Release Day Blitz: The Ghost of You by Amanda Burckhard

The Ghost of You
by Amanda Burckhard
Publisher: Swoon Romance
Release Date: 02/24/15


Synopsis:

Emmy has everything she’s ever wanted: a hot boyfriend she adores, great friends, a promising future, and even a well-connected family. But one night rips it all away.

A car accident shatters her world, claiming the lives of her twin brother and her best friend. In the wake of the accident, her friends drift away, her family falls apart, and her boyfriend cheats.

The grief is more than she can handle, so she finds escape at the bottom of a bottle of painkillers. Taking the pills makes her brother alive again, if only in her head. Seeing and talking to her brother as if he were still alive is the only thing that keeps her going. Until Logan King moves to town.

Logan sees past the mask of pristine popularity she wears in public and he’s the only one who can tell she hasn’t moved on. His uncanny ability to read her forces her to open up and she starts to fall for him, no matter how unwilling she is to admit it. But Emmy isn’t the only one keeping secrets and when a close brush with death sparks events that bring everything to light, Emmy will have to decide what’s more important: learning how to forgive and move on, or holding onto the pills and the ghost of her past.

I darted my way around a few chattering and dancing people. If there was one rule I lived by with my best friend, it was friends don’t let friends get hammered and make out with their exes.

When I reached them, I slid my arm under hers and pulled them apart. “Come on, Skye. Time to go home.” She didn’t put up a fight as I dragged her away. She only giggled in a way I knew meant she had one too many shots of that vodka I saw her carrying around earlier. 

We stepped outside into the summer night air and waited for Zane to pull his car around.  We sat on the bottom step of the porch, and Skye started to fall asleep on my shoulder. Sleep  sounded nice. “My stomach hurts,” she whined into my hair.

That last shot had settled, and mine wasn’t feeling the greatest either. “We’ll get you some ginger ale at Zane’s. You can nap in the car until then.” I pulled out my phone to text Derek. It was hard to focus on the screen.

 Me: Stayinf at Zane’s. You grood to get ho

Mid text, Skye knelt over and heaved. I set my phone down and pulled back her hair just in time. Zane pulled up and came around to us. “Get it all out now because if you puke in my car you’re walking home.”

After a minute or two, she assured us she was fine so we helped her into the back seat and sped off toward town. The open window sent warm air swirling around us like a blanket fresh out of the dryer. The forest smelled of fresh dew and sunshine, even though the sun had set a few hours ago. Soon it would start to smell of decay and changing leaves.

Zane grabbed my hand with the hand that wasn’t on the steering wheel and interlaced our fingers. “We still all crashing at my place?”

I squeezed his hand, smiling. “Skye’s mom thinks she’s at my place. My mom thinks I’m at hers. You know the drill.” Zane’s dad traveled a lot with work so his house was almost always empty on weekends. Something we often took advantage of.

Fifteen minutes later, Skye was passed out in the guest bed and Zane was half carrying, half dragging, me into his room. His lips found my ear lobe, softly caressing the edge with his tongue. My entire body tingled. “We shouldn’t. Skye’s right down the hall,” I breathed.

He moved his lips down to the skin above my collar bone, the place he knew always sent me over the edge. “She’s out cold. I seriously doubt she’ll hear anything during that vodka-induced coma.”

We backed into the bed and collapsed into it. Zane’s hand crept to the edge of my shirt, but my phone started to ring from where I set it on his dresser. The song roared in the quiet house.

Carry on, my wayward son

For there’ll be peace when you are done

Lay your weary head to rest

Don’t you cry no more.

I pulled away at the sound of Derek’s ringtone. It was his favorite song, and he blasted it in his Mustang every chance he got. Zane pulled me back to him, recognizing the ringtone as well.

“Call him back.” His voice was pleading, on the verge of a whine.

My lips hovered over his. “It’ll just take a second.”

By the time I pried myself out of Zane’s arms and crossed the room, my phone stopped ringing. I called him back, but it went straight to voicemail. I went to send him a text instead and noticed the one I had typed earlier when we were leaving. I must have forgotten to send it. Deleting it, I sent him a different one asking what he wanted. There was still no reply by the time I fell asleep.

Amanda Burckhard grew up exploring bat caves and hunting for dinosaur bones in the Black Hills of South Dakota. When she wasn’t crossing paths with mountain lions, she was making up stories and devouring books at the library. Although, she still does that.

