This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Mia Kerick will award a $15 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
Seventeen-year-old Callie Canter knows all about screwing up—and being screwed over. After her so-called boyfriend publicly humiliated her senior year, taking a fifth year of high school at Beaufort Hills Academy is her second chance to leave behind a painful past. But her need for social acceptance follows, and going along with the in-crowd is the difference between survival and becoming a target. Staying off the radar is top priority. So, falling for an outsider is the last thing on Callie’s “to-do” list. Too bad her heart didn’t get the memo.
With his strict, religious upbringing and former identity far away in Florida, Jayden Morrissey can finally be true to himself at Beaufort Hills Academy. But life as a trans man means keeping secrets, and keeping secrets means not getting too close to anyone. If he can just get through his fifth year unnoticed, maybe a future living as the person he was born to be is possible. Yet love is love, and when you fall hard enough, intentions crumble, plans detour, and secrets are revealed.
From multi-award-winning author Mia Kerick, comes a powerful, timely, and life-changing novel, which follows two teenagers nursing broken hearts and seeking acceptance, and who together realize running away isn’t always the answer.
Read an Excerpt:
Jayden
“You said that your old boyfriend didn’t treat you well. I’m curious about what happened with him."
Callie’s lips tighten. Even on guard, she’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Her face is what I’d call exotic—her eyes are wide, her cheekbones high, and her lips full. And the shade of her skin is even fairer than mine. I wonder about her ethnicity, but don’t ask. If I ask too many questions, it will open the door for her to ask questions of me. She leans back on her hands so she can better size me up. Her reply is cautious. “In the second half of senior year, things with us went downhill, but, to be real, they’d never been perfect.”
“How long did you go out with him?”
“Three years—well, just over.”
“What happened to screw things up?”
“Don’t you think the past should stay where it belongs?” She measures each word.
“Yeah… unless the event scars you. Because that stuff doesn’t just go away.”
She sighs. “Ryan did not appreciate that I was a plus-size girl. It was a huge deal that I wasn’t skinny.”
I swallow hard, having seen this issue from both sides.
“My body was always a problem for him… You could call it my fatal flaw.”
“Did he actually tell you that he didn’t like the way you looked?”
“Hell, yeah… like, ten times a day.” Callie smiles, but it isn’t out of happiness. It’s a bitter smile. “The size of my backside was almost a deal-breaker for him. He told me that he liked ‘the waif look.’”
“The waif look? What’s that?”
“Kind of skinny and underdeveloped—like many runway models. The emaciated opposite of gargantuan me.”
“That’s just wrong, Callie.”
“But he said my pretty face made up for my wide ass.” She flops back on the bed. “You must be wondering how desperate I was for attention to stick around for three-plus years, just to get that kind of treatment. I used to wonder about it, too.”
“And then?”
“Then I figured out the reason I stayed put: I believed what Ryan was saying. That a fat girl really has no options.” She covers her face with her hands and adds, “For some reason, his acceptance of me mattered so frigging much.”
“You dumped him, I hope.”
“I did, sort of.”
“Ryan didn’t deserve a girl like you, someone so smart and pretty and sweet.”
Callie laughs. “No one ever calls me sweet.”
“Well, I just did.”
Mia focuses her stories on the emotional growth of young people who are challenged by the circumstances of their lives and relationships. She has a great affinity for the tortured hero in literature, and as a teen, Mia filled spiral-bound notebooks with tales of tortured heroes and stuffed them under her mattress for safekeeping. Now she publishes her work—it’s an alternate way to stash her stories.
Her books have been featured in Kirkus Reviews magazine. They have won a 2019 IPPY GOLD award for Juvenile/Young Adult Fiction, Rainbow Awards for Best Transgender Contemporary Romance and Best YA Lesbian Fiction, a Reader Views’ Book by Book Publicity Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction, the Jack Eadon Award for Best Book in Contemporary Drama, an Indie Fab Award, a First Place Royal Dragonfly Award for Cultural Diversity, a First Place Story Monsters Purple Dragonfly Award for YA Fiction, and a category finalist for the Eric Hoffer award, a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards for Young Adult Fiction and more.
Mia Kerick is a social liberal and cheers for each and every victory made in the name of human rights. Her only major regret: never having taken typing or computer class in school, destining her to a life consumed with two-fingered pecking and constant prayer to the Gods of Technology. Contact Mia at miakerick@gmail.com or visit at www.miakerickya.com to see what is going on in Mia’s world.
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Giveaway:
$15 Amazon/BN GC
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7 comments:
Thank you for hosting today.
Thanks so very much for hosting me today!
Sounds like a good book.
Great post - sounds like my kind of book :)
Which one of the books that you've written so far is your favorite?
Thank you for the excerpt, can't wait to start this one ^^
sounds like a fun one
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