Genre: Young Adult Contemporary

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Blog Tour Review: Thicker Than Water by Kelly (Fiore) Stultz

January 4, 2016 Lily B Blog Tour, Giveaway, Review 18 ★★★★

Thicker Than Water by Kelly (Fiore) Stultz
Series: Stand-Alone
Published by Harper Teen on January 5th 2016
Genres: Young Adult Contemporary
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
Rating:
Heat Rating: zero-flames

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Cecelia Price killed her brother. At least, that’s what the police and the district attorney are saying. And although Cecelia is now locked up and forced into treatment, she knows the real story is much more complicated.
Cyrus wasn’t always the drug-addled monster he’d become. He was a successful athlete, but when an injury forced him off the soccer field and onto pain medication, his life became a blur of anger, addiction, and violence. All CeCe could do was stand by and watch, until she realized one effective way to take away her brother’s drugs while earning the money she needed for college: selling the pills.
Soon, CeCe becomes part drug dealer, part honor student. But even when all she wants is to make things right, she learns that sometimes the best intentions lead to the worst possible outcome.
Thicker than Water is an unforgettable dark, harrowing look into the disturbing truth of drug addiction and the desperate love of a sister watching her brother deteriorate before her eyes.

Thicker Than Water was a read that I came away with quite surprised. It’s a story told from Cecelia Price‘s point of view about the death of her brother, her involvement, and going through treatment as she awaits trial for his death.

It was an interesting story, and even more of an interesting subject as the author takes on a challenge of tackling prescription drug abuse in a Young Adult novel. It didn’t feel for the faint of heart. The subject was a bit dark, it was scary, and at times it felt difficult to read.

As Cecelia unfolds the events leading up to her treatment, I found her journey a bit hard to follow. There had been times where I found myself stepping away from the book in order to sort out my feelings. It was heartbreaking witnessing the deterioration of not just her brother but the friendship between them. It was also hard to swallow the fact that this ended up being another Young Adult novel with the clueless absent parents who wore rose colored glasses of blissful ignorance. I won’t lie when I tell you that it was annoying the way her father had handled the brother’s addiction, or how he choose to live in denial instead of finding his own son some help. I won’t tell you how ironic it felt that Cece is the one who ends up in treatment. Thought I have to admit, that part stumped me.

But I did enjoy the book, more than I thought I would given the difficult subject. I applaud the author for bringing something like this up to attention. The writing was amazing and quite talented. The story had me hooked and wandering the entire time about what had happened and what made things fall apart. It was well crafted, but the end did kind of surprise me and I am not sure if it was in a good or bad way.

Everything I thought I knew, felt like it wasn’t. Making everything that Cece had ever felt guilty of kind of scratch my head a little. But unfortunately I cannot go too far into why, without ruining the book.

Overall, it was really well written, despite a few problems. The story line was a bit dark, parts of it made me feel bad for Cece and the sibling relationship she lost with her brother, parts of it made it hard to read it.

Giveaway Details:

3 winners will receive a finished copy of THICKER THAN WATER. US Only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

12/28/2015- Ohana Reads- Interview

12/29/2015- Here’s to Happy Endings- Review

12/30/2015- FICTION FARE- Guest Post

12/31/2015- In Wonderland- Review

1/1/2016- PLEASE FEED THE BOOKWORM- Interview

Week Two:

1/4/2016- Night Owl Book Café- Review

1/5/2016- Fiktshun- Guest Post

1/6/2016- Such a Novel Idea- Review

1/7/2016- YA Book Madness- Interview

1/8/2016- A Dream Within A Dream- Review

About Kelly (Fiore) Stultz

Kelly Fiore-Stultz has a BA in English from Salisbury University and an MFA in Poetry from West Virginia University. She received an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2005 and 2009. Kelly’s poetry has appeared in Small Spiral Notebook, Samzidada, Mid Atlantic Review, Connotation Press, and the Grolier Annual Review. Her first young adult novel, Taste Test, was released in August 2013 from Bloomsbury USA, and her second, Just Like the Movies, again from Bloomsbury, was releasted in 2014. Forthcoming novels include Thicker Than Water from HarperTeen in 2015.

Review: Light of Day by Allison van Diepen

December 2, 2015 Lily B Review 34 ★★★

Light of Day by Allison van Diepen
Series: Stand-Alone
Published by HarperTeen on November 24th 2015
Genres: Young Adult Contemporary
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
Rating:
Heat Rating: one-flame

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Like any other Saturday night, Gabby Perez and her best friend, Maria, are out dancing. But this isn’t just another night. When a mysterious stranger warns Gabby their drinks have been drugged, she hurries Maria home. Sure enough, the next day, Maria can’t remember a thing. Gabby’s shaken by their close call. And she’s not going to stay quiet about it.
She opens up the airwaves on her radio show and discovers an even worse truth: the guy who drugged them was going to force them into prostitution. Then Gabby’s friend Bree never makes it home from a party, and Gabby fears the worst.
Gabby reaches out to the guy who saved her, the gorgeous stranger she knows only as X. As they dive into the seedy underworld of Miami, searching for Bree, they can’t ignore their undeniable attraction. Until Gabby discovers the truth about who X really is and the danger that surrounds him. Can their love survive the light of day?

