Author Guest Post with Kelli Swofford Nielsen

15 Jun, 2012 by in Shadow Mountain, stone mage wars Leave a comment

Fire and Ice has invited author Kelli Swofford Nielsen today to talk about her book which was given at BEA last week and is an awesome YA fantasy debut for 2012 from Shadow Mountain. Here’s a little about the first in the Stone Mage Wars series as well as an exclusive post from the author below the summary.

Journey to the Fringe
Stone Mage Ward Book 1
by Kelli Swofford Nielsen 
Paperback, 368 pages
Published May 1st 2012
by Shadow Mountain
ISBN 139781609088521

 

Summary from Goodreads: Long ago, Stone Mages were revered in Lyria. They were men and women who could use powerful tradestones to harness their unique gifts of wind, rain, and earth to help those around them. But war with the Southern realm has threatened the mages with extinction. The truth about the tradestones has been lost, and the remaining magic is dwindling. When Princess Ivy, the beloved daughter of the king, is abducted, it seems that all hope for Lyria is lost as well. But when an unlikely group of loyal subjects embarks on a dangerous journey to the far-distant Fringe, the hope of restoring crown and kingdom is renewed. Among the group is Simon, a fool with wisdom beyond his years; Gilda, a nonmagical witch; Burr, a young thief; and Merrick, a jaded sea captain. Their quest will test their courage, their strength, and their friendship. But at the Fringe, they encounter a truth that will change everything they thought they knew about themselves, and this small band of heroes must embrace the power that is their birthright and stand together as Stone Mages of Lyria
Author guest post:
“I want to thank Heather for featuring my book, Stone Mage Wars: Journey to the Fringe on her website, and am excited for the opportunity to do a post for Fire and Ice.
I have always been a big reader. I read a wide variety of genres—classics, contemporary adult fiction, mysteries, some nonfiction, but I have long been especially fond of fantasy—particularly YA fantasy. I remember reading and re-reading Robin McKinley’s books The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword during my difficult middle school years, and gaining an appreciation for honest, character-driven stories that feature brave heroines, magic, a little romance, and deeply-woven settings with a sense of history and authenticity.
Although I spent years developing ideas about what made great fantasy, I never considered writing my own until after I left teaching high school English to stay at home with my infant son. During that time, I read a collection of short stories by Garth Nix called Across the Wall. Before each story, Nix told a little about why or how he had written it, and I found that the way he described his thought process felt a lot like mine. I thought, maybe I should write short stories, and then I thought, maybe I should just write short chapters, and so I did. I began writing the kind of story that I found I liked reading, and over the space of a couple of years my short chapters eventually became a novel.
When I started writing Journey to the Fringe I had a basic storyline in mind driven by a few key characters—chiefly Princess Ivy, who was captured and whisked away to the perilous Fringe, only to find out that the end of the world was only an edge, and that her adventure was just beginning. I liked the idea of the magic in the novel centering on these common objects, stones, that the characters wore all the time—and took for granted. Only later would they discover that they each possessed a unique gift, in connection with their stones, that they could use for the good of their kingdom. As I wrote, more characters emerged and occasionally took the story places I hadn’t planned. They included a brave local fool, a jaded sea captain, a rejected witch, a young thief, and others. I felt that the characters grew as the story went on, and so even though I originally wrote Journey to the Fringe to stand alone, I was excited to let it continue when the publisher suggested a trilogy.
I am very excited to have Journey to the Fringe now in print! I feel pleased with my first novel and the way it turned out. However, as I am now almost finished writing the second book in the Stone Mage Wars trilogy, I am happily anticipating the opportunity to allow the story to further evolve in interesting and fulfilling ways.”
~Kelli Swofford Nielsen

About the author: Kelli Swofford Nielsen graduated from Utah State University with a bachelor’s degree in teaching English. She and her husband, Jeff, live in Chicago, Illinois, with their two sons. Journey to the Fringe is Kelli’s debut novel.

Find out more on Goodreads/ Shadow Mountain/ Deseret Book

 



Stacking the Shelves #3

14 Jun, 2012 by in robert millet, stacking shelves 1 comment

Stacking The Shelves is a meme started by Tynga’s Reviews “all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks.”

