Recruit of Talionis by C.J. Milacci - Spotlight and Excerpt! (With a giveaway!!!)

 

Welcome to the Blog Tour for Recruit of Talionis by C.J. Milacci, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

About the Book

Title: Recruit of Talionis
Series: Talionis Series #1
Author: C.J. Milacci
Publisher: Fayette Press
Release Date: November 3, 2022
Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi Dystopian

"Forget where you came from. Forget the life you knew. You are now recruits of Talionis!"

A teen with a dark past. A secret military force that kidnaps new soldiers. Can she survive as a Recruit of Talionis?

America has fallen.

Seventeen-year-old Bria Averton grew up in a small town of survivors near the ruins of Portland, Maine. It’s all she’s ever known — until she’s kidnapped along with hundreds of other teens and brought to the city of Talionis. A city no one knew existed.

The soldiers tell them the intense trainings are for the good of the survivors, and Bria resists being forced into a new life as a recruited soldier. But she soon finds the dangers in the city are greater than she imagined.

Escape is impossible, and Bria fears drowning in the evil of the city… and the guilt from her own past. But can she find hope, even here?

PURCHASE LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | IndieBound | BookBub

Excerpt:

A shock zips through me, and I bolt upright, gasping for breath.
“She’s alert, sir,” a woman kneeling on the floor next to me says.
The empty syringe in her hand causes me to try to move away from her, but my bound
hands and feet make it almost impossible. With a rush, everything comes back to me.
Waking up in the forest.
The soldiers.
The other teens.
Golden Eyes.
The man comes into view as though he could read my thoughts. “Good. We’re two mics
out. Prepare for landing.”
“Yes, sir.” The woman puts the needle in a box, seals it, and then stands.
My muddled brain struggles to process everything. I look down and immediately wish I
hadn’t. My stomach roils. I’m suspended in the air, the tops of trees passing by in a blur beneath
me.
“Where am I? What’s going on?” The questions burst from my mouth, coated with fear.
The soldiers ignore me, and I open my mouth to ask again, desperation pushing aside any
sane thought.
“Girl, I would stay quiet if I were you.” The words are a whisper, but they catch my
attention.

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About the Author

CJ Milacci has found creating to be therapeutic in the chaos of life. Writing is her favorite way to create, and she seeks to take her readers on a grand adventure that begins with a single word. As a referee, she is always relearning the hard lesson that it’s impossible to make everyone happy, and she’s discovered that stories can be found anywhere, even on a lacrosse field. She is passionate about crafting stories of good overcoming evil, finding hope in the midst of seemingly hopeless circumstances, and true acceptance. Always willing to get real about hard issues, C.J. also enjoys the cheesiest of puns. She loves deep conversations, yo-yos, roller-blading, and finding reasons to throw a dance party. She chats about writing, her faith and the hope found in Jesus, bubble tea, and other fun adventures online (@cjmilacci) and at cjmilacci.com.

Connect with CJ by visiting cjmilacci.com to follow her on social media or subscribe to email newsletter updates.

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Tour Giveaway

(2) winners will each receive a print copy of Recruit of Talionis with swag and a $15 Amazon gift card!

Full tour schedule linked below. The giveaway begins at midnight March 27 2023 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on April 3, 2023. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.

Giveaway is subject to JustRead Publicity Tours Giveaway Policies.

Enter Giveaway

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Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!

Sparked by Helena Echlin and Malena Watrous

Goodreads Summary:

Fifteen-year-old Laurel Goodwin wakes up to find her older sister Ivy missing from their Airstream trailer in the Oregon redwoods. A recurring nightmare convinces her that Ivy was abducted, but no one takes her dream seriously, including her mom. Laurel, a loner, has to learn to ask for help, and Jasper Blake, a mysterious new kid who shares her love of old books, quickly becomes her ally. Together they find their quiet town holds a deep secret and is the epicenter of a dark prophecy. 
Laurel soon learns that her worst enemies, mean girls Peyton Andersen and Mei Rosen, are developing powers that she needs to find and save Ivy. With time running out, Laurel realizes that power doesn't always take the form that you expect. And once she learns to look beyond her snap judgments, she develops an unexpected gift of her own.

