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
Ride of Your LifeBy Shevi Arnold
Genre: YA Romantic Paranormal
Publisher: CreateSpace
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.
My Review: I love that this book takes place in an amusement park. It adds a fun, creepy and interesting element to the story. Ride of Your Life is a ghost story - but it's different from those I've been reading recently - because both characters are ghosts (as opposed to the whole tragic dead girl and live boy story I've been reading a lot of lately). I also like that this book is inspired by a true event. It's so much creepier when a ghost story is based on fact (even if it's just a little bit).
Ride of Your Life is a heartwarming, endearing story. I really liked Tracy and Josh, and you can't help cheering for the two to get together despite their tragic circumstances. I found it interesting too, that even in death, the two ghosts face their still human feelings such as guilt and insecurity. I really liked this book and hope that you will too. I can't wait to read more boks by Shevi Arnold.
Short Excerpt:
(From the end of chapter one. At this point, Tracy the ghost has desperately tried and failed to prevent a teenage boy and a young girl from getting killed on a ride at the Amazing Lands Theme Park.)
People continued to rush through her, but Tracy ignored the flashing of the sunlight and shadows on her closed eyelids, ignored the screams and the panic. She let her consciousness slip away from the scene, let it blur until it faded into nothingness.
She was in the ghost world now. Here everything was silent and still, and nothing real could touch her. Although there was nothing to see, Tracy kept her eyes shut. The darkness was comforting, like a soft blanket on a cool night.
The only illusion she held onto was her body. Letting go of that was difficult, like stepping off a high diving board when she couldn’t see the water below, like riding on a roller coaster with nothing under her feet. It was a freefall into the unknown. Her body was what she knew, even if it was no longer real. It was familiar, and it felt safe. Everything around her was quiet and peaceful and still. She was alone in her world. Completely alone.
Then Tracy felt something hit her in the chest, and she returned to the Amazing Lands Theme Park with a scream.
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.
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1 comment:
Thanks for hosting me on my blog tour. You rock!
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