Flat-Out Love Tour: Review & Giveaway

My first book blog tour! I'm so excited! Check out the below post for my review of Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park and a giveaway. Later today I'll feature a guest post by Jessica Park on the recent Wall Street Journal article about YA literature.

Title: Flat-Out Love

Author: Jessica Park

Publisher: Self-Published

Release Date: April 11, 2011

Date Read: June 27, 2011

Rating: 5/5 stars 

Goodreads

Summary

Flat-Out Love is a warm and witty novel of family love and dysfunction, deep heartache and raw vulnerability, with a bit of mystery and one whopping, knock-you-to-your-knees romance. 

Review

Wow! I reviewed Flat-Out Love on a whim, to take my first dive into the world of self-published novels. I am blown away by Jessica Park's humorous writing and amazing plot. I would consider this one of the best novels of 2011. You should definitely check it out!

The characters. Don't even get me started on the characters. Flat-Out Love has some of the most hilarious, quirky, realistic, emotional, and relatable characters I've ever read about. Even the characters you don't understand or particularly like are so well written that you can't help but love hearing their stories. There's been a recent complaint about a lack of parents or family members in YA novels but instead this book is all about family interactions. My favourite aspect of the novel was the modern language and technology. Facebook status updates to start each chapter and constant music references made Julie, Matt and Finn even more real and humorous to read about. This would make an awesome movie!

Jessica Park stated that she had problems publishing Flat-Out Love mostly due to Julie's age. I would consider this a young adult novel because even though Julie's in university her story is more about her emotional relationships than her schooling. More teenagers would connect with her trials and tribulations than older adult readers. I hope publishers in the future would reconsider novels with older teenagers because they're missing out on a huge demographic of readers and some awesome novels. 

I absolutely loved this book. I cried, I laughed, I cried again. It taught me so much about love and life, less about university and more about finding my way. I thought I had a pretty solid prediction about the ending and where all the characters would end up but never in a million years would I have pictured such a perfect ending. I didn't want it to end and if I could I'd have Jessica Park write another novel with all the unseen conversations, all the "missing pieces" throughout the year.

Quote: "If you can't stop thinking about someone's update that's called status cling."

Recommended: The Year of Secret Assignments (Jaclyn Moriarty), Am I Right or Am I Right (Barry Jonsberg), Audrey, Wait! (Robin Benway)

Flat-Out Love is available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Paperback copies will be available soon.

GIVEAWAY

Throughout the tour we’re giving away three eBooks of ‘Flat-Out Love’ from Smashwords, so you can read the book in whichever format you’d like. Enter at each tour stop to increase your chances of winning.

Giveaway Rules

- Open internationally

- Comment on this post

- Fill out the form

- Bonus entries: promote the blog tour (tweet, sidebar link, blog entry, etc.)

- Giveaway ends midnight EST on July 12

Thank you  to Ashley at The Book Labyrinth for organizing this tour. Be sure to check out the other stops on the tour this week!

Canada Day Blog Hop: Meetup & Giveaway!

Happy Canada Day!

To celebrate Canada Day I am participating in the Canada Day Blop Hop created by Aislynn at Knit, Purl, Stitch, Read & Cook and Chrystal at Snowdrop Dreams of Books. Each blog participating is posting a Canada-themed post and giveaway from June 29th to July 2nd. The best part? All giveaways are open to Canadians!


My Canada-themed post is: Meet-Ups!


I've spoken to a few fellow Canadian YA book bloggers and I think it'd be awesome if we could all meet up at some point. Of course, not all of us live near Toronto or would be able to travel there but it's a central spot where the majority of us could meet at. What's a better venue than Word on the Street! If you are free on September 25th and are able to make it Toronto, send me a Tweet/comment/email. If there's enough interest hopefully we can all get together.

I am giving away one copy of Leap by Jodi Lundgren. This is her most recent YA novel, published on March 1, 2011.

When life is changing, sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith in yourself.


Natalie Ferguson has just turned fifteen, a momentous age that, happily, means that she's officially a grown-up. But while her mom doesn't seem to have got the memo, Kevin, her best friend Sasha's older brother, has. The school year is over, and Natalie is looking forward to a summer of perfecting her technique at dance camp. Caught up with the excitement of Kevin's attention, their relationship quickly becomes intimate and all-consuming.


Natalie's summer is a mix of amazing highs and dramatic lows. She goes from being in love and lust with Kevin to realizing that he is not the guy she thought he was, and she may have lost her friendship with Sasha in the process. Then, just when she's ready to turn to her single mom for advice, she learns that her mother is now in love with a woman. Losing her virginity, dealing with her new understanding of her mother, and trying to renegotiate her relationships, Natalie clings to her dancing as the only sure thing in a life suddenly full of questions.

Giveaway Rules

• One entry per person
• Open to US/Canadian residents only
• Must be 13-years-old minimum
• +1 entry for GFC follower
• +1 entry for Twitter follower
• +1 entry for tweet

Fill out this form to be entered. 

Giveaway closes on July 2nd at midnight. Winner will be randomly selected on July 3rd and will have 48 hours to respond to my email to claim the prize. 

Check out some of the other blogs on the hop for more awesome giveaways!

Spring Blog Carnival - Extraordinary Giveaway!

My first Carnival! The Spring Blog Carnival is a week-long giveaway hop from May 1st to 7th. The hosts of this Carnival have also created themed "booths" on their blogs for additional giveaways. Check out Reading Angel, Pure Imagination, The Book Swarm, and Candace's Book Blog for all the details! At the bottom of the post is a Mister Linky list of all other blog participants. Enjoy!

I am giving away a hardcover copy of Extraordinary by Nancy Werlin. This is her most recent novel, published in September 2010. 

Phoebe finds herself drawn to Mallory, the strange and secretive new kid in school, and the two girls become as close as sisters . . . until Mallory's magnetic older brother, Ryland, shows up during their junior year. Ryland has an immediate, exciting hold on Phoebe, but a dangerous hold, for she begins to question her feelings about her best friend and, worse, about herself. Soon she'll discover the shocking truth about Ryland and Mallory: that these two are visitors from the faerie realm who have come to collect on an age-old debt. Generations ago, the faerie queen promised Pheobe's ancestor five extraordinary sons in exchange for the sacrifice of one ordinary female heir. But in hundreds of years there hasn't been a single ordinary girl in the family, and now the faeries are dying. Could Phoebe be the first ordinary one? Could she save the faeries, or is she special enough to save herself?


Giveaway Guidelines

• Open to US residents only (Mr. Linky mix-up, sorry!)
• Must be 13 years old minimum
• You do not have to be a follower to enter 
• +1 entry for a tweet 

Contest closes on May 7th at 9:00 pm EST. 

Good luck!