Walk On Eath A Stranger Release Day Blitz!!

Hello there guys!! Today is release day for  WALK ON EARTH A STRANGER by Rae Carson, and I'm super pleased to take part on the celebrain that includes an awesome giveaway!

If you haven’t yet heard about this wonderful new series by Rae Carson, be sure to check out all the details below.

This blitz also includes a giveaway for a set of the GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS series (in paperback format). US only. So if you’d like a chance to win, enter in the Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post.

About The Book:

WALK ON EARTH A STRANGER by Rae Carson

Pub. Date: September 22, 2015

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Pages : 448

The first book in a new trilogy from acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Rae Carson. A young woman with the magical ability to sense the presence of gold must flee her home, taking her on a sweeping and dangerous journey across Gold Rush–era America.

Lee Westfall has a secret. She can sense the presence of gold in the world around her. Veins deep beneath the earth, pebbles in the river, nuggets dug up from the forest floor. The buzz of gold means warmth and life and home—until everything is ripped away by a man who wants to control her. 

Left with nothing, Lee disguises herself as a boy and takes to the trail across the country. Gold was discovered in California, and where else could such a magical girl find herself, find safety? 

Rae Carson, author of the acclaimed Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy, dazzles with this new fantasy that subverts both our own history and familiar
fantasy tropes.

Walk on Earth a Stranger, the first book in this new trilogy, introduces—as only Rae Carson can—a strong heroine, a perilous road, a fantastical twist, and a slow-burning romance. Includes a map and author’s note on historical research. 

Amazon | Barnes&Noble | iBooks

Read chapter 1 of WALK ON EARTH A STRANGER annotated by Rae Carson HERE!

About the author:

Rae Carson is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the acclaimed Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy. Her next book, Walk On Earth A
Stranger, will be available September 22, 2015. She lives in Arizona with her husband.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

GIVEAWAY

1 winner will receive a set of the 3 GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS series (in paperback format). US Only.

Ends on September 30th at Midnight EST!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Saturday Pages: ARC Review of Walk On Earth A Stranger by Rae Carson!!

Hey there guys!

It's the weekend! Well, I say so while I crash after working night shift and going grocery shopping afterwards to avoid the weekend crowds! *collapses in bed* I shall be taking a nice middle of the day nap!

But I'll leave you with a Saturday Pages review for one of the books that I read for ARC August! And it is another YA Western! I think I have a new appreciation for westerns since I really enjoyed the two that I've read, and they were quite different from each other!

Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I adored Rae's Fire & Thorns trilogy so I was dying to grab her next book and when I heard it would be a western I was even more intrigued!

If any of you are wondering about similitudes with Vengeance Road, they really don't exist aside from that both are YA westerns with a female main character that disguises herself as a boy for a part of the book. The main characters couldn't be more different and so couldn't be their journey, voice or plot.

Leah can feel gold, keeping her ability secret for fear of robbery, murder or exploitation. She lives modestly with her parents, until her life is turned upside down and she must flee from a man that would use her ability for his own means.

She decides to run away and join the Golden Rush to California, hoping that her ability will help her find a new life there amidst the gold madness.

Leah's journey is one of running away a future that she doesn't want, towards the hope of a better one. But in the end the destination isn't as important as the journey itself.

Leah as Lee finds herself with a freedom that would have been unheard of and meets quite a few characters that both change her and are changed by her.

I must confess that at first I was expecting the voice of the book to be in dialect too, and at first it sounded very modern, but once I got hooked on the action and the characters' relationships and dynamics I stopped noticing if the language sounded modern or not.

The biggest strenght of this book for me is in its characters and the way their relationships change and evolve as the journey goes on. All the secondary characters had more complexity than expected at first and they keep surprising us now and then. How some accept the conventions and rules of the time, and how some of them subtly bend them to their convenience. It really irked me how some attitudes changed from being Lee to being Leah, but I was glad that she had enough allies and friends that would not change the way they treated or appreciated her no matter what she was called or if she wore skirts of pants!

The plot of the book is pretty straight forward, it's a road trip in oxen carts, looking for a chance at a better life, so it's all about the very hard journey that it is. Injuries, power plays, encounters with "Indians" that will make your blood boil for the treatment of the Native Americans, but so true for the time, and that might make us think of what has really changed from then to now.

The end of the book brings us full circle to a situation that could have been very much the same that Leah was running away from but that is completely different because of the journey she and her fellow travelers went through. I know this is the first book of a trilogy, but it could have equally been a standalone with enough resolution if a lil bit of an open ending to imagine more details of the future on our own.

Very well deserved 4 stars to this one!



View all my reviews

Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman: Mini preview review and PREORDER CONTEST!!

Hey there guys!!

Happy Friday! And happy start of the long 4th of July weekend to those of you in the US! Also happy belated Canada Day to all my Canuck friends!

Today I am going to share my love for one of my BEA books that will come out in September with a mini preview review, since it's still a lil early and also spread the word on the preorder contest that is going on for said book!

Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman was one of those books that I knew I needed to get from BEA this year, and even though I'm not sure if they had any drops or anything, me and my BEA crew got our ARCs by the very simple method of going to the HMH Books booth and ask about it!

As the mood reader that I am I really couldn't wait till a closer time to release date to read Vengeance Road (but at least it's not as bad as already having read Truthwitch, that comes out in Jan... I know, I know!!) and since I had like well enough Erin's Taken trilogy ( I still need to read the final book though, soon!) I was pretty excited to read this one!

Vengeance Road truly blew me away! I loved it from beginning to end! It took me a lil while to get used to Kate's dialect (and the general way everyone speaks in the book) but after the first 4 chapters I was so immersed in the book and the story, it just felt natural to me!

I'm not the biggest western lover or expert but I've watched my fair share of John Wayne movies with my dad and enough episodes of Bonanza on weekend mornings to not be a complete newbie, BUT, I don't think I've really read a western book before, unless you count the 3 Rin-Tin-Tin ones that my brother had?

Vengeance Road was both atmospheric and had a very visual setting, you could almost feel the scorching heat and the dust in your eyes! I loved how Erin did use a real legend and added some historical characters into the story as a base for Kate's story. I loved how the pace was quite fast and a lot happened in the book but never to the point of being overwhelming or confusing, and I love how we got some seriously unexpected plot twists here and there!

Kate is quite a cactus character (I love that metaphor that Amber Argyle created on her Summer Queen book and plan to continue to use it!) very prickly and for a while she had me a bit worried about her lack of remorse, but I love how by the end of the book she was both stronger and softer than she was in the beginning.

There are two boys, but no love triangle, unexpected allies and a band of bandits that hide more than one ace on their sleeves, a quest for Vengeance and gold and redemption and quite a few shocks and deaths and a wonderful slow burn romance and a heroine that doesn't know the meaning of giving up!

Not only I gave Vengeance Road 5 stars but I also have it preordered already! And I MUST INSIST that you all go and preorder this one! If you liked Erin's previous books you must get this one and if you weren't too keen on them... I insist even more!!

And if you need a lil bit of a push to preorder the book already... Erin Bowman has a fantastic contest going on in her website. You get an awesome swag pack just by preordering the book, and then you enter a contest to win even more awesome stuff! For more details, click HERE!!