FFBC Blog Tour, Review, & Giveaway: The Killer In Me (Margot Harrison)

The Killer in Me
by Margot Harrison
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release Date: July 12th 2016

Genre: Young Adult, Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Contemporary, Fiction

Hasn't he lived long enough? Why not? I could take him like a thief in the night.
This is how the Thief thinks. He serves death, the vacuum, the unknown. He’s always waiting. Always there.
Seventeen-year-old Nina Barrows knows all about the Thief. She’s intimately familiar with his hunting methods: how he stalks and kills at random, how he disposes of his victims’ bodies in an abandoned mine in the deepest, most desolate part of a desert.
Now, for the first time, Nina has the chance to do something about the serial killer that no one else knows exists. With the help of her former best friend, Warren, she tracks the Thief two thousand miles, to his home turf—the deserts of New Mexico.
But the man she meets there seems nothing like the brutal sociopath with whom she’s had a disturbing connection her whole life. To anyone else, Dylan Shadwell is exactly what he appears to be: a young veteran committed to his girlfriend and her young daughter. As Nina spends more time with him, she begins to doubt the truth she once held as certain: Dylan Shadwell is the Thief. She even starts to wonder . . . what if there is no Thief?

Positive Points: 

• The Killer In Me is an engaging, colorful, and attractive cover with an intriguing female main character carrying a shovel into what looks like a desert which immediately grab the attention of suspense/thriller readers.

• The female heroine is determined to stop an literally unstoppable serial killer and follows his every move in order to learn what his next steps are.

• The Killer In Me is a psychological thriller with crazy twists and turns

• Creepy and intense situations throughout the book that will keep the reader guessing until the very last page

Weak Points:

• The Killer In Me is a good mystery but the story became confusing in certain parts of the book.

• The character development was weak and doesn't really help the reader connect with the main characters

• The story was hard to follow at some times and I found myself flipping back to see what I had missed within the story. 

Overall I would recommend this book for thriller and psychological readers who enjoy a good mystery and the positive points outweigh the negatives. 

Follow the The Killer In Me by Margot Harrison Blog Tour and don't miss anything! 

Click on the banner to see the tour schedule.

I was raised in the wilds of New York by lovely, nonviolent parents who somehow never managed to prevent me from staying up late to read scary books. I now work at an alt-weekly newspaper in Vermont, where my favorite part of the job is, of course, reviewing scary books and movies. The Killer in Me is my first novel.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

FFBC Blog Tour, Guest Post, & Giveaway: Break Me Like A Promise (Tiffany Schmidt)

Break Me Like a Promise (Once Upon a Crime Family #2)
by Tiffany Schmidt
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Release Date: June 7th 2016

Genre: Young Adult, Retellings, Contemporary

No one is unbreakable.
All Magnolia Vickers has ever wanted was to follow father’s path as head of the Family Business. But new legislation is poised to destroy the Family’s operations in the black-market organ trade and Maggie’s recent behavior has wrecked the business-savvy reputation she’s worked her whole life to build.
She’s given an ultimatum: shape up or step aside.
Then Maggie messes up: she downloads a virus onto her father’s computer, and must sneak it off-estate for repair. When Alex, a tech whiz, uncovers the type of information on the machine, he offers Maggie a choice: her Family can give him a kidney, or he’ll irreparably scramble the data. Maggie agrees, but has no intention of keeping her promise or every seeing him again. That night Alex shows up at her Family estate with copies of confidential Family files and a shocking revelation—the kidney is for him.
The Vickers aren’t willing to let Alex out of their sight, so he moves onto their estate and Maggie is assigned to be his keeper. A task she resents and he enjoys making as challenging as possible. But procuring black market organs is becoming increasingly difficult, and as Alex’s health declines, she’s surprised to find herself falling for him.
Like it or not, Maggie must accept that if she wants to save Alex’s life and carve out a place in the new legalized organ business, she’s going to have to fight for both.

INSERT A TEASER HERE

Follow the Break Me Like A Promise by Tiffany Schmidt Blog Tour and don't miss anything! Click on the banner to see the tour schedule.

Tiffany Schmidt lives in Pennsylvania with her saintly husband, impish twin boys, and a pair of mischievous puggles. She's not at all superstitious... at least that's what she tells herself every Friday the thirteenth.
SEND ME A SIGN is her first novel. BRIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE will follow in Winter, 2014. The ONCE UPON A CRIME FAMILY series begins with HOLD ME LIKE A BREATH in 2015. You can find out more about her and her books at: TiffanySchmidt.com, TiffanySchmidtWrites.Tumblr.com or by following her on Twitter @TiffanySchmidt.

COMING SOON!

