Sparked
by Helena Echlin & Malena WatrousPublisher: Geek & SundryRelease Date: October 3rd 2017Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal
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Synopsis: Fifteen-year-old Laurel Goodwin wakes up to find her older sister Ivy missing from their Airstream trailer in the Oregon redwoods. A recurring nightmare convinces her that Ivy was abducted, but no one takes her dream seriously, including her mom. Laurel, a loner, has to learn to ask for help, and Jasper Blake, a mysterious new kid who shares her love of old books, quickly becomes her ally. Together they find their quiet town holds a deep secret and is the epicenter of a dark prophecy. Laurel soon learns that her worst enemies, mean girls Peyton Andersen and Mei Rosen, are developing powers that she needs to find and save Ivy. With time running out, Laurel realizes that power doesn’t always take the form that you expect. And once she learns to look beyond her snap judgments, she develops an unexpected gift of her own. Post How Sparked Is Different From The Rest of YA Mandy Has Read In A While- The setting: Okay, this was kind of a Twin Peaks-esque setting with the stunning Redwoods, which kind of just make everything kind of creepier?? I just had this image of this little trailer set apart with these woods and IT WAS SPOOKY AND I WAS IN LOVE. It has a full on Twin Peaks/90s horror/sci-fi TV feel for me especially when the powers emerged, and I was giving it some major thumbs up.
- It’s a lot darker than this princess was expecting? I guess I was expecting little fairies and rainbows and butterflies BUT THINGS GET DARK AND DEEP AND I had to sit for a moment to just soak it in because it was impressive.
- Real sister love. In many books, you may hear a few vague mentions of a sister or sibling and then they’re lost to book oblivion. Laurel cared deeply about her sister and would do anything for her. It was very Anna and Elsa.
- And then that first chapter. It was what convinced me to pick up the book and give it a try. It was quite intriguing, and I was all for a girl that was questioning and knew her sister well enough to know something was wrong.
- The mean girls have some sort of backstories to explain why they do something mean. They were more than just a plain Regina George with a cool mom.
Hello! We are both novelists, but if you’ve ever tried to write anything, you know that writing can be a lonely, angst-filled business. So one night over a cocktail or two, we came up with a solution: write our next book together. Malena already had an idea: a girl’s sister is kidnapped and she has to rely on mean girls with superpowers to get her sister back. We couldn’t resist seeing where that story would take us – a wild ride that includes a loner girl who wants to be a writer and a gorgeous boy who can shoot fire from his eyes but also loves to talk about books. And an ancient Zoroastrian prophecy. And pie shakes. (OK, so maybe we got a little carried away.)
We’ve both published solo novels (check them out here and here) and had no idea how co-writing would work out, but we pounded out the first draft in a white-hot frenzy of inspiration we called “the Vortex.” One of us would write a scene and send it to the other with a note: “My apartment is a pigsty and I haven’t eaten all day. #inthevortex.” We wrote the book we wanted to read as teenagers: a supernatural thriller with healthy doses of horror and humor. Oh, and of course there’s romance. You have to wait a long time for the only kiss in the book, but isn’t that the case with all the best kisses in books?
Giveaway
- Prize:3 copies of SPARKED by Helena Echlin & Malena Watrous (US Only)
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