This was an interesting story and an interesting concept. It basically follows Gabby an aspiring DJ, who is saved from being drugged at the club by a mysterious handsome stranger named ‘X’ and somehow gets tangled up into a darker world of girls getting kidnapped, pimps and sex trafficking.

The story was a quick read for me. I think in a way the author was trying to spread awareness about this issue that’s so big in this world right now, I just felt as far as the story went, it was a bit unrealistic. Entertaining, but unrealistic.

For me, all the steps that Gabby took felt dangerous and if this was taken by a girl her age in the real world, the girl would be long dead and probably would have hurt a lot of girls in the process for being so reckless. As nice and cleaned up the ending came out, there aren’t a lot of happy endings for a lot of the girls going through this.

In the book, Gabby was trying to find and rescue a girl from her school named Bree, so she uses the radio to spread awareness and is forward about the pimps and actually mentions the name once or twice. Somehow everything works out for Gabby, no one she cares about get’s hurt, only the bad guys. Unfortunately, this is not how it works. If anyone did what Gabby had done, it would never turn out the way it did.

Are there people out there like ‘X’ looking and rescuing the girls that are kidnapped and forced into the sex trade? I don’t know. I did not do a lot of research on that. I do know that sex trafficking numbers are high, that most of these girls never get a happy ending because they are never found, and if someone in real life announced the pimp’s name on the radio - the pimp would probably have disappeared into the night with these girls.

In truth the statistics are real and frightening. I wish the story was handled better, but nonetheless, it was entertaining and I am sort of glad that someone took a bold step to write about this. I just wish the actions of the main character wasn’t so reckless, uninformed and dangerous. Even the messy situation that she gets herself into in the end, she somehow comes out unscratched.

I gave the author 3 brownie points for at least trying.

The Statistics behind sex trafficking from http://www.equalitynow.org:

At least 20.9 million adults and children are bought and sold worldwide into commercial sexual servitude, forced labor and bonded labor.²
About 2 million children are exploited every year in the global commercial sex trade.³
Almost 6 in 10 identified trafficking survivors were trafficked for sexual exploitation.⁴
Women and girls make up 98% of victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation.⁵

ARC Review: The Lies About Truth by Courtney C. Stevens

September 8, 2015 Lily B Review 8 ★★★★★

The Lies About Truth by Courtney C. Stevens
Series: Stand-Alone
Published by HarperTeen on November 3rd 2015
Genres: Young Adult Contemporary
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
Rating:
Heat Rating: half-flame

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Sadie Kingston, is a girl living in the aftermath. A year after surviving a car accident that killed her friend Trent and left her body and face scarred, she can’t move forward. The only person who seems to understand her is Trent’s brother, Max.
As Sadie begins to fall for Max, she's unsure if she is truly healed enough to be with him — even if Max is able to look at her scars and not shy away. But when the truth about the accident and subsequent events comes to light, Sadie has to decide if she can embrace the future or if she'll always be trapped in the past.

An emotionally charged story about lose, friendship and love. In that order. Sadie Kingston is a girl who survives a car accident that killed her best friend Trent, scarred her face, and damaged his brother’s Max voice. She is now living in the aftermath of the accident and is trying to deal with the deep painful feelings of loss, her boyfriend’s betrayal and the fact that her face took quite a beating. Moving on isn’t easy for Sadie, but I respect her journey and her will and courage to do so. This book was not an easy read for me, especially with losing some family members in the past year. The circumstances might be different then the books, but the pain is no different. Me dealing with loss, I really don’t know how to and maybe this was why reading this book was kind of a milestone for me. Usually I tend to stay away from anything heavy or what would bring me into easy tears. I was happily surprised with this one, thought it was a difficult read, the main character was likable. Sadie went through a lot and although I have questioned some moments, like how is she taking this harder than Trent’s own family, her journey did feel somewhat realistic. Especially since she had to cope with the fact that her face will never be the same, she will carry those scars like battle marks of survival for the rest of her life and that is not easy.

There was a bit of a love story laced into this, but it was not the main focus. The main focus was Sadie is trying to move on and put her life together closer to the anniversary of the death. Trying to forgive her best friend and her ex-boyfriend for what had happened and dealing with new information that had come out in light of everyone trying to move on.

I did enjoy this book. I thought it was well written. The story was good. It made me want to know Trent and feel sorry that he was lost before the book started. He felt real, with Sadies memories bringing him up throughout the book, it made me feel kind of like I knew him and in the end, wish I knew him better.