Amanda loves to travel and cross out things on her adrenaline packed bucket list. Some of the things she's been able to cross out include see an active volcano erupt, ride a gondola in Venice, and pet a tiger.

She currently lives in North Sioux City, South Dakota and works as a microbiologist by day. Some of her obsessions include comic book movies, hot chocolate, sushi, sunshine, and Doctor Who.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Book Blitz Organized by:

Ghost House (The Ghost House Saga #1) by Alexandra Adornetto

Ghost House (The Ghost House Saga #1)
by Alexandra Adornetto
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release Date: August 26th 2014

Rate: Enjoyed it (4 stars)

Synopsis:

From the New York Times bestselling author of Halo comes the start of a beautiful and powerful new series.

After the loss of her mother, Chloe Kennedy starts seeing the ghosts that haunted her as a young girl again. Spending time at her grandmother's country estate in the south of England is her chance to get away from her grief and the spirits that haunt her. Until she meets a mysterious stranger…

Alexander Reade is 157 years dead, with secrets darker than the lake surrounding Grange Hall and a lifelike presence that draws Chloe more strongly than any ghost before. But the bond between them awakens the vengeful spirit of Alexander's past love, Isobel. And she will stop at nothing to destroy anyone who threatens to take him from her.

To stop Isobel, Chloe must push her developing abilities to their most dangerous limits, even if it means losing Alex forever… and giving the hungry dead a chance to claim her for their own.

I was shocked when I entered on goodreads to mark this book as read and see a lot of people not liking the book. When I finished this book I went all crazy because I needed to know what happened next. I liked the story, the plot and the sinister and terrifying touch that Alexandra Adornetto used the welcome us to her new "Ghost World".

After Chloe's mother passes away, Chloe has to face a world without her and also the dead that she could control before are showing again. With a not so welcome trip to England, where her grandmother lives, all that ghost world that was left behind resurfaces in full force and she finds herself in the middle of a doomed love story that ended up with the lovers dead. 

With a possessive vengeful spirit wondering around and a sweet, handsome gentleman who Chloe finds herself really attracted to, her life becomes more dangerous than ever.

I believe the plot from this story has a lot of potential and that Alexandra did a great job. It is true that the story is kind of slow, but for some reason I didn't find this annoying. Quite the opposite. I think the author gave enough time for the readers to understand Chloe's emotional state after losing her mother and brings out a normal teenage behavior towards something she does not want to do. After that, we have a transition, where we meet Alexander and scary Isobel while getting pieces of their story. As the story progresses the relationship between Alexander and Chloe is stronger than ever and I was always hanging into the book to read more of their private moments, wondering what would happen between them at the end. As for Isobel, her craziness and scary aura, keeps growing until the very end. It is true that there are some things unsaid and could be considered plot holes, but I think the story behind the pages is a good one.

The only thing I didn't quite know how to handle was Isobel's behavior. I knew she had issues: she was a possessive woman and her life was not easy. But her behavior as a ghost was very temperamental, you didn't know what would do: if she would end up killing everyone over a rant or going on inoffensive ghost without leaving the creepy part. I think this is because the author wanted to make her also a victim of life, but I would have wanted more scary Isobel all the time.

You know those stories who look like they are about to have an ending that would might leave you sad, because it was not the ending you were hoping for, but a good and nice one? The ones that allow the reader to sleep at night? Well, then Ghost House was about to be that book until the very last chapter where your inner book addict might go all crazy about it. I was left with some many questions, and not about the obvious one (How...?), but with a bunch of them that would might unravel all the mystery in the series.

I truly enjoyed Ghost House. It had the scary factor from the very first page and an impossible romance during the turmoil of dealing with the death of a loving one and a creepy and scary ghost trying to kill the main character. It is a slow story, that If you are willing to read it with patience might surprise you. 

Alexandra Adornetto was only fourteen when she published her first book, The Shadow Thief, in Australia. Her U.S. debut, Halo, debuted in Fall 2010 on the New York Times bestseller list a week after it was published and has been published in over twenty countries. The daughter of two English teachers, she admits to being a compulsive book buyer who has run out of shelf space, and now stacks her reading “in wobbly piles on my bedroom floor.” Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Ally is now a college student in the U.S.