My Take:

This was a very paranormal young adult read and I liked it!  I immediately liked Laurel.  I felt the missing sister story line has been played a lot, but Echlin and Watrous did a nice job in making this story its own.  I think any book that has the words ancient prophecy in it, speaks for itself.  I definitely wished I could've read this before October as I feel it has a nice creepy vibe to it and I like those types of books at certain times of year.  I felt that Laurel was a complex character who shows originality and true versions of being a teenager, making  her very easy to relate and connect to.  Jasper was a nice love interest in that he, himself, has a backstory that is quite unique.  I didn't really care for Mei or Peyton, but I do think that was the objective.  You can plainly see that everyone is struggling with real life teenage feelings and emotions and insecurities. 

I truly enjoyed Laurel's dreams that told so much of the story and her journey into finding out what happened to her sister Ivy.  I would probably give this story 3 stars for being a creepy, paranormal, sibling bonded, teenage journey to finding ones true self. 

Dream Cast  Was so much fun to make!!!

Laurel ~ Chloe Moretz

Ivy ~ Veronika Bonell

Jasper ~ Ansel Elgort

Sky ~ Skai Jackson

Peyton ~ Aurora Perrineau

Mei ~ Nikki Soohoo

Simone ~ Bailee Madison

Favorite Quotes

"But it was only a nightmare, I told myself. It couldn’t mean anything."

 "I felt like she’d taken the billowing black mass of the nightmare and folded it over and over, until it became a tiny square, small enough for me to put away and forget about."

"Ancient magic sang in their veins, while the most ordinary blood trickled through mine." 

 “As the date approaches, the natural order will begin to fall apart, and the lower beings will be seen to rise from the dead.”

About the Authors

Hello! We are both novelists, but if you've ever tried to write anything, you know that writing can be a lonely, angst-filled business. So one night over a cocktail or two, we came up with a solution: write our next book together. Malena already had an idea: a girl's sister is kidnapped and she has to rely on mean girls with superpowers to get her sister back. We couldn't resist seeing where that story would take us – a wild ride that includes a loner girl who wants to be a writer and a gorgeous boy who can shoot fire from his eyes but also loves to talk about books. And an ancient Zoroastrian prophecy. And pie shakes. (OK, so maybe we got a little carried away.)

We've both published solo novels (check them out here and here) and had no idea how co-writing would work out, but we pounded out the first draft in a white-hot frenzy of inspiration we called "the Vortex." One of us would write a scene and send it to the other with a note: "My apartment is a pigsty and I haven't eaten all day. #inthevortex." We wrote the book we wanted to read as teenagers: a supernatural thriller with healthy doses of horror and humor. Oh, and of course there's romance. You have to wait a long time for the only kiss in the book, but isn't that the case with all the best kisses in books?

Tour Schedule

December 16th

The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club & Pink Polka Dot Books - Welcome Post

December 17th

Deal Sharing Aunt - Promotional Post

The Reading Life - Review + Dream Cast + Favorite Quotes

Book Princess Reviews- Review

December 18th

JusticeReads - Review + Dream Cast + Favourite Quotes

A Bookish Abode - Review

Rainy Days and Pajamas- Promotional Post

December 19th

Belle's Bookish Reviews - Review

Vicarious Bookworm - Review + Favorite Quotes

Ink of Blood- Review

December 20th

Ctrl, Alt, Books - Review + Favourite Quotes

The Clever Reader - Review + Favorite Quotes

Never Too Many To Read- Review

December 21st

Books, Boys, and Blogs - Review + Dream Cast + Favourite Quotes

Lisa's Loves(Books of Course) - Promotional Post

A Dream Within a Dream- Promotional Post

December 22nd

YA/NA Book Divas - Review + Favourite Quotes

Hauntedbybooks13 - Review

The Cursed Books- Review

GIVEAWAY and Guest Post of Love is Both Wave and Particle

Bog Tour:  Love is Both Wave and Particle

By: Paul Cody

 LOVE IS BOTH WAVE AND PARTICLE

“My First Book for Teens”

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Release Date: August 1, 2017

Genre: Young Adult,  Contemporary, Romance

Synopsis:

This achingly beautiful novel considers how to measure love when it has the power to both save and destroy.

Levon Grady and Samantha Vash are both students at an alternative high school for high-achieving but troubled teens. They have been chosen for a year-long project where they write their life stories and collect interviews from people who know them. The only rule is 100% confidentiality—they will share their work only with each other. What happens will transform their lives.