Here’s what’s new on my shelves this week

Apparition by

Wicked Sweet by Mar’ce Merrell- ARC, won

Reality Check by Karen Tuft- bought

Mormons: An Open Book by Anthony Sweat- from publisher for review

What’s new on your shelves?

Clean Read Review -The Most Important Catch

12 Jun, 2012 by in Spirit Dance Books 2 comments

The Most Important Catch
by Jaclyn M Hawkes
Paperback, 318 pages
Published March 16, 2012
by Spirit Dance Books
ISBN: 0985164808
Source: Blog Tour
4 Stars

Summary from Goodreads: Run or die!
She knew too much, and she’d seen too much.
And the police refused to help.
Knowing that she was to be the next scheduled death, Kelly Campbell hid under head to toe black leather and a tinted motorcycle helmet and ran for her life.
When the weather turned cold, she turned south.
She ended up in North Carolina, home to one of the most famed and eligible NFL football stars in the whole league; only she didn’t know that. She thought he was a businessman. Not being a huge fan, all she knew was that he was incredibly attractive, kind, generous, and that she was safe with him. 

Or was she?

His brand of fame proved to be all but deadly, but his fame wasn’t nearly as lethal as his attraction.

He kept her safe and protected. All except for her heart.


Cathy’s Review: Kelly Campbell is just a normal, beautiful 23 year-old. She’s a nurse at a hospital for the mentally unstable. She is dating one of the doctors there. But one day a patient dies under very suspicious circumstances and it worries Kelly. She finds the patient’s file as soon as she can, but it appears to be normal and when her boyfriend, Peter Holmes, catches her looking at it, he makes a remark about not digging too deep if she wants to survive. Unfortunately, the same thing happens again, to another patient and Kelly knows that she can’t leave the situation alone any more. She has a date with Peter that night and she knows from the look that he gave her when he caught her reading the second patient’s file that she won’t be coming back alive from this date. She knows she has to run, so she fakes her own death and takes off on her cousin’s old motorcycle with just seconds to spare. Living on the run is so lonely, so she’s thrilled to meet a man named Robby in North Carolina that she can just tell by her feelings is trustworthy. She settles down for a while to be caretaker over an old house that needs a face-lift. Kelly and Robby start to fall in love, but she doesn’t know who he really is, Rocker Robideaux, famous NFL player. When she finds out, will she ever trust Robby again and what if Peter finds her??


This book was fun. I loved the action and the adventure of it. Not to mention the sweet romance between Robby and Kelly. I felt like I was riding that motorcycle cross country with Kelly and hiding from the bad guys. I love it when you can escape from the world you’re in and into a whole new world that you may have never even seen before in certain books, this was one of those for me.

Content: drug dealing

About the author: Jaclyn M. Hawkes grew up in Utah with 6 sisters, 4 brothers and any number of pets. (It was never boring!) She got a bachelor’s degree, had a career and traveled extensively before settling down to her life’s work of being the mother of four magnificent and sometimes challenging children. She loves shellfish, the out of doors, the youth and hearing her children laugh. She and her fine husband, their family, and their sometimes very large pets, now live in a mountain valley in northern Utah, where it smells like heaven and kids still move sprinkler pipe.

Learn more about author Jaclyn M Hawkes: Goodreads/ Website/ Blog

Enter to win a copy of The Most Important Catch from Fire and Ice here.

Book Review- Illuminate

11 Jun, 2012 by in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Illuminate
by Aimee Agresti
Hardback, 511 pages
Published:  March 6th 2012
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN   054762614
Book Source: Publisher
2 Stars
Book Summary From Goodreads: Haven Terra is a brainy, shy high school outcast. But everything begins to change when she turns sixteen. Along with her best friend Dante and their quiet and brilliant classmate Lance, she is awarded a prestigious internship in the big city— Chicago—and is sent to live and work at a swanky and stylish hotel under the watchful eyes of a group of gorgeous and shockingly young-looking strangers: powerful and alluring hotel owner Aurelia Brown; her second-in-command, the dashing Lucian Grove; and their stunning but aloof staff of glamazons called The Outfit.
     As Haven begins falling for Lucian, she discovers that these beautiful people are not quite what they seem. With the help of a mysterious book, she uncovers a network of secret passageways from the hotel’s jazz-age past that leads her to the heart of the evil agenda of Aurelia and company: they’re in the business of buying souls. Will they succeed in wooing Haven to join them in their recruitment efforts, or will she be able to thwart this devilish set’s plans to take the souls of her classmates on prom night at the hotel?
     Illuminate is an exciting saga of a teen’s first taste of independence, her experience in the lap of luxury, and her discovery she may possess strength greater than she ever knew.
Review by ephrielle:
This book not only is huge but it felt so long. It took most of a week for me to get through two thirds of it. It seemed to improve around three hundred pages. The story and the characters all started to flow and pique my interest. This quickly faded back to less than exciting and then into a confused mess of chaos.

