BLOG TOUR: The Beauty That Remains by Ashley Woodfolk - Review + My Musical Journey

Hello Book Humans, and welcome to my stop on the International Blog Tour for Ashley Woodfolk's brilliant debut novel, The Beauty That Remains. A huge thank you to PRH International for putting this tour together, and for inviting me to be a part of it. 

The Beauty That Remains is a beautiful portrayal of how music can heal. It's told through three different teenagers, with numerous secondary characters and I absolutely loved it. 

Since the book focuses on music, apart from my review, I'll also be talking about my musical journey so do read until the end!

~**~

Title: The Beauty That Remains
Author: Ashley Woodfolk
Publication Date: March 6th 2018
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Part of a Series?: No, A Standalone
I Got A Copy Through: PRH International (THANK YOU!)
Buy Links: Amazon US || Barnes and Noble || Wordery || Kobo || Books A Million || Chapters Indigo || Google Books

Blurb Description: Music brought Autumn, Shay, and Logan together. Death wants to tear them apart.
Autumn always knew exactly who she was—a talented artist and a loyal friend. Shay was defined by two things: her bond with her twin sister, Sasha, and her love of music. And Logan always turned to writing love songs when his love life was a little less than perfect.
But when tragedy strikes each of them, somehow music is no longer enough. Now Logan can’t stop watching vlogs of his dead ex-boyfriend. Shay is a music blogger struggling to keep it together. And Autumn sends messages that she knows can never be answered.
Despite the odds, one band's music will reunite them and prove that after grief, beauty thrives in the people left behind.

“If someone asked now, “What does love look like?” I’d tell them it was the lies in your eyes.

Books centred on tragedies usually fall in one of three categories for me – either the fall completely flat, or they leave me curled up in under my blanket sobbing my eyes out or they devastate me, and still leave me with hope.

The Beauty That Remains definitely left me in the last category. Ashley Woodfolk’s deep and haunting debut novel reminded me of Adam Silvera’s writing, along with one of my favourite elements in books (that we rarely see) – music – and I fell in love with it.

MY THOUGHTS:

1.       I love way this book was told. We had three narrators, and some incredibly developed secondary characters, each of whom were experiencing the devastating loss of a friend, ex or sister and it was their journey to reaching some kind of acceptance, through music.

 

2.       I struggled to keep up with all the characters in the beginning of this book. All of them were equally important from each narrator, to the person they each lost, to their support systems, but THERE WERE TOO MANY PEOPLE thrown at me in the beginning.

3.       Ashley Woodfolk’s writing was spectacular.  It was slow paced, but really dove into the unbearable grief each teenager felt. It was heart-breaking, poignant and I am A HUGE FAN.

4.       The cast was diverse and inclusive and I LOVED IT. Just off the top of my head, we had Asian rep, Hispanic rep and Gay rep and it dealt with depression, coping mechanisms, therapy and panic attacks with such finesse.

5.        I honestly connected with Logan and Bram’s story right from the get go, and I was desperately craving more.

6.       The only reason this book isn’t receiving a five star rating from me was that there was no definitive ending. I understand that you never truly finish grieving, but this book felt unfinished in a way I can’t fully explain.

A spectacularly written book on loss that will make you feel. 4 stars.

I first laid my hands on a grand piano when I was nine years old. I had seen my older sister practicing for years before that, and I was so excited to meet her teacher and play a real piano. It took me four years of grueling practice under that yeacher before she thought I was ready for an actual graded examination - the Trinity College of London Examination. 

Before I move on, I should inform you that I was not a natural at playing the piano. I struggled to find any sort of rhythm, make my fingers move across the keys and jump from one octave to another without staring down at each key and, just in general, understanding the beat of a song. 

It took years of practice before I had an understanding of how putting together music worked, which was when I took up my Grade One Trinity Examination. I went on until Grade Five (there are 8 grades) 

I worked on each piece for months on a row, purely because Trinity prescribed pieces from Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin. It was grueling work, learning part of a piece, playing it again and again until it became muscle memory to you, until a point where you weren't reading the notes of looking at the keys, but listening to the music you were creating and knowing what came next to make the melody.

It's hard to describe what music means to me. It's not something I can't live without, but working on a piece from a famous composer part by part and bringing it to life in a flurry of music in a cold examination room that smells suspiciously of maple syrup and makes you think God, I am HUNGRY, is honestly something I can't believe I did. 

Music, or learning an instrument like the Piano and it helps you understand that there are things more than yourself and your life. It's about re-creating art and melody and putting some life into black marks in a paper. 

Because of my ten years of piano lessons, I LOVE books that have music in them. The Beauty That Remains was a beautiful book on grief and music and I can't recommend it enough!