Told from the perspectives of Levon, Sam, and all the people who know them best, this is a love story infused with science and the exploration of identity. Love Is Both Wave and Particle looks at how love behaves in different situations, and how it can shed light on even the darkest heart.

Goodreads- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31145041-love-is-both-wave-and-particle

Amazon- https://www.amazon.ca/Love-Both-Wave-Particle-Paul/dp/1626726884

B&N-https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/love-is-both-wave-and-particle-paul-cody/1124116008?ean=9781626726888&st=AFF&2sid=Goodreads,%20Inc_2227948_NA&sourceId=AFFGoodreads,%20IncM000004

BookDepository-https://www.bookdepository.com/Love-Is-Both-Wave-and-Particle-Paul-Cody/9781626726888

Kobo- https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/love-is-both-wave-and-particle

I didn’t intend to write Love Is Both Wave and Particle for teenagers. I had always written dark literary fiction for adults, usually about people who were mentally ill, or somehow living at the margins of society—in prisons, or mental hospitals, or on the streets.

But I taught at colleges and universities for more than fifteen years, and nearly all my students were anywhere from seventeen to twenty-one years old. One course I taught often was focused on personal essay and writing from experience.

The very nature of that course encouraged students to write about their lives, their hopes, fears, the things that had upset them or gave them joy. The students often wrote about cutting, eating disorders, sexual assault, depression, alcohol and drug problems, and serious problems with their parents.

I got to know the students unusually well, because they were writing from the heart. It made me realize how even “normal-seeming” students were often carrying heavy emotional burdens, and how often, writing about the burdens would somehow ease the pain.

I also have two sons who had recently passed through their mid to late teens. So, I felt I knew kids of that age.

Kids that age are in flux. Not quite adults, not only teenagers. They have driver’s licenses, are only a year away from voting or joining the military. Many drink alcohol, at least a little, some smoke weed.

I wanted to write a novel about two seventeen-year-olds, each with some history of mental illness or disability, and throw them together, in a fairly small setting, to see what would happen.

Would they hate each other?

Understand each other?

Might they fall in love?

Might they even change each other in big or small ways?

Part of being a teenager, I’d always thought, was growing up and away from the influence of parents and home, and finding different influences in the world, from friends, teachers, musicians, books, and the internet. Many things go into the process of growing up.

As I got deeper in the writing of Love Is Both Wave and Particle, the characters deepened and changed for me. Often, a character who I thought was a certain kind of person, who was cynical and heartless, turned out to have lots of heart and a real sense of decency. It had just been buried beneath a façade of cynical cool.

My main characters, Sam and Levon, were often contradicting my expectations for them. I wanted them to go left, and they wanted to go right. And in pretty much every case, I tried to watch and listen carefully, and I nearly always followed their leads.

Characters become alive to me as I’m writing, and I develop great respect and affection for them during the creation of a novel.

When I finished the novel, and sent it to the woman who’s now my agent, she read it and said, “This is a terrific young adult novel.” 

I was absolutely surprised, but very curious about the genre. I thought of Huck Finn and The Catcher in the Rye, and that in many ways those are young adult novels, and those are also novels I had loved for decades.

And then when I thought of the thousands of students I had taught, and when I looked at my two sons and their many friends, it made perfect sense that I had written a novel about young adults for young adults.

Just as my characters had surprised me, I had surprised myself.   

Paul Cody earned an MFA at Cornell University, and has published several novels and a memoir for adults. He lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife, the poet Elizabeth Holmes, and their two sons. Love Is Both Wave and Particle is his first novel for teenagers.

Links:

Website- http://www.paulcodywriter.com

Goodreads- https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21771.Paul_Cody

August 1st

Pink Polka Dot Books- Welcome Post

August 2nd

Little Library Muse- Promo

August 3rd

Serial Bibliophile- Review & Bookstagram

YA Book Divas- Review

August 4th

Mind of a Book Dragon- Guest Post

The Candid Cover- Guest Post

August 5th

Never Too Many to Read- Guest Post

A Dream Within a Dream- Promo

August 6th

JusticeReads- Guest Post

Here's to Happy Endings- Review

August 7th

When Curiosity Killed the Cat- Review

ABOUT THE GIVEAWAY:

1 copy of LOVE IS BOTH WAVE AND PARTICLE by Paul Cody

US/Canada only

No Giveaway accounts

Rafflecopter Link:

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/d9681b86256/?