Early on the vibe I got from this book was something very similar to Another Faust by 















Content: Mild to moderate violence

About the author: Aimee Agresti is an entertainment journalist with ten years of experience writing, editing, and chatting up celebrities. A former staff writer for Us Weekly magazine, she has interviewed everyone from Angelina Jolie and George Clooney to the stars of The Hills, and even penne

d the magazine’s coffee table book Inside Hollywood.

In addition to Us, her work has appeared in People, Premiere, DC Magazine, The Washington Post, Boston magazine, Women’s Health, Mademoiselle, and the New York Observer. She lives in Washington, DC.


Find more about author Aimee Agresti on Twitter /  Website/ Blog

Seeds of Discovery Blog Tour

10 Jun, 2012 by in ya, ya fantasy 1 comment

We are happy to be today’s stop on the Seeds of Discovery Blog Tour hosted by Lightning Book Productions.
Seeds of Discovery
Dusk Gate Chronicles – Book One
by Breeana Puttroff
Paperback, 288 page (also available for Kindle)
Published April 2011
by Musefish Independent Press
ISBN 0983993017   
Source: Author
Rating 4 stars

Book Summary from Goodreads: Quinn Robbins’ life was everything she thought a teenager’s should be. She has good friends, a family that she loves, good grades, and an after-school job she enjoys. And, she’s just been asked out by Zander Cunningham, a popular football player and great guy. But one day when driving home after picking up her little sister from the baby-sitter’s, she nearly hits a boy who, after running blindly into the street, mysteriously disappears.
The mystery only deepens as she figures out who the boy is; William Rose, a reclusive, awkward boy from school who always has his nose in a pile of books.

 As she becomes more aware of his behavior it becomes more obvious how out of the ordinary William is and how hard he deliberately tries to blend into the background. This only intrigues her more and she finds herself working to find out more about him, and exactly where he keeps disappearing to. 

 On a whim one night she follows him and suddenly finds herself in a new world. One where William is a prince, literally, and she is treated like a princess. She also discovers that she is stuck; the gate back to her own world isn’t always open. 

Quinn finds herself smack in the middle of a modern-day fairy tale, on a course that will change her life forever
My Thoughts: Quinn is a fun character. She is a bit reserved, yet quite curious. She doesn’t quite buy into the social scene at her local high school, but she is a typical teenager in many other ways. When I began reading the book, I had a hard time figuring out how the cover image fit the story at all. It opens in a modern small town and follows Quinn as she is torn between a budding crush on her long time good friend, and her curiosity about William. I couldn’t see how a castle fit in to the story. 
Then all of a sudden, a burst of courage and an overwhelming sense of curiosity sent Quinn on an adventure in a modern fairy tale world of Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses. But this world, while beautiful and filled with wonderful people, is plagued by a mysterious illness that only seems to attack children, and rarely more than one child in the same family. 
 I really enjoyed reading this book. It is fun and clean. The characters are very likable and I found myself wondering more about them. I liked that the story shed a positive light on larger families. As a mom to five children I love to see the positive aspects of large families highlighted (The king and queen in this tale have 13 children!). 
I would definitely recommended this book, especially if you like a light fantasy read. I look forward to reading the next books in the series!
About the Author: Breeana Puttroff has loved making up stories since she could talk. For many years, her biggest audience for those stories was the fantastic students she had the privilege of teaching.
One summer afternoon, while she was picnicking in the beautiful mountains of her Colorado home with her little girl, Breeana saw an old, broken stone bridge, and she just knew there was a story inside. Six months later, the Dusk Gate Chronicles was born.
Breeana now runs a small business and writes full-time, and is a busy, single, homeschooling mom to her beautiful daughter.
Breeana holds a B.A. in English from the University of Northern Colorado, and an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction and Literacy from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA  
Find out more on her website/ blog/ twitter

Buy all three books:

Middle Grade Reads for 1.99

08 Jun, 2012 by in Uncategorized Leave a comment

HarperCollins unveiled some great prices today for your summer reader! Get a complete middle grade summer reading list for just $20. From 6/8 – 7/2, you can get 10 top ebooks for $1.99 each
.
      