FFBC Blog Tour, Interview, & Giveaway: Circle of Jinn (Lori Goldstein)

Circle of Jinn (Becoming Jinn #2)
by Lori Goldstein
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends
Release Date: May 17th 2016

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Mythology

Being Jinn is Azra’s new reality. As she grants wishes under the watchful eye of the Afrit council, she remains torn between her two worlds—human and Jinn. Soon, secrets spill. Zars are broken. Humans become pawns. And rumors of an uprising become real as the Afrit’s reach extends beyond the underground world of Janna.
Straddling the line becomes impossible. Aware of her unique abilities, Azra must not just face but embrace her destiny. But when the role she must play and those she must protect expand to include a circle of Jinn greater than her own, Azra will be forced to risk everything. A risk that means there’s everything to lose, and at the same time, everything to gain—for herself and her entire Jinn race.
In this dramatic sequel to Becoming Jinn, Azra’s story comes to a heartfelt and thrilling conclusion.

Behind the Jinn Series Covers

Thanks so much for having me here to talk about Becoming Jinn and Circle of Jinn’s covers.

First, some may remember that the original cover of Becoming Jinn went through a slight change before release. It was originally red instead of purple. I’m thrilled that Circle of Jinn was able to return to a version of that red cover. In person, the colors coordinate beautifully.

For those that don’t know, that bangle on the cover (and the six on the cover of book two) were actually purchased by me! Macmillan did a photo shoot of them for the series.

Here’s the full, funny story!

Some authors know down to the last detail what they’d love to see on their cover; some have no opinion at all. That’s as varied as the author’s involvement in the cover design. Every publisher, editor, designer, and author is different in terms of being involved in discussions, seeing drafts, and seeing the final version land in their inbox. 

My experience is somewhere smack dab in the middle. While I didn’t have a particular cover in mind, the one thing I thought would represent the book well was to incorporate the silver bangle that Azra receives. It’s what releases her Jinn powers and starts her journey.

Long ago, I mentioned this to my editor, Liz Szabla, and it turns out that Rich Deas, the creative director at Macmillan, and the rest of the team were on the same page. That was the direction they intended to go with the cover of Becoming Jinn. Great! Fast-forward a few months to when I received an e-mail from Liz asking for my opinion on the bangles they were to use in a photo shoot for JINN 1. She had scoured markets and online sites and was having trouble finding the one she thought matched the feel of the book.

Give me a shopping challenge, and I’ll take it! Off I went to find a bangle that screamed Jinn. And I did, in a store called Ten Thousand Villages. It was perfect. What wasn’t perfect was that the store only had two. And Liz asked me to get six; there are six Jinn girls in the book and F&F was considering using multiple bangles to represent them on the cover. The bangle I found was on clearance, which was good for our budget, but that meant we couldn’t easily get more. This is where it got crazy and fun: Ten Thousand Villages is a chain store. The woman helping me whipped out the huge list of stores all over the country and began to hunt down where we might be able to snag a few more bracelets. We found some. Hurray! But store policy prevented phone orders. Boo!

As luck and fate would have it, one of my best friends who lives in California was visiting his parents in Portland, Maine, and guess which store had four more bangles, giving us the six we needed? 

Bingo. Six bangles were then on their way to Feiwel and Friends. 

Of course, after all that, Becoming Jinn only used one bangle! But now, Circle of Jinn uses all six! Which makes the heroic efforts to find the bangles more than worthwhile!

Incidentally, after we secured the six bangles for the cover, I enlisted friends in other parts of the country to help me locate a few more (shout-out to my good friend Chandler Baker, author of Alive and Teen Frankenstein, who picked up one in Texas for me). I managed to get my little hands on one for myself as well as a few extra that will be given away to fans in my preorder/order giveaway going on now!

I just love having the bangle on the cover. To me, it’s the perfect representation of both the beauty and the obligation of becoming Jinn.

Follow the Circle of Jinn by Lori Goldstein Blog Tour and don't miss anything! Click on the banner to see the tour schedule.

My debut novel, the Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy Becoming Jinn, is a modern spin on the traditional tale of wish-granting genies. The sequel, Circle of Jinn, releases May 17, 2016 (Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan).
Too much of my day involves chatting books, obsessing over The Vampire Diaries, and perfecting the art of efficient writing through Twitter. Find me at @loriagoldstein and follow my blog at www.lorigoldsteinbooks.com, my Tumblr athttp://lorigoldsteinbooks.tumblr.com, or my Instagram athttp://www.instagram.com/lorigoldstei....
Like my author page on Facebook for fun book-related photos, tidbits, and happenings as well as news on Becoming Jinn.
I am represented by Lucy Carson of The Friedrich Agency.

a Rafflecopter giveaway