Maria V. Snyder is the author of the popular novels, The Study series, The Glass series, and most recently Inside Out, which also happens to be our Book of the Month right now.  We recently asked Maria to review one of her favorite YA novels.  She chose Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready.   Enjoy!

Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready

Award winning fantasy author, Jeri Smith-Ready has dipped her toe into the young adult market with her recently released fantasy book, Shade.

The premise of the book is quite intriguing – On the day of Aura’s birth a Shift happened and all children, including Aura born after this Shift can see and hear ghosts. It’s sixteen years later and the world has adjusted to life with ghosts that only kids can see. Aura would like nothing better to ignore them and hang out with her rocker boyfriend, Logan Keeley. In fact, Aura would like to find out why the Shift happened and how she could undo it.

Jeri has created an unique world with Shade. And she answered all the logical questions a reader would ask about what’s it like to live with ghosts (thank you Jeri!). For privacy, she invented black boxes that keep ghosts from entering certain rooms like the bathroom and schools. People wear red to repel them, and there’s a shady government agency (of course) dedicated to studying and policing them.

Just like in her urban vampire books, Wicket Game and Bad to the Bone, Jeri’s love of music is once again a main theme throughout this book. Aura’s hot boyfriend is the singer in an Irish-flavored rock band in Baltimore named the Keeley Brothers. In the beginning chapters of the book, we learn it’s the night of Logan’s 17th birthday and record company reps are listening to their gig. After the gig, he’s offered a recording contract. Basically, it’s the best night of his life, but unfortunately it’s his last.

Now don’t yell at me for spoiling this little surprise. Just read the back cover blurb or the write up on Amazon.com and you’ll know all about it, too. And the kicker about those back cover blurbs is – the author doesn’t write them. It’s usually the editor or marketing, hoping to hook a reader’s interest. After I read the blurb, I assumed that Logan’s death happened before the start of the story (don’t know why – I just did). That when I opened to chapter one, it would be a few months later or even a day later, but no, there’s Logan happy and full of life. He’s a great character and so are Aura and the band members (Jeri excelled with creating very likable characters).

Unfortunately for me, knowing he’s going to die makes it really hard for me to read the first three chapters (the reason – I’m a mother of a 15 year old boy so I don’t think this would bother the target audience as much). I kept putting the book down, but I wanted to review the book and I loved Jeri’s other books, so I kept with it. But as soon as I made it past the tragedy, I flew through the rest of the book in a day.

This is a great book you need to read. Logan returns as a ghost (so he’s not gone gone) and another potential and very much alive suitor, Zachary Moore arrives with his secrets and sexy Scottish brogue. The characters and world are rich and well developed and the ending hinted at more books to come. Which I just found out, the second book, Shift is due out on May 2011.

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Read also Maria’s review of Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer here.

Visit Maria’s website for more info about her and her books.

Without much further ado, the winners of the Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder giveaway are:

5 US and Canadian winners:

Kelsey F.
Desiree T.
Morgan M.
Jacy H.
Abigail B.

1 International winner:

Nelda F.

Congratulations guys!  Expect an email from me soon.

We had over 300 entries in this giveaway. Thanks so much for participating everyone and stay tuned for more book giveaways.

Read Katie’s review of Inside Out and Maria’s Interview.   Also watch out for Maria V. Snyder’s Guest Review tomorrow.

Maria V. Snyder is the author of extremely popular series such as The Study Series and The Glass Series and various short stories to name a few. April celebrates the release of Maria’s new young adult novel Inside Out and as it is our current book of the month, Maria was kind enough to answer some of our questions for your reading pleasure. I should warn you, there are a few spoiler-ish moments. Enjoy!

Trella has had an interesting childhood, one that has left her with very little trust for anyone else around her, yet it was those people who ultimately Trella needed to survive. Was it a conscious decision to have Trella start from this place of no-trust to slowly understanding why she needed the people around her?

MS: Yes – I did try to have Trella start out basically hating her world and the people in it—except for one person. Then as she learns that not every thing in her world is as she had thought, her view changes with time and experience. I’m like to put my characters in difficult situations and see how they change.

Where did the idea for Inside Out come from? I’ve read it was a dream, but was there any other events that inspired the setting? I’m particularly curious as to how the concept of ‘weeks’ and ‘centiweeks’ came around.

MS: It was from a dream. But I created some of the details in order to turn the idea into a story. The idea to use weeks actually came from my daughter. She was mad at my son and told him she “wouldn’t talk to him again for a million weeks.” Then she paused and asked me how long was a million weeks. So I calculated it out and came up with 19,000 years. I tucked this little nugget of information away and then when I needed a way for the Insiders to keep track of time, weeks sounded better than years. Centiweeks is just like centimeters – my world uses base 10 for everything so centi and deci all worked well.