Ashley Woodfolk graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in English and her life-long love of books led her straight to the publishing industry. She's a member of the CBC Diversity Committee and markets books for children and teens. In her abundance of "spare" time, she writes contemporary YA. Indie movies, beer, books, and burgers are a few of her favorite things. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and pit bull puppy, Winnie. THE BEAUTY THAT REMAINS is her debut novel.

Have you ever played a musical instrument? Which one?

What are some of the best books you've read that handle grief?

What are you currently reading? 

I'd absolutely love to hear from you!

 

Meet The Authors - Karen McManus: Author of One Of Us Is Lying - Playlist + Giveaway

HII! And WELCOME BACK to Meet The Authors! Since February (when the last Meet The Authors Was), I've had a ton of submissions, a whole set of semester finals and two sets of mid terms, I worked at an advertising agency for a month and went out of the country on vacation. It's been a LOT and I only just had time last month to contact some AMAZING Authors for a week long Meet The Authors feature.

There are a few giveaways coming up over the next week along with some BRILLIANT authors who've agreed to come onto my blog, and I do hope you all have fun (virtually) meeting them and get to know a little more about them and their books!

For day one, please do welcome the WONDERFULLY TALENTED Debut Author, Karen McManus who wrote the YA Mysters, One Of Us Is Lying. 

Music is an essential part of writing for me. While I was drafting One of Us Is Lying, I used certain songs to get into the overall mood of the book, and—probably more importantly—into the minds of the characters. Now that the book is out in the world, I feel a twinge of nostalgia every I hear one of “my” songs, because they remind me of that intense drafting period when the Bayview Four were living inside my head.

If you’re interested in what that was like, here’s a sampling from the One of Us Is Lying playlist:

1.      Don’t You Forget About Me by Simple Minds. This one’s pretty obvious, since The Breakfast Club was the original inspiration for the book. Also, the lyrics “Going to take you apart/I’ll put us back together at heart” sum up one of the book’s major themes.

2.      Kids by MGMT. There’s a scene in the book when a clip of the four main characters set to this song goes viral. People have asked me why I picked this song, and it’s basically because I could picture it. Four kids accused of murder walking in slo-mo against the backdrop of trippy music with dark undertones just felt right.

3.      Stitches by Sean Mendes is Addy’s heartbreak song. Addy’s an interesting character; you’re not meant to like her at the beginning, and most people don’t. But she couldn’t transform the way she did without going through everything this song represents, and realizing she’s better off on the other side. (Side note: this song was in constant rotation while I was drafting in fall 2015, and to this day when it comes on the radio in our car my son yells, “Addy’s song!”)

4.      Maybe I’m Right by Pete Yorn. This is Cooper’s song, and for this one, the lyrics don’t really matter. It’s more the yearning, searching tone of the music that got to me while I was writing.

5.      Secrets by One Republic was Simon’s song, which is probably self-explanatory.

6.      Breathe (2 AM) by Anna Nalick. I had this song on constant repeat when I wrote scenes with Nate and Bronwyn. Bronwyn even borrows part of a lyric at one point to describe Nate.

7.      First, by Cold War Kids. This applied to all the main characters, particularly these lines: “There comes a time/In a short life/Turn it around, get a rewrite/Call it a dark, night of the soul/Ticking of clocks, gravity’s pull”.

Karen M. McManus earned her BA in English from the College of the Holy Cross and her MA in journalism from Northeastern University. Her debut young adult novel, ONE OF US IS LYING, will be released from Delacorte Press/Random House on May 30, 2017. It will also be published internationally in 18 territories including the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia.

To learn more visit www.karenmcmanus.com, or follow @writerkmc on Twitter. 

Title: One Of Us Is Lying

Author: Karen McManus

Publication Date: May 30th 2017

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Part of a Series?: No, A Standalone

I Got A Copy Through: eARC from Random House via NetGalley (THANK YOU!)

Buy Links: Amazon IN || Amazon US || Amazon UK || Barnes and Noble || The Book Depository || Wordery || Foyles || Waterstones || WHSmith || Kobo || Books A Million || Chapters Indigo || Google Books

Blurb Description: One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide.
Pay close attention and you might solve this.
On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.
Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule.
Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess.
Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.
Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher.
And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app.
Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose?
Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

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BLOG TOUR: The Color Project by Sierra Abrams - Guest Post + Giveaway

WOOOOOT! I can't believe it's already time for my stop on the The Color Project blog tour and also that there are MERE DAYS until one of my best bookish friend's DEBUT BOOK releases for the world to read. Sierra Abrams is one of the kindest humans I've had the pleasure of getting to know and I'm so so happy for the chance to have her on my blog. 

Thanks so much Helena and Becky from Book Nerd Addict for putting together this BRILLIANT TOUR!

