Congratulations to Kimberly, winner of our context to win an ARC of Starcrossed!
The drawing was random, but we also loved her answer to our question, what superpower would you like to have:
“If I were to have any superpower, I would an ability that would make a difference and help people, something like the power to heal others. I would love to put my superpower to good use!”
Thanks to everyone who entered and keep reading our blog for your chance to win our next book-of-the-month!
Earlier this week you saw our Q&A with Josephine Angelini, author of Starcrossed. Today we have our review of the book and a chance to win a free ARC from us!
Read the rules for entering after the review and good luck!
In Josephine Angelini’s Starcrossed, mythology meets island romance—two of PLL’s favorite things. This book has it all: humor, intrigue, intense chemistry, out of this world fight scenes, and super-powered super-cuties desperate to remedy an age-old curse.
Enter Helen Hamilton. She has always known she is different, although she does her best to blend into the background. But at a small high school on the tiny island of Nantucket, this is no easy feat–especially when you have incredible long blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, and the answer to every question in class. Then there’s the fact that she can run faster than anyone on the track team—faster, in fact, than any other human being. So yeah, people have noticed her—resented her, and envied her—all her life.
But things get a whole lot more complicated when she starts having nightmares—and waking up with dirt and cuts all over her feet, as though she’s been traveling in her dreams. The wails of three hag-like women begin to haunt her more and more often. Helen is afraid she’s totally losing her mind—and it only gets worse when a new boy in school, Lucas, has such an intense power over her that she reacts by practically strangling him in the hallways.
Throw into the mix Lucas’s huge European family full of hotties with unusual abilities—and a keen interest in Helen’s heritage—and you’ve got the recipe for a sizzling, salty-sea-aired saga full of demigods and star-crossed destinies, as Helen trains to face her fate head-on.
Sure, you might say this book has some implausible scenes even for a paranormal, but we were too swept away by the sexy dialogue, rich setting and enormous cast of intriguing characters to mind. Angelini has us hooked!
Want to win a free ARC from us? Check out all the ways to win!
1) You MUST submit a comment on this post to be entered. Suggested topics? How awesome we are, how awesome you are or, if you could pick any superpower to have, what would it be?
2) You can garner ANOTHER entry by tweeting about the contest. Be sure to include @paperlanternlit in your tweet so we don’t miss it!
3) You can get YET ANOTHER entry by being a subscriber to our newsletter! If you’re not already, sign up by following the link in our sidebar. If you are, be sure to let us know so we can mark down your entry.
Do all three and you’ll be entered three times. Easy peasy! Contest ends 11:59pm April 7 and winner will be announced April 8. Good luck!
Our book-of-the-month for March is Josephine Angelini’s forthcoming Starcrossed:
“Helen Hamiliton has always tried to hide how different she is—no easy feat on an island as small as Nantucket, and only getting harder as she finds herself haunted by hallucinations and vivid nightmares.
It’s not until she crosses paths with Lucas Delos at school that Helen’s true heritage is finally revealed. Yet even as Lucas helps her awaken to her startling powers, they can never be together—not unless they can break free from the tragic destiny the Three Fates have in store.”
Sounds dark and steamy, right? Check out our interview with Josie and stay tuned later in the week for our review of Starcrossed and a chance to win an ARC of the book from us!
We are total nuts for Greek mythology so we were immediately excited about the whole idea behind this book. What was your original inspiration for focusing on these figures from the Greek myths and Trojan War?
A nervous break down? No, seriously, it was a very fortuitous accident. I was pitching a different idea for a supernatural YA series to my husband, who is a screenwriter. For the life of me I couldn’t spit out a logline or sum up that other series in two or three concise sentences. He told me to start with a simpler idea for my first book.
I bawled like a two-year-old throwing a fit in the grocery store. Then I saw a copy of Romeo and Juliet sitting next to The Iliad on my bookshelf, and it hit me.
What if I took Homer’s amazing characters and set it up so that if two teenagers fell in love they would start a war? Then I took the opening line of Romeo and Juliet, which begins: “Two Households…”
I went from there.
The Nantucket setting is so evocative. (We want to vacation there now…) What made you choose it?
I grew up in Massachusetts in a very small town. I wanted to write from a setting that I understood, and for plot reasons, I needed to isolate Helen, my protagonist, and hide her away from the world– almost like I was walling her up in a city by the sea. Nantucket is a beautiful place, very stark and close to the elements, and it is surprisingly small. It had everything I needed to tell my story. And of course there are those “research” trips. So important to a writer!
Is Lucas based on anyone specific? (And is he single? Just kidding! Kind of…)
Ha!! Lucas is based on my husband, actually. They aren’t exactly alike, but the relationship Lucas and Helen have is very similar to the one I have with my husband. The laughter, the “being in it together,” that sort of thing—not the wanting to kill each other part! Or the cursed by the Fates part! Luckily, my husband and I have never experienced the Furies. (Although I do drive him bananas when I forget to lock the front door…)
We love how the mortal characters are just as well developed as the not-so-mortal ones. Do you have any tips for making funny, believable, heartwarming characters come to life?
The only tips I have for character development are very long, very detailed character bios. I write one for every single character—minor or major. I’ve found that for me, there are no short cuts when it comes to building character. It takes a lot of time and a lot of thought. I was a bartender for a lot of years, so I’ve met just about every kind of bug in the zoo, you know? But even still, I have to put in a lot of thought and work before I start to write, or my characters get vague. Vague is bad. I try to avoid vague.
We noticed in your bio that you have a theater background. As an actress? Do you still act? Do you think this experience informs who you are as a writer?
This questions ties in very closely with the one above. My training helped me build character, to the point where it is second nature for me to sit down and write out bios. In fact, I love it. It’s fun for me to try to figure a character out.
I also spend a lot of time saying my dialogue out loud, just to “audition” it and make sure it sounds like something a real person would say. If I can’t say it without my baloney detector going off, I know that I have to rewrite it. Unfortunately, this means I have deep, emotional conversations with my computer screen. Luckily, my husband is also a writer. He knows I’m crazy, but it’s not because I talk to myself.
If you could have a superhuman ability what would it be?
Flying! I mean, what’s not to love about that?
