Happy Easter/ Passover/ Hanuman Jayanti/Chocolate day to all of your celebrating! And for those of you already on school holidays – teachers and students alike – I hope you’re having a blissful time of rest and peace. I’ve had four consecutive days of chilled-out time at home spent writing, flopping around on couches, doing jobs in the garden, napping and reading. It’s been bloody wonderful, so I hope your time has been equally nice.
Our title for this month is VALENTINE, the first in a new paranormal series by Jodi McAlister (the second book, IRONHEART has just been released). Here’s the blurb:
“Four teenagers – all born on the same Valentine’s Day – begin to disappear. As the bodies mount up, Pearl Linford has to work out what in the supernatural hell is going on, before it happens to her.
Finn Blacklin is the boy with whom Pearl shares a birthday, the boy she has known all her life and disliked every second of it, the boy her subconscious has a totally annoying crush on. Finn is also the Valentine: a Seelie fairy changeling swapped for a human boy at birth. The Unseelie have come to kill the Valentine – except they don’t know who it is. And now both the Seelie and the Unseelie think Pearl is the Valentine, and if they find out she isn’t, she’ll disappear too.
Pearl must use all her wits to protect herself. Finn must come to terms with his newfound heritage. And then there’s the explosive chemistry between them that neither of them know quite what to do about . . .”
A vibrant mix of action, romance and YA wit, with lashings of faery lore transplanted into an Australian setting, VALENTINE has received rave reviews and its author has been welcomed into the ranks of new LoveOzYA talent. Jodi McAlister is a native of New South Wales, a previous Assoc. Lecturer of English at University of Tasmania, and has recently moved to Melbourne – welcome! – to lecture on Writing and Literature at Deakin University. She holds the position of Co-Chair for Romance with the Popular Culture Association of Australia/New Zealand and her academic work focuses on love, sex, women and girls – she’s an expert on popular fiction, and according to her bio, ‘reading romance novels and watching The Bachelor is technically work for her’ (win).
We’ll be having a Facebook chat with Jodi on Wednesday 11 April at 7.30pm AEDST, so start getting your questions ready – and if you’d like to keep up with Jodi on Twitter, you can find her @JodiMcA
As always, you can order VALENTINE through Boomerang Books and receive free shipping by using the ‘loveoz’ code at the checkout.
I hope you enjoy this month’s read, and have a great month!
xxEllie