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson       
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech     
Umbrella Summer by Lisa Graff    
Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary    
Septimus Heap, Book One: Magyk by Angie Sage     
The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable by Dan Gutman      
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia     
The Secret Zoo by Bryan Chick    
Ida B by Katherine Hannigan    
Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen

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Monument 14 Blog Tour Guest Post and Giveaway

07 Jun, 2012 by in macmillan, monument 14 9 comments

Fire and Ice is thrilled to be today’s stop on the official Monument 14 blog tour. We have a guest post from the author Emmy Laybourne as well as a giveaway!
But first here’s more about the book…

Monument 14

by Emmy Laybourne
Hardcover, 294 pages
Published June 5th 2012
by Feiwel & Friends
ISBN 0312569033
 
Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not—you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.

Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.

But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.

Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.

In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart.
 
Guest Post from Emmy Laybourne:
 
Hello friends!
I’m so delighted to be guest blogging here at Fire and Ice. Since my blog tour coincides with the Fierce Reads author tour – Heather and I thought it would be cool if I used this blog spot as a report from the field. Here is a day by day report on the tour so far!
Tuesday, June 4th – I LEAVE HOME
I was picked up at 6:30 by Carmel – a trusty NY car service company that has a catchy phone number – 212 + all sixes. This probably makes the devil very happy.
I had planned to have my husband, Greg, take a photograph of me and the driver in our driveway before I set out. However, after kissing my two beautiful, sleeping children goodbye (8 and 5 years old) I burst into tears. They were so sleepy and warm and I felt, somehow, that my being away for two weeks would change them and somehow I’d return to find them more grown up. Also, I am a crybaby in general, so it was somewhat par for the course.
Anyway it didn’t seem like the right time to take a photo. Instead my husband gave me a good hug and assured me that they’d all be fine and I let my driver, Osama, load my suitcase into the trunk of the towncar. I spent the ride to the airport blotting makeup off my cheeks, chin and décolleté.
By the time we arrived at Newark, I had sufficiently recovered enough to ask a passerby to take a photo of the driver and I. To my surprise, Osama asked me to email him a copy of the photo. I have no idea why he would want a photo with me, especially one with me looking so bedraggled. But here it is. Cheers, Osama!
I spent the flight reading M14 and marking up places where I might read at tonight’s book party/improv show. Instead of doing the usual book reading and signing in a store, I decided to do something really new and strange.
I assembled a group of improvisers and tonight we would do a show at a great little LA theater called Improv Olympic West. The show follows an improv format called The Armando. The way it usually works is that an actor or celebrity tells a story from their life and then the improvisers interrupt it to do scenes loosely based on the monologue. But for my show, I would read from Monument 14 and improvisers would work based on what I read.
I took the time on the plane to re-read M14 and select passages I thought might work well in the show. I was happy to discover I still liked the book!
June 4 – AFTER THE SHOW
It was great to see all my friends at the Book launch show. I couldn’t believe how many people came out to celebrate the release of Monument 14. Afterwards, I got to sign books for my friends. That, let me tell you, is fun!
My brother, Sam and his beautiful wife Herran were there in full support mode. Sam even brought a bunch of writer friends from his recent gig at Cougartown. That’s the kind of guy he is and it’s just one of the reasons why I dedicated Monument 14 to him.
The show was solidly good, but I think I threw the improvisers too many curveballs with my readings from the text. They would have been better serves if I had just read the first chapter of the book – allowing them to interrupt me with scenes.
Oh well, live and learn! The next time I assemble a LA cast to do an Armando on my post-apocalyptic YA debut, I’ll know!
June 5 – I CHECK IN TO THE HOTEL
Now, I should take a moment to say that until I pulled into the hotel, I had NO IDEA what “kind” of tour I was on. Would we be staying at Motel 6’s and eating at McDonalds? Would we be living the high life at fancy hotels with pools and spas and manservants named Sasha?
Guess what – it’s the latter. Sort of. Everything except for Sasha. Our first hotel is the Sheraton Suites Fairplex in La Verne. Now, the Four Seasons it aint, but I have a suite with a King bed and it’s a sweeeeet suite! It turns out all the hotels we’ll be in will be this nice. I know because I asked Kate Lied, our Macmillan rep, “Will all the hotels be this nice?” and she said, “Yes.” yahooo!
I checked in to the room, pinched myself several times and prepared to meet the other authors.
WE HAVE DINNER
It was funny, meeting these authors that I know I’ll be spending the next two weeks with! They are all very nice, as it to be expected. What I did not expect was that they’d all also be so funny! Anna Banks, in particular, has a dry wit that totally took me by surprise. She sort of sneaks up on you and then zings you so bad you can’t recover. I like her. A lot.
We all had dinner and during dinner I learned that Leigh Bardugo is a crybaby, just like me; Jen Bosworth has a deep dark secret that WILL come out during the tour; Kate Lied (our lovely Macmillan rep) does not like chocolate; Jessica Brody gives great advice; and Anna wants to write a YA Sasquatch romance.
WE GO TO THE EVENT
You know, I trained as a comedy improviser and was a professional actor for 10 years — I was confident that I could be funny and personable at the event. What I was not prepared for was how emotional I would feel looking out at the readers and fans who gathered at Mrs. Nelson’s Bookshop. Here’s a photo I took of them.
I love books and I love writing. And I felt, looking out at the friendly, smiling faces, like I had somehow come home. Like sitting and talking about fiction with other book lovers was what I was meant to do.
I knew I loved the writing part of this job, but I didn’t know about these other parts of the job – meeting readers, talking about my work, and connecting with fans. What can I say, I feel extraordinarily lucky and blessed to get to do this.
So there was all of that – all of that magic and thankfulness and emotion. And then I got back to my room and found this:
That’s my first tour report! I’m so glad that Heather encouraged me to report in from the field. I’ll be making another report on the Author tour on Monday, June 11 at: http://withabook.blogspot.com/ Tune in to see if I am still quite so euphoric!
And hey – if you’re in San Francisco, please come join us tonight along with Not Your Mother’s Bookclub at Books, Inc. (the Opera plaza location.) I promise I won’t cry on you!