Originally Trella and Riley are lead to believe that there are vast differences between Upper and Lower lifestyles, largely stemming from lack of knowledge. How important was it to need the Uppers and Lowers to work together to discover a solution to their problems?

MS: It was very important since the uppers controlled all the mechanical systems. And also the Pop Cops encouraged the lack of knowledge between the uppers and lowers so they would not trust each other and wouldn’t compare notes and see how they both suffered under the Pop Cop’s rule. I was trying to show how making assumptions about people because of their race or religion is not the right way to go about it. That you need to learn more about another person before you judge them.

The harsh methods taken by LC Karla to control the scrubs and Uppers were eventually her downfall. If there was more understanding between scrubs and Uppers, would life be better for everyone?

MS: It would be better, but still having that division of people – uppers and lowers and different set of rules for each will make people unhappy.

Favourite holiday destination?

MS: I enjoy spending a week at the beach – any beach will do as long as I have sand, sun and an ocean to swim in

Can you tell us anything about the next instalment, Outside In?

MS: I can’t tell too much as I don’t want to give away the twists of Inside Out, but it continues Trella’s story and how she and the Insiders deal with a new threat – one from Outside.

All time favourite novel?

MS: This is a really hard question for me to answer. I have so many favorites and each is a favorite for a different reason. Since Inside Out has a strong female protagonist, my favorite girl power novel is The Gate to Women’s Country by Sherri S. Tepper.

What is currently in your To-Be-Read pile?

MS: It would probably be easier to list what isn’t in my TBR pile Right now I have a bunch of young adult books in my pile, Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins, Fire, by Kristen Cashore, the last two books of the Percy Jackson Olympians series by Rick Riodian, Ink Exchange, by Melissa Marr, Bad to the Bone, by Jeri Smith-Ready, How to Make a Wish by Mindy Klasky, and I’m eagerly awaiting Rachel Caine’s newest Morganville Vampire book, Fair Fight.

Any quirky writing rituals or habits?

MS: When I sign books, I like the color of my pen to match the color of the book’s cover. Right now, I take 5 different color pens with me and they have to be Uni ball’s vision elite pens

Any last thoughts to share with us?

MS: I like to add that because the layout of Inside can be hard to imagine, I posted maps of all four levels of Inside on my website.  Here’s a link: http://www.mariavsnyder.com/maps.php I was hoping my publisher would print them in the book.  But they are excited about the book and have created a website just for it: http://www.whatsinsideout.com On the website is a personality quiz to see what type of scrub job you’re suited for, and a video book trailer for the book.

Inside Out is available now at all good bookstores.

Nothing has been the same since Caleb Becker left a party drunk, got behind the wheel, and hit Maggie Armstrong. Even after months of painful physical therapy, Maggie walks with a limp. Her social life is nil and a scholarship to study abroad—her chance to escape everyone and their pitying stares—has been canceled. After a year in juvenile jail, Caleb’s free . . . if freedom means endless nagging from a transition coach and the prying eyes of the entire town. Coming home should feel good, but his family and ex-girlfriend seem like strangers.

Caleb and Maggie are outsiders, pigeon-holed as “criminal” and “freak.” Then the truth emerges about what really happened the night of the accident and, once again, everything changes. It’s a bleak and tortuous journey for Caleb and Maggie, yet they end up finding comfort and strength from a surprising source: each other.

Caleb wishes that his parents would stop pretending that everything is fine. He just got out of juvenile hall, for Pete’s sake – everything is not fine. So when Caleb’s mom throws a little ‘welcome home’ party for Caleb and invites all her friends rather than his, he almost wishes he was back behind bars. On top of that, he’s having trouble getting back into school, his friends are treating him differently and his girlfriend wants to pick things up from where they left off, but she’s seeing someone new now. Just when Caleb thinks his life couldn’t possibly suck any more, he runs into Maggie.

The girl he hit with his car.

His sister’s ex-best friend.

His neighbor.

When he looks into her eyes, he’s confronted with a whole bunch of emotional baggage that he would rather not think about. He wants to apologize for ruining her life, but what would be the point? There is nothing he could say that could possibly fix what he did to her. He knows he should turn and walk away – after all, his probation forbids him from speaking to or contacting her – but he just can’t seem to get his legs to move.

When Maggie sees Caleb standing there only a few feet away from her, it hurts. It hurts more than she thought it would. He did this to her. Before the accident, she was an athlete. A good one, at that. Now she can barely walk. Her athletic scholarship has been revoked and she’s got no chance of getting out of this place. She turns to walk, to get as far away from him as possible, but she stumbles. He reaches for her, catches her. She recoils, of course, but it’s in this moment that both Maggie and Caleb’s lives are forever changed.

