For the first cover reveal here on the blog this year, I'm beyond glad to be sharing the cover to a sequel that I only just learned is actually happening - which is good because I need to prepare my heart for this book.
Showing posts with label Author: Selene Castrovilla. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Author: Selene Castrovilla. Show all posts
Jun 23, 2014
{Blog Tour} Book Review + Giveaway: MELT - Selene Castrovilla
Title: MELT
Author: Selene Castrovilla
Release Date: November 6th 2014
Release Date: November 6th 2014
Publisher: Last Syllable Books
Age Group: Young Adult
Source: eARC for blog tour
Source: eARC for blog tour
MELT is a brutal love story, set against the backdrop of The Wizard of Oz. Sixteen year old “good girl” Dorothy just blew into the small town of Highland Park – where the social headquarters is Munchkinland (Dunkin’ Donuts.) There, she meets Joey – a “bad boy” who tells no one about the catastrophic domestic violence he witnesses at home. Can these two lovers survive peer pressure, Joey’s reputation, and his alcoholism? And then there’s his family's secret – about to be unleashed.
Told in dual first person, Joey's words are scattered on the page - reflecting his broken state. Dorothy is the voice of reason - until something so shattering happens that she, too, may lose her grip. Can their love endure, or will it melt away?
MELT is based on true events. It is both a chilling tale of abuse, and a timeless romance. It will hit you like a punch in the face, and also seep through the cracks in your soul.MELT is not a book for the faint of heart. I went into it on a lazy Sunday morning and having completely forgotten what the blurb said, and instantly it had me in its grip. This is one of those books that is just impossible to put down, and because of its length - three hundred twenty-eight pages, according to Goodreads, but it does feel significantly shorter than that - I don't think anyone would have to.
Dorothy is an all-around good girl: she has good grades, does not smoke, drink, or care for her social status. But when her parents' job bring her to Highland Park, she meets Joey, someone that everyone considers to be a bad boy through and through. He drinks, has a mangled fist from numerous fights, and even a rap sheet, but no one in their small town knows the horrors that he's subjected to daily at home. No one knows, and when they see him, no one cares... except for Dorothy.
They ain't doing nothing new to me.
I already got myself locked up in my head.The moment we enter his head, it is easy to discern that Joey has a twisted life. His story broke my heart because, once we get past the booze and the fighting, he really is a good guy who just wants a normal, loving family to come home to. So the entire time as Dorothy tries her best to unravel him, I kept waving my internal pom poms for her.
There is, undeniably, quite a bit of insta-love in this book, but it was so beautifully done that it didn't bother me one bit. And who was I to question the sparks that flew right off page one, the same sparks that melted my heart right alongside Dorothy's and Joey's? Their relationship goes through its highs and lows, Dorothy desperate to tear down his walls and Joey letting her in while still keeping her at a distance because he's sure that once she learns of his real life, she'd bail.
A gripping tale of love, the lack of it, and just what both can do to a person, MELT is one book I will never forget. The author truly nailed the dual POV and made me not just read the story, but experience it, and I only breathed for real once I got to the end.
MY FAVORITE PART is the ending. Sigh.
RATING:
Selene Castrovilla is an award-winning teen and children’s author who believes that through all trends, humanity remains at the core of literature. She is the author of Saved By the Music and The Girl Next Door, teen novels originally published by WestSide Books and now available digitally through ASD Publishing. Her third children’s book with Calkins Creek Books, Revolutionary Friends, was released in April 2013. She is also a contributing author to UncommonYA. Selene holds an MFA in creative writing from New School University and a BA in English from New York University. She lives on Long Island with her two sons.
Giveaway!
Sep 18, 2013
{Blog Tour} Book Review + Giveaway: The Girl Next Door - Selene Castrovilla
Welcome to my stop for The Girl Next Door blog tour! You can follow the tour here.
Title: The Girl Next Door
Author: Selene Castrovilla
Release Date: May 24th 2013
Publisher: ASD Publishing
Age Group: Young Adult
Source: ecopy for blog tour
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes
Seventeen year old Samantha has been best friends with seventeen year old Jesse since she moved into the New York high-rise apartment next door to his thirteen years ago. Jesse is their school's poster child for popularity: good-looking, a star athlete, even Romeo in the school play. On opening night he collapses on stage. That's when doctors discover the unthinkable: a tumor on his spine. His type of cancer is virtually incurable – 97% of those diagnosed die within ten months.
Jesse shuts down, refusing to see most of his friends. He submits to treatments of chemo and radiation, but he doesn't possess hope. Sam is the one person he’ll talk to. He convinces his mom to let her sleep in another bed in his room, saying he's afraid to die alone.
That’s when Jess and Sam make a startling, bittersweet discovery: they’ve been in love all along.I've always been a softie when it comes to terminal illnesses in books and movies, which is why I try to avoid those as much as possible. This is the reason why I haven't read John Green's The Fault in Our Stars yet, and until now, I'm still not sure what compelled me to read The Girl Next Door. Not that I regret it.
The first thing I noticed was the beautiful writing. Selene Castrovilla knew how to gut-punch with just a few words, and with this story she's telling, she sure hit me more than once. But it wasn't all sad. The dry humor in this book, particularly Sam's and her mom's, had me laughing out loud a lot of times.
Mom sighed. "Is this my punishment for writing smut all these years? If I switch to Christian writing, will things be different?"
"Only with your royalty checks."Jesse's initial sarcasm also made me snort very un-lady-like, even though I knew it was brought about by his helplessness.
As is the usual case with terminal illnesses—or any illness, for that matter—the sick person isn't the only one who suffers. Sam might as well have been dying herself. She definitely couldn't hold back her emotions well, and I hated how she would often get selfish and even more depressed than Jesse. But turns out she actually had deep-seated issues of her own, so I just felt for her in the end.
One of my few qualms with this book was how there wasn't a lot said—or, rather, showed—pertaining to their friendship because when the story opened, Jesse already had cancer and Sam was already sleeping in his room. But their romance? Oh, it was there, alright. Theirs was a sad, beautiful, tragic love affair, and I'd be damned if I say I didn't root for them to live out the rest of their young lives together, for Jesse to beat his cancer.
Just when I thought I'd survive this without the waterworks, the dam broke. The book was beautiful in its entirety, but the ending particularly even more so. Until now, almost a day after finishing it, I'm still telling myself that my tears were happy ones.
MY FAVORITE PART was
"I want you to hold me just like this—I want you to hold me when I die."*SOBS*
RATING:
About the author:
Selene Castrovilla is an award-winning teen and children’s author who believes that through all trends, humanity remains at the core of literature. She is the author of Saved By the Music and The Girl Next Door, teen novels originally published by WestSide Books and now available digitally through ASD Publishing. Her third children’s book with Calkins Creek Books, Revolutionary Friends, was released in April. She is also a contributing author to UncommonYA. Selene holds an MFA in creative writing from New School University and a BA in English from New York University. She lives on Long Island with her two sons.
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