Where Can You Find the Perfect, Affordable Summer
Escape?
By Shevi Arnold
Since it’s the day after Canada Day and two days before
America’s Independence Day, here’s wishing you a happy holiday! I hope you had,
are having, or will have a wonderful time.
Independence Day always feels to me like the start of
summer, and I love that it starts out with a bang. The summer is here, a time
when it feels like anything is possible.
At least that’s what I think of when I hear that word
“summer.” What about you?
Does it remind you of a time in your life when summer
meant a couple of months off from school, time to kick back and do the things
you’ve been waiting to do all year? Does it make you think of special times
shared with your family? Does it make you think of a summer romance, two people
falling in love under the hot sun? Does it remind you of a summer vacation, maybe
walking on white sand or riding a Ferris wheel at an amusement park, enjoying
the simple pleasure of a lemon Popsicle? Or do you picture yourself stretched
out on a beach chair with a big umbrella over your head, a glass with an
ice-cold drink on a table at your side, and a book in your hand?
Hmm…that fun summer read sounds pretty good right now.
Books are the perfect summer escape. They can take you anywhere you can
imagine, and they only cost a few dollars. A book can take you away to some
fantastic place, make you laugh, cry, and fall in love... Wouldn’t that be
divine?
Below you’ll find a short list of books that will make
you do all of that. These are books for teens, so if you have a teenage
daughter (or son), you can both enjoy them.
My latest book, Ride
of Your Life, is the perfect summer read. It takes place in an amusement
park, and who doesn’t like to make at least one trip to an amusement park
during the summer. But this is not just any amusement park. That’s because the
main characters of Ride of Your Life are teenage ghosts. They experience what
they believe they experience, so this amusement park is a magical place where
anything can happen, even love.
Ride
of Your Life is the story of Tracy Miller, a seventeen-year-old girl who met the love of
her life . . . thirty years after her own death.
Tracy was
working at the House of Horrors at the Amazing Lands Theme Park when the fire
broke out. Instead of running, she lost her life trying to save eleven-year-old
Mack. Now thirty years have passed, and suddenly everything changes with the
arrival of two new ghosts: a little girl named Ashley and a cute
seventeen-year-old boy named Josh. Josh would do anything for Tracy, but can he
help her let go of the past and accept his love?
Ride of Your
Life is a
bittersweet, romantic, YA ghost story that was inspired by a true event: the
Great Adventure Haunted Castle fire, which killed eight teenagers in 1984. It
is a fantasy novel about undying love, and it won third-place in Smart Writer’s
Write It Now (W.I.N.) contest in the YA category, which was judged by Alex
Flinn, the author of Beastly and Cloaked.
I hope this summer you take a chance on love and decide to take the Ride
of Your Life.
Want more great summer reads for teens? Here’s a short
list:
1. The Dead Girl series
by Linda Joy Singleton, which starts with Dead
Girl Walking, is another series that takes a funny, fantastic, teenage,
romantic look at the afterlife. Amber Borden was supposed to return to her own
body after her near-death experience, but she accidentally takes a wrong turn
and winds up in another girl’s body. Over three books, Amber gets to experience
three different lives, and each time she discovers they’re not what they appear
to be.
2. The
Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series by Louise Rennison, which starts
with Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison is one of the
funniest, sweetest series you’ll ever fall in love with. Georgia is a typical
British teenager girl who loves hanging out with her besties, eating Jammie Dodgers,
playing with her cat named Angus, falling for lurve gods, and just having a fabbity-fab
time. This series is frivolous and fun and a lot more innocent than the titles
of the books in the series might lead you to believe.
3. The Chronicles of Vladimir Todd by Heather Brewer doesn’t have any
angst-ridden sparkly vampires. Vlad is funny and in many ways a typical teenage
boy—and like many teenage boys, he finds that high school bites. One of Vlad’s
parents is a vampire, while the other is human, which is against the law in
vampire society. That means Vlad and those around him are in trouble from the
moment he’s discovered, but he does have many allies, including a girl named
Snow, who knows his secret.
I hope you have a
wonderful summer, and even if you can’t afford a fancy vacation, remember you
can always escape in a good book.
What books are you looking
forward to reading this summer?
Ride of Your Life
By Shevi Arnold
Genre: YA Romantic Paranormal
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: ISBN-10: 1477477934
ISBN-13: 978-1477477939
ASIN: B0081ICVEQ
Number of pages: 296
Word Count: app. 83,000
Formats available: all digital formats and paperback
Book Description:
Seventeen-year-old Tracy Miller met the love of her life . . . thirty years after her own death.
Tracy was working at the House of Horrors at the Amazing Lands Theme Park when the fire broke out. Instead of running, she lost her life trying to save eleven-year-old Mack. Now thirty years have passed, and suddenly everything changes with the arrival of two new ghosts: a little girl named Ashley and a cute seventeen-year-old boy named Josh. Josh would do anything for Tracy, but can he help her let go of the past and accept his love?
Ride of Your Life is a bittersweet, romantic, YA ghost story that was inspired by a true event: the Great Adventure Haunted Castle fire, which killed eight teenagers in 1984. It is a fantasy novel about undying love, and it won third-place in Smart Writer’s Write It Now (W.I.N.) contest in the YA category, which was judged by Alex Flinn, the author ofBeastly and Cloaked.
Hang on. Love can be as terrifying as a roller coaster, but it can also be the Ride of Your Life.
Author Bio:
Shevi Arnold loves writing, illustrating, and making people laugh—and she’s been doing all three since 1987 when she started working as an editorial cartoonist for a newsweekly. She’s also worked as a comics magazine editor, as an arts-and-entertainment writer specializing in comedy and children’s entertainment, and as a consumer columnist.
Nowadays, though, she enjoys writing (and sometimes illustrating) humorous fiction, fantasy and science fiction, mostly for children and young adults. Shevi grew up in Philadelphia, and her family had a season pass to Great Adventure in the early 1980s. She was nineteen-years-old and studying overseas when a fellow college student asked her if she knew about the Great Adventure Haunted Castle fire. Eight teenagers had lost their lives.
Like many, Shevi was shocked by the news. In her mind, she wanted to give that tragedy a happy ending. Ride of Your Life is the result. Her previous books are Dan Quixote: Boy of Nuevo Jersey--a humorous novel for middle graders about individualism and friendship overcoming peer pressure and bullying--and Toren the Teller's Tale--a YA fantasy about the magic of storytelling and one girl's struggle to accept that magic within herself. Why My Love Life Sucks, the first in the Gilbert the Fixer, is a funny YA science-fantasy novel about the ultimate geek having to confront his ultimate fear--getting stuck with a gorgeous girl who wants to be his platonic best friend literally forever.
Websites: http://www.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#
4 comments:
Thanks for hosting me on the first stop of my book tour, Wenona!
The book sounds wonderful, mysterious, and I can't wait to read it since I've got my copy already.
This sounds like an interesting premise for an exciting story.
Thanks, LM and Elizabeth! I hope you enjoy the book.
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