In My Mailbox Aug. 31- Sept. 5

In My Mailbox was created by Kristi of The Story Siren. This week I received a package of books I won from Stephanie Kuehnert’s blog. Also, be sure to enter the Maximum Ride promotion I’m hosting. Thanks! 🙂

Leftovers – Laura Wiess

A devastating novel of desperation and revenge from one of today’s most compelling new voices in fiction. In this follow-up to her heartbreaking debut, Such a Pretty Girl, Laura Wiess once again spins a shattering tale of the tragedies that befall young women who are considered society’s Leftovers.

Blair and Ardith are best friends who have committed an unforgivable act in the name of love and justice. But in order to understand what could drive two young women to such extreme measures, first you’ll have to understand why. You’ll have to listen as they describe parents who are alternately absent and smothering, classmates who mock and shun anyone different, and young men who are allowed to hurt and dominate without consequence. You will have to learn what it’s like to be a teenage girl who locks her bedroom door at night, who has been written off by the adults around her as damaged goods. A girl who has no one to trust except the one person she’s forbidden to see. You’ll have to understand what it’s really like to be forgotten and abandoned in America today.

Are you ready?

How It Ends – Laura Wiess

All Hanna’s wanted since sophomore year is Seth. She’s gone out with other guys, even gained a rep for being a flirt, all the while hoping cool, guitar-playing Seth will choose her. Then she gets him — but their relationship is hurtful, stormy and critical, not at all what Hanna thinks a perfect love should be. Bewildered by Seth’s treatment of her and in need of understanding, Hanna decides to fulfill her school’s community service requirement by spending time with Helen, her terminally ill neighbor, who she’s turned to for comfort and wisdom throughout her life. But illness has changed Helen into someone Hanna hardly knows, and her home is not the refuge it once was. Feeling more alone than ever, Hanna gets drawn into an audiobook the older woman is listening to, a fierce, unsettling love story of passion, sacrifice, and devotion. Hanna’s fascinated by the idea that such all-encompassing love can truly exist, and without her even realizing it, the story begins to change her.

Until the day when the story becomes all too real…and Hanna’s world is spun off its axis by its shattering, irrevocable conclusion.

I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone – Stephanie Kuehnert

A raw, edgy, emotional novel about growing up punk and living to tell.
The Clash. Social Distortion. Dead Kennedys. Patti Smith. The Ramones.

Punk rock is in Emily Black’s blood. Her mother, Louisa, hit the road to follow the incendiary music scene when Emily was four months old and never came back. Now Emily’s all grown up with a punk band of her own, determined to find the tune that will bring her mother home. Because if Louisa really is following the music, shouldn’t it lead her right back to Emily?

Going Too Far – Jennifer Echols

All Meg has ever wanted is to get away. Away from high school. Away from her backwater town. Away from her parents who seem determined to keep her imprisoned in their dead-end lives. But one crazy evening involving a dare and forbidden railroad tracks, she goes way too far…and almost doesn’t make it back.

John made a choice to stay. To enforce the rules. To serve and protect. He has nothing but contempt for what he sees as childish rebellion, and he wants to teach Meg a lesson she won’t soon forget. But Meg pushes him to the limit by questioning everything he learned at the police academy. And when he pushes back, demanding to know why she won’t be tied down, they will drive each other to the edge — and over….

Bling Addiction – Kylie Adams

After a hot summer of partying in sexy South Beach, the fabulous five of the Miami Academy for Creative and Performing Arts are back in school but no less scandalous!

You met them in Cruel Summer: Vanity, the gorgeous celebutante; Dante, the hip-hop dreamer; Max, the second-generation Hollywood bad boy; Christina, the anime-obsessed Latina; and Pippa, the British hottie. Now, with a sex tape looming overhead and a very adult career happening in secret, you’re about to get to know them better than ever.

But as out-of-control parties rage and dangerous connections form, the cool kids who thought they’d be friends forever are about to face the cold hard fact that they won’t…because one of them will be dead by graduation day.

Beautiful Disaster – Kylie Adams

Senior year is cooling down, student scandals are heating up, and in sexy South Beach, one teen’s wicked dirty trouble is another teen’s good clean fun. Until the last killer party becomes exactly that — a party that kills.

Everyone wants to be just like them: Vanity, the gorgeous celebutante; Dante, the hip-hop dreamer; Max, the second-generation Hollywood bad boy; Christina, the just-out-of-the-closet Latina; and Pippa, the British hottie. They’re the fabulous five of the Miami Academy for Performing Arts, and they’ve got everything and more. But for the unluckiest one of all, that includes a violent death at seventeen…on the night before graduation.

Hot romance, dangerous games, platinum dreams, and deadly choices. For some people, it’s an impossible life. For Miami’s most infamous clique, it’s just another day at the beach…and for one of them, it’s going to be the last.

Boy Trouble – Beth Killian

What do you get when you mix broken hearts and superstar egos? Drama, drama, and more drama. With her family in chaos, her roommates at each other’s throats, and her ex-boyfriend Danny refusing to return her calls, good girl Eva Cordes is desperate for her luck to turn around. So when she snags a role in Westchester County, TV’s hottest new primetime hit, she’s thrilled. But the casting directors must have made a mistake — she’s been cast as a vampy vixen? Talk about playing against type.

Being the star of the show is more than Eva bargained for — she has kissing scenes with both her aunt’s actor boyfriend (ick!) and smoldering Aussie heartthrob Teague Archer, plus the show is filming on the UCLA campus — home to the ex-boyfriend she hasn’t quite gotten over. And when she’s not dealing with boy trouble on the set, she’s trying to get to know the older brother she just found out she had (nice going, Mom!). Eva is ready to give up on boys forever, but Teague Archer — the guy every girl wants — has decided he wants Eva. This good girl is no match for his bad boy ways…or is she? Eva just might surprise everyone — including herself.

Fairest of Them All – Jan Blazanin

If life were a fairy tale, Oribella Bettencourt would have a “happily ever after” kind of future ahead of her. A Hollywood producer has come to Des Moines in search of a perfectly modern Princess Rapunzel, and Ori — a model, dancer, and star of the beauty pageant circuit — lands the part. And why shouldn’t she? With her hardworking, self-sacrifi cing mother guiding her career, Ori is stunning, dedicated, poised…and then there’s her hair. Breathtakingly lustrous blond hair that sets her apart from all the other girls at school. So what if she doesn’t have any friends her age, or anyone to talk to other than her mother? She’s on the verge of having everything she’s ever dreamed of.

But in this fairy tale, the beautiful princess wakes up to her worst nightmare — when almost overnight, Ori begins to lose her hair….

Days of Little Texas – R.A. Nelson

Welcome, all ye faithful—and otherwise—to a ghost story, a romance, and a reckoning unlike anything you’ve read before. Acclaimed YA author R. A. Nelson delivers a tantalizing tale set in the environs of the evangelical revival circuit and centered around Ronald Earl, who at ten became the electrifying “boy wonder” preacher known as Little Texas. Now sixteen, though the faithful still come and roar with praise and devotion, Ronald Earl is beginning to have doubts that he is worthy of and can continue his calling. Doubts that only intensify when his faith and life are tested by a mysterious girl who he was supposed to have healed, but who is now showing up at the fringe of every stop on the circuit. Is she merely devoted, or is she haunting him? Fascinating and original, this is an unusual story whose reverb will be deeply felt and which will inspire lively book discussion.