As always, Simone Elkeles does not disappoint. Leaving Paradise is raw, emotional, and anything but heart-warming, but it’s one of those ‘must read’ kind of novels. There are many things I love about Simone Elkeles: her writing style is free-flowing and effortless; her descriptions are bright and colorful and tantalize the imagination; but most of all, her characters are enigmatic and alive. I could be Maggie. You could be Caleb. Elkeles creates characters that are flawed and mirror real life, actual people. And that, dear yaReaders, is the thing that sets Simone Elkeles aside from many Young Adult authors today.

Leaving Paradise is so believable it reads like a memoir, rather than popular teen fiction.

Simone Elkeles – I heart you!

Rating:

Teaser Quote: Caleb crouches down, his face right in front of mine.

“You are not a loser. Hell, Maggie, you always knew what you wanted and went for it.”

I tell him the honest truth. “Not anymore. When you hit me, a part of me died.”

Hey yaReaders.

If your anything like me, that you would be counting down the days until the release of Spirit Bound, the 5th instalment in Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series. Thanks to Penguin Australia, we are happy to present to you the Spirit Bound Teaser Quotes. Released through Penguin Australia’s YouTube channel, there are seven videos in total with one quote from Spirit Bound.

Keep in mind though, there is no context to these quotes! We don’t know who is saying this and to who. Keep a check on http://www.youtube.com/user/PenguinAustralia, and the first one is here below.

Enjoy!

Spirit Bound Teaser Quote 1 of 7

Love is all you need…or is it?

Penny Lane is sick of boys and sick of dating, so she swears off it all and starts The Lonely Heats Club. What penny doesn’t realise is just how many of her friends feel the same way and want to join her club. Even some girls she’d never have thought would care, want to sign up. Then the unthinkable happens…

So what do you do when you’re the founding member of an anti-dating club and you start to have feelings for a guy who obviously likes you back?

Penny is your average, normal everyday girl. She passes school, has her best friends who are there for her and a family who is normal. Well, normal if you discount the intense love her parents have for the Beatles. So intense, that they named their daughters after their favourite songs, went vegetarian because that’s what Paul McCartney did and refuse to listen to anyone else singing a Beatles song, except the Beatles themselves. And it’s the summer where Penny starts to think that she might get what she wanted. Nate Taylor.

Penny has known Nate since they were five; the Taylor’s are her parent’s longest friends after all. Nate was the only person Penny looked forward to seeing on her summer, her mind fixed on what they could do. This year, there is something more underneath the flirting. There is promise of what might be. Penny is thinking that all her dreams are going to come true. She has finally decided that Nate is the one, that he will be her first. That is until she finds him in the basement with another girl. A girl that is missing quite a few clothes. Suddenly, Penny knows what it is like to have a broken heart. Nate was all she ever wanted, and he lied to her and betrayed her, the one thing he said he would never do. Penny does the only thing she knows how to – turn’s to the Beatles for comfort, and inspiration.

For hanging on her wall is a poster of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Lonely. Hearts. Club. It’s an idea that changes the rest of Penny’s school year. Penny decides that she has had enough. Enough of guys that cheat and lie, enough of getting her heart broken and enough of the jerks that go to McKinley High. She starts a club that has her swearing off guys for the rest of her high school life. No dating, ever. It’s a decision that has her friends thinking she is crazy that is until they decided that they too, want to join.

Before she knows it, Penny’s club is the hottest thing at McKinley. Girls from all grades are want to join, and not always for the right reasons. And as the club gains more popularity, Penny is dancing closer to the edge of the line that could see her lose her best chance at a guy that could actually be right for her. For her decision to stick by the club rules, could not only affect her own life, but those of the people around her.

The Lonely Hearts Club is debut novel from Elizabeth Eulberg, who just like Penny, was sick of having to change herself to get a guy. It was this idea and an experience with a past friend that inspired Eulberg to create the story of The Lonely Hearts Club. It is something different, a romance where the rules have changed. One where friends try to understand who they are, and exactly what they want, not always with the best outcomes. The plot is easily relatable too – who hasn’t thought they found the perfect guy, only to discover that he defiantly wasn’t the perfect boyfriend. Who has lost a best friend to their new boyfriend, someone they haven’t known for long but is suddenly much more important than the friend they have had since year four. It’s a story of a group of friends brought together through the common trait of being single. Yet it is a celebration of finding yourself, of staying true to your friends and discovering that there are the good guys out there, but it might take a while for you to find them.