 

About the Author: Emmy Laybourne’s first novel, Monument 14, will be published by Feiwel and Friends, a division of Macmillan, in June 2012. The sequel, Monument 14: Sky On Fire, is expected to be released in the summer of 2013.
Emmy began her writing career as a playwright. The first play she wrote and performed was called, The Miss Alphabet City Beauty Pageant and Spelling Bee. The New York Post said it, “restores faith in our country’s comedic future.” The Daily News called it, “hilariously clever.”
Her next play, Smorgas-Bourne, landed Emmy a starring role in the Paramount feature film, Superstar, opposite Will Ferrel and Molly Shannon.
As an actress, Emmy went on to have featured roles in the films “Nancy Drew,” “The In-Laws,” and “Lucky Numbers.” She was a season regular on the NBC sitcom “DAG,” and performed original comedy on Comedy Central, MTV, and VH1. She has improvised with the Upright Citizens Brigade, Chicago City Limits and the Heartless Floozies.
Emmy has performed original comedy material throughout LA and New York, including the song she sang with her brother, Sam, “We Can’t Make Love Because We’re Related.”
In addition to writing YA novels, Emmy is currently a Lyricist in the prestigious BMI Musical Theater
Writer’s Advanced Workshop, writing a musical called “The Midnight Princess” with composer Paul Libman.
 
Learn more about the blog tour and visit all the stops here. 
 

 

The Giveaway: Feiwel and Friends has generously donated one copy of Monument 14 to our readers with a US or Canada mailing address. To enter fill out this form.  Good luck!

The Guardians of Elijah’s Fire Blog Tour and Giveaway

07 Jun, 2012 by in Uncategorized 5 comments

Fire and Ice is pleased to announce Frank L. Cole’s newest book as part of the Cedar Fort blog tour and offer a giveaway to our readers!

by Frank L. Cole

Expected publication June 12, 2012

by Cedar Fort, Inc.

