sickly girl in junior school and Kerry’s feud with the fake-tan-caked Lisa Flaherty. I’d called it “the war of the Jaffa fakes” and assumed I was being witty… These notes from four years ago also revealed that another idea had been Mark developing a close friendship with Blake and discussing why he was no longer a born-again Christian. There were so many ideas jotted down all over the page. I suddenly realized that nearly every character had eventually had their name changed or their story changed, in one way or the other. Not one single one of them had stayed exactly the same from the original ideas I’d had for this book. Except for one. At the very top of the page, in neat strokes of black ink, I’d written “Meredith Elisabeth Anne Harper.” No other notes. It was the first name I wrote down for this book and it’s still the first name you’ll come across on the very first page of “Popular.” Nothing about Meredith was ever changed or debated.

I can’t remember where Meredith Harper came from. I can definitely remember various conversations and articles that gave me the idea for her, but I don’t remember where, or how, she was born so completely. One day, she just strolled into my head – fully formed. No edits. Other characters were changed, but Meredith remained the same. There was no need to change her. I know Meredith in a way that it’s difficult to define. Like Cameron in the novel, I often despair of her nastiness, her pettiness and her vengefulness, but writing her has been refreshing because she’s so effortlessly self-confident. She’s a cut-glass perfectionist, with barrels of brains and minimum tolerance for weakness. Having created the character, it’s my job as a writer not to try to make her “nicer” just to suit everybody’s taste. Writing is a bit like friendship, I think: if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no-one. I prefer to leave Meredith as she is and let readers decide if they like her or don’t. 

It’s that idea that was at the very core of writing “Popular.” It’s right there, on those scribbled notes: “Make them likable if you’d like in real life. No preaching.” I like Meredith Harper, but there are plenty of people who don’t. That’s good. Some people find Cameron to be spineless, others think he’s endearing, others see him as snobbish and cold. A lot of readers detested Blake, but there were also quite a few writing to me or leaving comments on our Facebook page saying how much they liked him and wanted to see him back in the next books. During a book signing in Waterstone’s book store in Belfast, two girls actually got into a pretty  heated conversation in front of me about Blake – with the phrase, “I’m sorry, but HOW can you actually think that?” being used by one of them. Imogen, who everyone seems to like despite her wanton selfishness and constant partying, is far more popular with some readers than her beret-loving friend Kerry, who a friend of mine described as ‘not funny, at all,’ while another said she’s ‘by far the most likable character in the book and utterly hilarious.’ 

I suppose that was my intention with these books. If I’ve done it right, you’ll like the characters in “Popular” if you’d like them in real life; you’ll laugh with (or at) them; you’ll hate them or love them or something in between. I’d like them to feel, in some way, real. But to seem real, they have to have good bits, bad bits, funny bits, unique bits, weird bits, bits you’ve observed from watching other people and bits you’ve made up yourself. So much work has gone into these characters – as the sheet of notes that I discovered reminded me – but it doesn’t feel that way. They have been a constant pleasure. I’ve had a lot of laughs with them and I root for their romances, their friendships and their failures. They’re great company, so much fun to write and thank God there are still a few more books to go. I’m not quite ready to leave them yet!

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You can buy “Popular” from Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon Canada or Barnes and Noble. It’s available in paperback and on Kindle.

You can buy its sequel “The Immaculate Deception” from Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon Canada or Barnes and Noble. You can also rent them on Amazon Kindle US and read some fun reviews of the books here and here!

A second sequel is due out later this year. I’d love to hear from you on our Facebook page, you can find out more about the series of books (including how they were made into a play) at our website. Or if you’d like to follow me on Twitter - @garethrussell1.

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About Gareth Russell

Gareth Russell is a 26 year-old writer, speaker and historian from Northern Ireland. He studied history at the University of Oxford and his first book was published in the UK and Ireland by Penguin in 2011. The “Popular” series has since gone global with its new publishers, MadeGlobal. Gareth is currently working on the third novel, as well as his first non-fiction book, a history of the British monarchy.
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