The characters that Eulberg constructed are instantly likeable, albeit at times a little frustrating. Penny as the founding member makes the most discovery and growth. From someone who doesn’t know who she is or what she wants, she turns into someone that decides exactly what she is going to do. Yet, getting there wasn’t easy, and Penny made her own fair share of mistakes along the way. Tracey provided the comic relief in a way that made you wish you knew her in real life. Tracey was always there, being supportive and knowing the right thing to do, even Penny didn’t know it herself. Diane is the friend that we have all seen, the popular cheerleader whose life all revolves around her boyfriend. That is, until she breaks up with her boyfriend. Diane becomes the second member of The Lonely Hearts Club, and comes to discover exactly what she was missing out on.

The Lonely Hearts Club is one of those easy, enjoyable reads that leaves you feeling good at the end of. A great debut from a promising writer.

Publication date: 2010

Pages: 290

Rating::

Teaser quote: “And, Nate? You kiss like a sobering dog, you have bad breath, and you wouldn’t know how to push the right buttons on a girl if we came with manuals. Happy Thanksgiving, Jackass.”

All right, I am going to be a bigger person starting right now.

Keep your head down. Don’t get noticed. Or else.

I’m Trella. I’m a scrub. A Nobody.

One of thousands who work in the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I’ve got one friend, do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops. So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? Not like it’s all that dangerous – the only neck at risk is my own.

Until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to girl to lead a revolution.

I should have just said no…

Trella’s life is a never-ending pattern. Work the even shifts, 10 hours on, 10 hours off. Cleaning the air-ducts with her cleaning troll. Turn troll on. Follow troll. Turn troll of, move to the next duct. It’s a life that she has known for years. One that has made her hate the scrubs around her. It’s in the ducts that Trella can get her peace. No one else around, just her and the metal. And when you have a life with no friends, it’s easy to see why Trella chooses the ducts over the taunts and hostile glances of the other scrubs around her. All except one – Cogon. Everyone is friends with Cog, and it’s impossible not to be.

Cog had been looking for Trella. He has a new prophet he wants her to meet. An Upper who did something so wrong that he was cast into the Lower levels to be forgotten. Yet Trella has her suspicions. This Upper knows too much about her, is asking for too much and promising too little. Yet it’s the kind of thing Trella can’t resist. A chance to prove why she is the queen of the pipes. For the prophet claims he has information on the location of Gateway. The portal to Outside. Yet, they are hidden. In his old apartment, which just happens to be in the restricted section of the Uppers. Scrubs aren’t meant to access the Uppers, and Trella is probably the only who has found a way around.

Against her better judgment, Trella goes looking for the prophet’s disks, knowing that if she is caught, she has no hope of ever returning to the Lowers. Yet as she continues to delve further into the secrets of Inside, she realises maybe everything isn’t exactly as they have been told. After a chance meeting with an Upper who doesn’t turn her in, Trella embarks on a path more dangerous than anything she has tried before. Along with Riley, Cog and the prophet, Trella embarks on the path to discovering the true location of Gateway. A location that every scrub has heard of, but few believe exists. Yet there is a cost, more deadly then Trella could ever imagine.

As more and more scrubs and Uppers alike start to become involved, it is only a matter of time before one of them will be gone forever…

Inside Out is the start of a new series from bestselling author Maria V. Snyder. I have been a large fan of Snyder’s work, and was interested to see how Inside Out would live up to her, in my opinion, most well known work, the Study Series. From the first chapter, the writing and perspective of Trella captured me. Trella was a character that was so clearly defined that I knew we were on for an adventure. Trella develops from a girl who doesn’t trust anyone around her, into a young woman who is confidant in what she needs to do to protect those around her. Trella goes through her rough moments, her self doubts and battles her inner demons on why is she helping to do something she swore she didn’t believe in? Yet without the help of Cog and Riley, Trella would not have been able to achieve anything. For Cog teaches her how to see those around her for more than just mindless scrubs, and Riley convinces Trella that not all Uppers are the same, that there are people who she can trust.

The development of the social constructs of Inside is completely thought out and impeccably detailed. Each and every aspect of society is there, rules that must be obeyed or fought against. Social hierarchy, illegal activities and the ever alluring promise of Outside. The world is complete in a way that lets you get completely lost in the actions of Trella and her friends, lets you believe that their situation is possible. Extremely well written in a way that leaves you needing to read the next page, Snyder has constructed a work that I see as the beginning to a new and fantastic series.

Publication date: 2010

Pages: 315

Rating::

Teaser quote: My heart dropped into my stomach and ran laps. Lieutenant Commander Karla and three Pop Cops followed my supervisor. The LC’s smug expression and the terrified fury on my supervisor’s fact told me all I needed to know.

Without hesitating, I ran.