Book Blitz: Zenn Diagram

We are really excited that ZENN DIAGRAM by Wendy
Brant has dropped and that we get to share the news (although it is a little after the fact, we are no less excited!)!

If you
haven’t yet heard about this wonderful book by Author Wendy Brant, be sure to
check out all the details below.

This blitz
also includes a giveaway for 3 finished copies of the book courtesy of Kids Can
Press and Rockstar Book Tours. So if you’d like a chance to win, enter in the
Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post.

About The Book:

Title: ZENN
DIAGRAM

Author: Wendy Brant

Pub.
Date: April 4, 2017

Publisher: Kids Can
Press

Pages: 328

Formats: Hardcover,
eBook

Find
it: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads

Eva Walker is a seventeen-year-old math genius. And if that doesn’t do
wonders for her popularity, there’s another thing that makes it even worse:
when she touches another person or anything that belongs to them — from clothes
to textbooks to cell phones — she sees a vision of their emotions. She can read
a person’s fears and anxieties, their secrets and loves … and what they have
yet to learn about calculus. This is helpful for her work as a math tutor, but
it means she can never get close to people. Eva avoids touching anyone and
everyone. People think it’s because she’s a clean freak — with the emphasis on
freak — but it’s all she can do to protect herself from other people’s issues.

Then one day a new student walks into Eva’s life. His jacket gives off so
much emotional trauma that she falls to the floor. Eva is instantly drawn to
Zenn, a handsome and soulful artist who also has a troubled home life, and her
feelings only grow when she realizes that she can touch Zenn’s skin without
having visions. But when she discovers the history that links them, the truth
threatens to tear the two apart.

Excerpt:

While he waits for his coffee, I snuggle deeper into the couch, hoping he
won’t notice me. The only thing worse than filling out college applications the
night of the homecoming dance is your crush seeing you fill out college
applications the night of the homecoming dance. I guess it should make me feel
better that he’s not at the dance, either, but it doesn’t. When guys don’t go
to homecoming it seems like a conscious choice. When girls don’t go, it just
seems like they didn’t get asked.

….

“Tall black drip!” the barista calls out, like she’s calling out his name
and not the drink. Zenn is tall and dark, but there is nothing drippy about
him. He is most definitely non-drippy, whatever that means. He takes his coffee
and I think I am home free until he steps away from the counter.

Crap. He sees me. I am equal parts mortified and thrilled.

He raises his cup in a silent greeting and comes a few steps closer. He
opens the lid and I try not to stare at his mouth as he blows on his coffee to
cool it.

“Hey, Zenn.” My voice sounds goofy in my own ears. Too loud in this
small, cozy space.

He takes a tentative sip from his cup. Straight black coffee, no cream,
no sugar, no chocolate syrup. What a badass.

“No homecoming for you either?” he asks.

I close my laptop and press my hands against the warm surface. I shrug.
“I’m not much of a dancer.”

Zenn nods in agreement. “Yeah. Me neither.”

He comes even closer and sits down on the arm of the sofa across from me.
His knees are spread wide, his forearms resting on his inner thighs, his
hypnotizing hands holding his coffee in the triangle between his legs. He looks
so comfortable, so at ease in his own skin. How does one get that way? You
wouldn’t think it would be hard – I mean, we’re born in our skin. It should be
pretty comfortable by the time you hit seventeen, eighteen. But for me … not so
much.

Excerpt
from Zenn Diagram © 2017 Wendy Brant, with permission from Kids Can Press.

About Wendy:

So my name alone should give you a clue that I graduated from high school
when bangs were big and clothes were baggy. I went to Northwestern University
and majored in journalism even though I had no desire to be a journalist. I've
been married to a great guy for a whole drinking-aged person's life. I've got
two amazing and yet very different (and very tall) teenage kids. I like crappy
food, pinning inspirational quotes on Pinterest, have a tendency to start
paragraphs with "anyway", and I wish I were funnier. I would love to
be one of those really, REALLY funny bloggers (like Insane in the Mom-Brain) that
makes you pee yourself a little bit. I am only moderately funny. I admit
that. It's one of my great sadnesses in life.



​I started writing fiction when I was 10, but tried to be practical with the
whole journalism thing. Didn't take. Shortly after college, the fiction-writing
desire reared its non-practical head and I've been writing ever since.



Anyway, I'm probably just like you. We'd probably be friends if we met in real
life. (Well, let's be honest. It's likely that only my friends are actually reading
this blog, so we probably ARE friends in real life.) But whether we are friends
in real life, or just virtual friends through cyberspace, I hope you will enjoy
your time here.