Title: The Color Project

Author: Sierra Abrams

Release Date: July 18th, 2017 

Publisher: Gatekeeper Press

Buy Links: Amazon    Barnes & Noble   Book Depository  

Add To: GoodReads

Blurb Description: Bernice Aurora Wescott has one thing she doesn't want anyone to know: her name. That is, until Bee meets Levi, the local golden boy who runs a charity organization called The Color Project. Levi is not at all shy about attempting to guess Bee’s real name; his persistence is one of the many reasons why Bee falls for him. But while Levi is everything she never knew she needed, giving up her name would feel like a stamp on forever. And that terrifies her. When unexpected news of an illness in the family drains Bee's summer of everything bright, she is pushed to the breaking point. Losing herself in The Color Project—a world of weddings, funerals, cancer patients, and hopeful families that the charity funds—is no longer enough. Bee must hold up the weight of her family, but to do that, she needs Levi. She’ll have to give up her name and let him in completely or lose thebest thing that’s ever happened to her. For fans of Stephanie Perkins and Morgan Matson, THE COLOR PROJECT is a story about the three great loves of life—family, friendship, and romance—and the bonds that withstand tragedy.

 

Aditi: The official The Color Project Playlist is AMAZING (And I can't wait to read the book and listen to the playlist while doing so) How does music shape your writing process? What are some of your favorite songs?

Sierra: When I read the topic of this guest post, I almost screamed.  If you follow me on any social media, you know I LOVE MUSIC.  It means as much to me as reading and writing do.  I grew up with my parents buying CDs all the time (they owned 500+ CDs, which was a lot before we had digital music) and listening to music everywhere: at work, in the car, at home.  There was always something playing in the background.

        Now as an adult, I listen to music every day.  I have listened to 700+ artists on Spotify and my tastes range from movie scores to indie electronica (my favorite genre) to heavy metal/screamo.  (The only genre that I don’t like, off the top of my head, is country.)

        Naturally, this means music plays a HUGE role in my writing.  Every day, a song—new or old—will inspire an idea, concept, sentence, or character.  I’ve had entire story ideas sprout from single lines in songs I’ve heard hundreds of times.  Sometimes, it just has to click at the right moment.

        I try to write with music in the background, and most of the time it works, but sometimes I do need silence.  And weirdly enough, I often find myself changing my playlists around.  I’ll be writing a contemporary romance and yet I’m most motivated or inspired to write by one of my fantasy playlists.  Or I’ll be working on one of my magical realism concepts and suddenly the perfect mix is a heavy metal album from my childhood.  Everything about this is weird, and I can’t explain it, but it’s true.

        I tried to list off some of my favorite groups/albums by genre, but that gave me too much freedom and there were WAY too many.  So instead, I made a playlist of my favorite songs from my favorite groups from all the genres, and if you like one a lot and want more, find me on social media or let me know in the comments and I’ll give you more recommendations.

It was extremely difficult to narrow that down.  Oh my word.

If you give any of these songs a listen, I’d love to hear what you think of them!  If you’re a writer, did they gave you any character and writing feels/inspiration?  What kind of music do you listen to when you write?  Tell me all about it!

And a big thank you to Aditi for having me on her amazing blog!  You rock!  And thank you to everyone who stopped by today…it means so much to me!

XOXO, Sierra

At 7 years old, Sierra Abrams decided that one day she would publish a book. For over a decade, in between exploring other career options, she kept coming back to that very first dream. Now her life consists of writing books of all kinds... Kissing books, angsty books, killing books, whimsical books, and sometimes books that are all of the above. When she's not writing, you can find her reading, traveling, consuming sushi, or daydreaming about Henry Cavill.

Website || Twitter || Instagram || Goodreads

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Where Was The Integrity? // ARC Review: At First Blush by Beth Ellyn Summer

Title: At First Blush

Author: Beth Ellyn Summer
Publication Date: April 4th 2017
Publisher: Bloomsbury Spark
Part of a Series?: No, A Standalone
I Got A Copy Through: The Publisher via NetGalley (THANK YOU!)
Buy Links: Amazon US || Barnes and Noble || Kobo || Books A Million || Chapters Indigo || Google Books

Blurb Description: Who would have thought that a teenager could have a successful career creating makeup tutorial videos on YouTube? For Lacey Robbins, this dream has been her reality. An up-and-coming YouTuber, she has thousands of fans and can't wait for the day when her subscriber count reaches the one million mark. And when she is offered a high school internship at On Trend Magazine, she figures that this could be the make it or break it moment.
But sometimes your dream job isn't all that it seems. Her editor is only interested in promoting junk products, and her boss in the Hair and Makeup department introduces her to the larger world of makeup artistry, making her wonder if making tutorials online is all she is meant to do. To top it all off, when the magazine's feature subject , musician Tyler Lance, turns his broodingly handsome smile her way, falling for him could mean losing her fans, forcing her to make a decision: her YouTube life or her real life?
Fans of Zoella's GIRL ONLINE will fall right into the world of this YA DEVIL WEARS PRADA and stay hooked from the first blush to the last glossy kiss.

