BooksChatter: ☀ Heart in a Box

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Heart in a Box, a Young Adult Contemporary Romance by Catherine Stine (4 December 2015, Inkspell Publishing, 207 pages).

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and chapter one excerpt below, as well as our Q&A with author Catherine Stine.
Read the first six chapters with Amazon Look Inside.

Author Catherine Stine will be awarding several prizes, including a $40 gift card, 2 hand-painted heart-boxes with secret treasure inside, a signed paperback of Dorianna , a signed paperback of Heart in a Box, a great YA ebook pack of novels: Tiger Lily by Wende Dikec, When Sorrows Come by Katie M John, and Time Runs Away with Her by Christine Potter.

Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), interviews (ℚ), reviews (✍) and guest blog posts (✉).

Synopsis | Teaser | Author Q&A | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops

Synopsis

Each heartbeat leads Joss closer a shocking truth that will change everything.

Joss Olstad wins the fight to switch from her private school to a public high to “find her pieces” she lost when the Indian artist father she never knew died. There, Joss struggles with a slutty friend, who flirts with her new love; Indian Culture Club girls who press her on her past, as well as her stoner mother’s lies back at home. Armed only with her handmade heart boxes that hold private messages, Joss’s search for identity leads her to a scary industrial section of Queens, and a shocking family secret that changes everything.

Teaser: Excerpt

BOBCAT IN BLACK DENIM

     I’m stoked, but jumpy walking down this strange new hall to the classroom. My nerve endings feel like someone’s lit them with a match. I only got two hours of sleep last night, torturing over all the garbage my mother crammed into my head about this public school.
      But the moment I walk into the classroom, I’m more stoked than scared. It sounds like a stadium in here—all the shouts and raucous laughter, people banging up against each other. Everyone surges forward, and I’m caught in a current of electric expectation like before a Cloud concert, my favorite band. It’s still hard to believe I finally talked my mom into letting me transfer to this huge school in Brooklyn. I’m seventeen now, and it only took me an entire year of begging and arguing with her. She was paranoid about my leaving my safe Manhattan prep school. You’d think she would’ve jumped at the chance to save about thirty thousand smackers, and that was with a partial scholarship! Her shelling out all the money from the store income always shocked me. But she was always too afraid I’d follow in her wild footsteps if I mixed with the masses. She’s so wrong. I’ve got different reasons for being here.
      A way out, a way in, and something I can’t even put into words. Yet.

      From the noise level, it sounds like hundreds of students, not thirty-five. To me, it’s big. My old school had eighteen to a class. Mom worries about overcrowding, but I don’t care. Cram them in, the more the better, people from all over. Let me hear Russian, Albanian, Senegalese, whatever. Earlier, walking down the hall, I overheard kids talking about Brighton Beach, Ozone Park, Staten Island, and Sheepshead Bay. The people at my old school were mostly white, mostly rich—not exactly me.
      Eleventh graders keep scrambling in. A pretty black girl with razzed-out purple hair and tattoos, a guy wearing a turban, another dude with his hair in a bun on the crown of his head, and a tawny, athletic girl with amazingly shiny hair. Smart geeks, too, with glasses and plaid shirts. Finally, people who seem more like I want to be—sure of where they came from and where they’re going. Sure of who they are.
      They tote backpacks and messenger bags, water bottles and Brooklyn Tech duffels. Most kids must know each other from last year. Not many people switch from private to public, do they? Seems like most stay with what they’re used to. For sure, nobody here is from my old prep school. Do I look like the clueless nice-but-lost-in-the-shuffle girl I feel like? I clamp my mouth shut and hug my binder to my chest, realizing I’m gawking. Only a few seats left. Better grab one, quick.
      I plop down at a desk near the center of the room and twist my dark-brown hair with its freaky blonde streak on the side. It’s the telltale sign of Mom’s Nordic blood infused with Dad’s Indian—a swirl of cream in espresso. I always worry what people think of it, so I stop the twisting and begin to stroke the ancient wooden desk, run my hand along the graffiti engraved with ink pens.

      The teacher, a silver-haired guy in a pinstriped shirt, writes EARLY TRADE ROUTES on the board. History captivates me, customs and costumes and treaties spiraling up in expanding circles. Interesting how the world’s becoming one enormous neighborhood to explore. I sigh and settle in.
      I open my binder and take out a pen, glance up. A tall, slim boy with wavy brown hair weaves toward me through the rows. A bobcat in boots and black denim. He hesitates a beat then sits right next to me and grins.
      Hot, hot, hot, I stutter silently.
      “Hey,” he says, grabbing a bunch of books from his pack. His binder slides down under his elbow. It smacks the floor and careens under my chair. With my foot, I nudge it, lean over to pick it up then begin to straighten up. Speckled eyes the color of rust stare into mine. I’m buzzing. He reaches to take the notebook. The hair on his arm grazes mine, and I smell limes. The room drops away.
      The two of us are on some Hollywood set, not a sugary and over-the-top High School Musical one, more of an urban fascination set in a dark club. The set swirls us around to the thrum thrum of Skrillex or Pharrell. Hey, I don’t know this guy from John Q. But love at first sight? Heck, yeah! He whispers thanks as we lift the book together.
      My deity in the flesh.
      I peek at the name scratched on his spiral binder as he pulls it away.
      William. William Torres.

Heart in a Box
Available NOW!

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About the Author

Catherine Stine’s fiction spans the range from contemporary to dark fantasy to sci-fi. Her futuristic companion thrillers Fireseed One and Ruby’s Fire are Amazon bestsellers and indie award-winners. Dorianna, her YA paranormal won Best Horror Novel in the Kindle Hub Awards.

She also writes romance as Kitsy Clare. Her Art of Love series includes Model Position and Private Internship. She suspects her love of dark fantasy came from her father reading Edgar Allen Poe to her as a child, and her love of contemporary fiction comes from being a jubilant realist. Visit her at catherinestine.com and subscribe to her newsletter for news of releases, workshops and appearances.

Follow Catherine Stine:

Giveaway and Tour Stops

Enter to win one of many prizes on offer, including a $40 gift card, 2 hand-painted heart-boxes with secret treasure inside, a signed paperback of Dorianna, a signed paperback of Heart in a Box, a great YA ebook pack of novels: Tiger Lily by Wende Dikec, When Sorrows Come by Katie M John, and Time Runs Away with Her by Christine Potter.
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