First THANK YOU to Eric Smith and Paste for hosting my cover reveal. What follows is a little information about the cover, the book, and, if you're still reading, an ARC giveaway!
THE COVER
I knew, from the onset, that I wanted the Boomerang cover to be, for lack of a better word, obvious. I didn't want the fact that it was about two boys in an intense and complicated relationship to be hidden. I didn't want their heads to be cut off, or for the cover to simply be a beautiful illustration. I am eternally grateful that my editor, Alison Weiss, felt the same way. We've been working all summer, alongside Art Director Kate Gartner, to nail this down. And I love where we've landed. I hope you do as well.
THE BOOK
The following text is borrowed from a post I wrote when I sold the book in 2015:
I can’t tell you where the idea for BOOMERANG came from. One day it didn't exist and the next I knew I wanted to tell the story of a boy who everyone assumed had been kidnapped, but who really hadn’t been. A boy who left a bad situation and ended up with something he thought was perfect. Until it wasn’t, because nothing really is.
The story was originally told in two points of view until I realized that Sean’s story wasn’t the story of the friends and family he’d abruptly left and then just as abruptly returned to. It was the story of a boy who sees things only in black and white, even though his entire life is filled with greys. A boy who loves and judges everything so deeply that he isn’t able to step back and determine whether or not that love or those judgements are well-placed.
Something about Sean’s story struck me at my core. Long before the book was chiseled into its current form, I knew it was the book of my heart. I deleted almost 40,000 words when I took it to a single point of view, changed agents, changed tenses, cut the most perfectly-crafted page I will ever, EVER, write. I leaned HARD on my critique partners, particularly Beth Hull who talked me out of quitting not just this book, but writing all together. More than once. Or twice.
But something in Sean’s story wasn’t going to let me go. Something in his difficult, complicated love for Trip and his easy, but no less complicated love for Emery had gotten into my bloodstream. Something about the way that Sean so blindly wrestles to figure out what “home” means and to learn that loving people doesn't make either them or yourself perfect, made me feel responsible for this story in a way I hadn’t felt responsible before. Boomerang became, along the way, more than a manuscript for me. These characters were so real and so important to me that I felt beholden to them and to their stories.
I’m so excited about being able to share them with you.
GIVEAWAY
Please note that there are TWO ARCS on offer: one available internationally and one US only.