Check out my debut YA novel, ZENN DIAGRAM (KCP Loft 4/4/17), available for
pre-order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Target!

Website | Twitter |Facebook
| Goodreads | Instagram

Giveaway
Details:

3 winners will receive a hardcover of ZENN DIAGRAM, US Only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Let us know what you think!
Your Friends,
The Autumn Bookshelf

Book Blitz: Perfect

We are so
excited that PERFECT by Cecelia
Ahern is available now and that we get to share the news!

If you
haven’t yet heard about this wonderful book by Author Cecelia Ahern, be sure to
check out all the details below.

This blitz
also includes a giveaway for 2 sets of finished copies of FLAWED & PERFECT
courtesy of Fierce Reads and Rockstar Book Tours. So if you’d like a chance to
win, enter in the Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post.

Title: PERFECT
(Flawed #2)

Author: Cecelia
Ahern

Pub.
Date: April 4, 2017

Publisher: Feiwel
& Friends

Pages: 352

Formats: Hardcover,
Paperback, Audiobook, eBook

Find
it: Amazon, B&N, Audible,
iBooks, Goodreads

Celestine North lives in a society that demands perfection. After she was
branded Flawed by a morality court, Celestine's life has completely
fractured--all her freedoms gone.

Since Judge Crevan has declared her the number one threat to the public,
she has been a ghost, on the run with Carrick--the only person she can trust.

But Celestine has a secret--one that could bring the entire Flawed system
crumbling to the ground. A secret that has already caused countless people to
go missing.

Judge Crevan is gaining the upper hand, and time is running out for
Celestine. With tensions building, Celestine must make a choice: save just
herself or to risk her life to save all Flawed people.

And, most important of all, can she prove that to be human in itself is
to be Flawed?

Title: FLAWED

Author: Cecilia
Ahern

Release Date: April
5, 2016

Pages: 368

Publisher: Feiwel
and Friends

Formats: Hardcover,
paperback, eBook, & audiobook

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon,
Audible,
Barnes& Noble, iBooks

Celestine North lives a perfect life. She's a model daughter and sister,
she's well-liked by her classmates and teachers, and she's dating the
impossibly charming Art Crevan.

But then Celestine encounters a situation in which she makes an instinctive
decision. She breaks a rule and now faces life-changing repercussions. She
could be imprisoned. She could be branded. She could be found FLAWED.

In her breathtaking young adult debut, bestselling author Cecelia Ahern depicts
a society in which perfection is paramount and flaws are punished. And where
one young woman decides to take a stand that could cost her everything.

Excerpt:

Chapter
Eight

            They stay there for
three hours.

            My muscles burn, my feet
ache, but I’m afraid to move.

            When the fire has
reduced to a smolder, Granddad and Dahy are ordered to place the bundles of
food onto the coals. The farmworkers watch from their orderly line, their F brand armbands all visible on their
right arms, just above their elbow.

            This was supposed to be
a celebration, a coming together to show that the Guild couldn’t beat them
down. Now the Whistleblowers themselves are here. Hiding behind the tree,
huddled on the ground, hugging my legs, shivering from the damp forest, I can’t
say that I feel empowered. This feels like a defeat.

            Granddad and Dahy cover
the food with the soil so it will cook under the ground in the heat. Granddad
looks at the ground, his work finished, as though he’s buried me alive. Again I
want to call out to him that I’m okay, I made it out, but I can’t.

            A phone rings and the
female Whistleblower takes it. She steps aside, walks away from the others, so
she can talk in private. She moves closer to me in the woods. I tense up again.

            “Judge Crevan, hello.
It’s Kate. No, Judge, Celestine isn’t here. We’ve checked everywhere.”

            Silence as she listens
and I hear Crevan’s voice from where I stand. Kate walks farther and stops by
my tree.

            I press my back to the
tree, squeeze my eyes shut, and hold my breath.

            “With all due respect,
Judge, this is the Guild’s sixth visit to the property and I believe Mary May
was meticulous in her search. We’ve checked everywhere you can imagine. I don’t
believe she’s here. I think the grandfather is telling the truth.”

            I can hear the
frustration in her voice. They’re all under pressure to find me, pressure
placed on them by Judge Crevan. Kate takes a few more steps, right into my
eyeline.

            She slowly scans the
forest, her eyes searching the distance.

            Then she looks right at
me.