ISBN 1462110576
 
Book Summary: Just when they thought they were safe, Amber Trendon, and their classmates get yanked back into the action. With the Tebah Stick in enemy hands, Amber becomes a target, and it seems even her closest allies can’t be trusted. Now the gang will have to travel through enemy territory to protect a deadly ancient weapon that could cause the earth’s utter destruction.

This thrilling tale ups the action and doubles the danger. Bestselling author Frank L. Cole delivers an addicting read for adventurers of all ages
About this author: Frank L. Cole has lived in such exotic places as the Philippines and Kentucky, and currently lives with his wife and three children out west. While he strived for years to earn his publishing credits, Frank considers sharing his message of “Exercising Your Imagination” to over 30,000 kids across the country as his greatest accomplishment. The Guardians of Elijah’s Fire is Frank’s 5th published book and will release this June, 2012.
You can learn more about his writing at his blog.
To enter to win a copy of Guardians of Elijah’s Fire simply comment below. Must be 13 or older and have a US mailing address.


Books I’d Wait in Line For at BEA 2012

06 Jun, 2012 by in bea 4 comments

I personally won’t be at BEA this year due to a brand newborn baby boy and the recent passing of my mother. However, my reviewer Margie ( AKA: Bumble Girl) will be there representing Fire and Ice. These are the books I would wait in line for if I were with her. Click on the book title to learn more about each one. And for those of you at BEA, have fun.  Miss you!
 I’ll see everyone else at ALA Anaheim in a few weeks.

The Raven Boys (Raven Cycle #1)  by

Finale (Hush, Hush #4)

 

Rift (Nightshade Prequel #1)

Fathomless (Fairytale Retellings #3)

by Marie Lu

 

Reached (Matched #3) by Ally Condie

 

 

Palace of Stone (Princess Academy #2)

by

 

A Fractured Light (A Beautiful Dark #2)

by

The Golden Flute: Adventures of Lilli and Zane #1

05 Jun, 2012 by in Uncategorized Leave a comment

The Golden Flute:
Adventures of Lilli and Zane #1
by Catherine Lanigan
Hardcover, 304 pages
Expected publication date, June 12th 2012
by Cedar Fort
ISBN: 1462110231
Source: Netgalley
3 Stars
Summary from Goodreads: Masterfully written by award-winning author Catherine Lanigan, this thrilling action story keeps you guessing through every twist and turn. Cross continents and connect the clues along with teen treasure hunters Lilli and Zane as they try to stay one step of ahead of danger, find the ancient artifacts, and keep them far away from their enemies. A must-read for adventurers of all ages!

Cathy’s Review: Lilli is 14 years old, her dad finds ancient artifacts and he’s gone a lot, leaving Lilli in the care of her nanny, Nancy. Lilli has been having a lot of strange dreams featuring her mother, Arlette, who died five years earlier. Arlette seems to be trying to tell Lilli something…something to do with a golden flute that Arlette sent to Lilli, ironically on the day that she was murdered. The flute came to Lilli, but it has always been broken, it doesn’t make noise. Lilli and Nancy are just getting ready to join Lilli’s father JC in England for spring break. But when Lilli’s next door neighbor’s, Zane and Teddy spot some men breaking into Lilli’s house right after they’ve left, they know that there’s going to be trouble for Lilli and Nancy and they hurriedly get tickets on the same flight to London. It’s a good thing they did, there’s no way Lilli and Nancy could be prepared for what comes next! 

This book had a lot of action and adventure in it. The plot moved maybe a bit too fast for me. It was hard to keep up with just which character was narrating the story. The story jumps from Lilli to Teddy to the criminals to her father…you get the idea. I really liked Teddy’s character, he was just a cutie. I could picture a little boy acting just like he does, trying not to show his crush on the older Lilli, but trying to be kind to her at the same time, plus he’s such a computer nerd! I didn’t really feel like the other characters were quite as well developed as Teddy. I do however think that the target audience of young adults will really enjoy the story and the characters!

Content: Clean


About the author:  I am an author of over 30 published books and am constantly researching the next 30. I love gardening, cooking, reading, loving my old friends and making new friends. 
Find out more about author Catherine Lanigan: Goodreads/ Website/ facebook