I went into this book not quite knowing what to expect. I don’t do makeup – well, not a lot of it at least. I bought my first eyeliner tube about three months ago, and before that, I had one tube of red lipstick, one pink, and a few lip gloss tubes.

That’s it.

So if you said things like foundation and highlighter and contour, I might know what they were, but I’d have never used them on my own skin.

Still, a book like this always sounds intriguing, and so I was so happy when Bloomsbury approved me to read an eARC of this title on NetGalley.

My Thoughts:

1.      This book was definitely better than I expected it to be. Most books that contain bloggers, or internet content creators, don’t take the time to express what their lives are like – especially ones with a big audience. What I mean to say is, that books with bloggers and vloggers usually just say ‘I quickly typed up a post’ or ‘after a little editing’ and don’t properly explain the life like they would for say – a jock. At First Blush definitely wasn’t like that.

2.       I liked Lacy. I liked her, but she had no personality – NOTHING at all that made me think that she was a real person. She was a little good girl – a vanilla girl – with nothing about her personality that made her pop. She just was, if that makes any sense

3.       I think more than anything, I was slightly mad that Lacy was willing to rep a company that was sup-par just because it was every YouTuber’s dream to be sponsored. I felt like it’s ALL about integrity. Shouldn’t she have at least tried the company’s products before trying to represent and promote them? Is that not basic sense? Why wasn’t SHE, the content creator, given the option to choose whether she wanted to rep them or not? It felt unrealistic.

4.       I liked Tyler, but once again, there was nothing special about him as well.

I guess my main problem with this book was the lack of the characters having anything other than a one-track personality. I liked the book, but if the main part of the plot was her YouTube channel, why was she okay to compromise on it?

3.5 stars. 

What is your opinion on makeup? Do you use it a lot, very little or not at all?

Who are some of your favourite Youtubers? I feel like I don't watch enough and I need to start! Give me some great recs!

A GODDESS ON EARTH // This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

Title: This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)

Author: Victoria Schwab
Publication Date: June 7th 2016
Publisher: Titan Books
Part of a Series?: Yes, Book 1 on 2 in the Monsters of Verity Duology
I Got A Copy Through: eARC from the Publisher (THANK YOU!)
Buy Links: Amazon US || Amazon UK || Wordery || The Book Depository || Barnes and Noble

Blurb Description:  There’s no such thing as safe in a city at war, a city overrun with monsters. In this dark urban fantasy from author Victoria Schwab, a young woman and a young man must choose whether to become heroes or villains—and friends or enemies—with the future of their home at stake. The first of two books.

Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city—a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent—but he’s one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who’s just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August’s secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHY I WAS SITTING ON THIS BOOK FOR MONTHS AND NOT READING IT, BECAUSE I AM SO IN LOVE I DON’T KNOW HOW TO PROCESS ANYTHING ANYMORE.

“Good and bad were weak words. Monsters didn’t care about intentions or ideals. The facts were simple. The South was chaos. The North was order. It was order bought and paid for with blood and fear, but order all the same.”

VICTORIA SCHWAB IS A GODDESS, OKAY? She managed to take the EVER RISING levels of violence in the world and tuned the CONSEQUENCE of it all into something scarier – that VIOLENCE BREEDS MONSTERS, combined into a Romeo and Juliet love story and THIS IS SO FUCKING INGENIOUS, I CAN’T EVEN. 

It took me a while to get past the first 10% of the book, because it was slow paced and I kept restarting and stopping for MONTHS, and then I just FELL. Like August, everything else about the world became black and this book was all I had, I needed to EAT UP, because my hunger to know everything was INSATIABLE.

Also, if someone would be kind enough to just BUILD A TIME MACHINE ALREADY so I can read book two, I would be SO GRATEFUL.

What is This Savage Song all about?

Kate Harker has only wanted one thing – to get back to the city filled with monsters. To get back to all she has left – her father, Callum Harker. The man who makes people pay for protection, the one with monsters following his orders. 

August Flynn was born from nothing. August Flynn is a monster – one of the three rarest. Born from acts of incomprehensible acts of violence, the Sunai are the cosmic balance, and their only food is the souls of the sinners that created monsters.

Living on either side of the Seam, they are the children of warring families. The Harker’s that believe in money and fear and the Flynn’s with their task force to protect the innocents and kill the sinners and monsters. But when the monsters start to overpower the men, nothing in Verity is ever the same.

LIKE I SAID BEFORE, THIS BOOK IS LIFE ITSELF AND SO BLOODY BEAUTIFUL.

Now, please excuse me while I go away and read another VE Schwab book!

5 BEAUTIFUL STARS.

 Have you read any of Victoria Schwab's books? Which one do you think I should read next? Any other dystopian novels you would like me to read?