About
Cecilia:

At
twenty-one, Cecelia wrote her first novel PS, I Love You, which was sold to
forty-seven countries. The film of the same title, directed by Richard
LaGravenese and produced by Wendy Finerman productions, starred Hilary Swank,
Lisa Kudrow, Kathy Bates, Gerry Butler, Harry Connick Jr, Gina Gershon and
Jeffrey Dean Morgan. PS, I Love You was one of the biggest-selling debut novels
of 2004, reaching number 1 in Ireland and in the UK Sunday Times bestseller
list. It was also a bestseller throughout Europe and the USA, staying on the
best-seller list in Germany for 52 weeks.

That same year, in November 2004, her second book Where Rainbows End (as Rosie
Dunne hardback in the US, Love, Rosie paperback in US) also reached no.1 in
Ireland and the UK, remaining at the top of the Irish bestsellers list for 12
weeks and again was a bestseller internationally.  Where Rainbows End was
adapted for film titled Love, Rosie and will be released in Oct 2014, starring
Lily Collins and Sam Claflin.

Her third book If You Could See Me Now was published in November 2005 and also
became an international bestseller. It has been optioned by producer Simon
Brooks, producer of Love, Rosie.

Cecelia’s fourth novel A Place Called Here (published under the title There’s
No Place Like Here in the US) also became an international number one
bestseller.

Thanks For The Memories her fifth novel was also a huge bestseller and is now
being adapted for a TV Drama Series by Gate Productions.

The Gift was published in October 2008 and became an International bestseller.
It is optioned by Oscar winning producer Andreas Bareiss, and it is going into
production later this year.

Her seventh novel The Book Of Tomorrow was released in October 2009 and eOne
Television are developing it for a TV series in the US.

In March of 2011 her two short stories, Girl in the Mirror were published.

In November by Cecelia’s eighth novel The Time Of My Life was published and
also became a bestseller.

Her ninth novel One Hundred Names was published in October 2012 and became a
number one bestseller.

Her tenth novel How To Fall In Love was published last November and also became
another bestseller.

To date Cecelia has sold over 22 million copies of her books worldwide.

Website | Twitter
| Instagram

Giveaway Details:

2 Winners
will receive finished copies of FLAWED & PERFECT, US Only.

Ends on April
18th at Midnight EST!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Let us know what you think in the comments!
Your Friends,
The Autumn Bookshelf

Blog Tour: But Then I Came Back

Hey Everyone!

To honour the release of But Then I Came Back by Estelle Laure, Raincoast decided to host a blog tour! Below is a review and rating of the book and a Q&A with the author. I hope you find it as interesting as I did!

Review: 
    But Then I Came Back begins swiftly and immediately leads into the events preceding the accident. During these events, you get a brief backstory of Eden's character, her problems, and her family. Knowing these details really helped me to visualize the story. It made the whole book more realistic. Eden had a life before the incident, her story, her entire existence, didn't just suddenly start the second she slipped into a coma. She didn't know in advance that she was going to be harmed, so she continued on dealing with her everyday problems until the last moment. 
    AND THEN... THE COMA. Estelle Laure wrote exactly what I thought being in a coma would be like, minus the whole Jasmine situation. I imagined an alternate universe where everything resembles your normal life, but something is off. Maybe everyones' faces are distorted, or random events take place that make absolutely no sense, or, in this case, flowers appear randomly all the time. I was so impressed and happy to read all about it. It was just so incredibly bizarre.
    I was also incredibly excited that the novel didn't centre around the romance. I mean, I enjoyed the scenes with Eden and Joe, but I was more interested in the plot line with Jasmine, and how Eden was recovering from her coma. This got an A+ in my book. My favourite part about Eden's therapy was probably how she treated the whole situation. She would give sassy responses to her doctors and therapist but still treated them like old friends. It was hilarious viewing these scenes through her eyes.
    Overall, I would 100% recommend this book. It deals with tough issues but presents them well, and still adds lighter tones and comedic scenes. It shows you that even when things look bleak, they will get better.

Rating: 8/10

Q: Have you yourself endured such a traumatic experience? What led you to this idea?

A: I personally have not been in a coma or had a major accident I needed to recover from. A really close friend of mine committed suicide as I was working on this. I had been writing a story about love and romance and suddenly I couldn’t do it. My life was consumed by questions of life and death and suicide and why we make the choice to live or die on a daily basis. The story unfurled pretty organically from there once I gave in to the subject matter.

That's all for today! Want to read more Q&A's with Estelle Laure? Check out the following blogs in the next couple of days!

Lauren,
at the Autumn Bookshelf