Friday, March 23, 2012

EMBRACE Blog Tour Stop/ Review



Embrace (Embrace, #1)

*scroll down for the guest post by Jessica Shirvington*

 
Title : 
Embrace

Series : The Violet Eden Chapters #1
Pages : 366 (my ARC)
Author : Jessica Shirvington
Publisher : Sourcebooks Fire/Raincoast Books
Format : ARC
Source :  
**Thanks to Raincoast Books for providing me with an ARC to review**




My Opinion :


Embrace, Jessica Shirvington's debut, is like a fresh breeze; new and perfect.

Violet (mmh, I like that name) Eden is a normal teenager. Wait, no she isn't, except she thought she was. But she couldn't be more wrong. She's actually part angel. And she learns that on her seventeenth birthday. You thought the gift from your grandma sucked? Well, nope, not compared to getting your normal life ripped from your hands.Oh, and also, her crush, Lincoln, is lik her, and icing on the cake, he lied to her! Happy Birthday Violet (*trows confettis*)!

Violet didn't seen like a strong character at first. She seemed a little whiny, and weak. But, I was wrong (*gasp* right?), because she revealed to be a great main-character; one that would sacrifice her humanity for a boy she felt like she didn't love. Also, I've seen some #TeamLinc and #TeamPhoenix going on around... and I'm... (wait for it)

#TEAM LINCOLN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just love him too so much! He's a Grigori (yep, that'S a part-angel person... oh wait, you didn't know that????? Then you should read Embrace, duh!), like Violet, and I love him. He's just so nice, breath-takingly hot (well, in my imagination). I was really struggling to choose a team throughout the book... but then... at the end, I learned something (that I'm not going to tell you; you'll just have to read the book!) about Phoenix... and I wanted to plunge a dagger into his heart!

I loved Jessica Shirvington's debut novel!



4.5 roses!




So, here's the EMBRACE Blog Tour Stop! A cool guest post! Enjoy and Comment!

Where Are You From?
By Jessica Shirvington


Jessica ShirvingtonIn my first draft of EMBRACE (there were eight!), I didn’t set the city. I was in two minds the entire time. I suppose I was drawing on all the places I have been around the world. Although I now live in Sydney, when I started to write EMBRACE, my family and I had just moved back from six years living in London. And prior to that, I’d spent quite a lot of time travelling to many cities around the world – so much so, that when I was writing scenes in EMBRACE, I found myself thinking of different cities around the world and never being able to truly decided which one most suited Violet’s world.

In my second and third and fourth drafts, I chose different cities (I’ll never tell) from around the world and set Violet’s story there. But each time, it felt forced.

I wanted her to live in a city, as opposed to some small town where all these major apocalyptic events just miraculously found her. To be believable she had to be in a metropolitan environment, but which one?

In the end, the answer was … any of them, and none of them. It wasn’t that the cities I chose didn’t work; it  was that in my mind I’d amalgamated them into what I needed for her story to work for me. So I made the decision to give that option to all of my readers and simply called her city, the City.

It isn’t the ‘done thing’ usually, but I believe for this story, it works. I want readers to be able to put this story where they know. If they live in a city, it can be there, if they live in a rural area, then it isn’t a stretch for them to imagine a city nearby. It is an element of control that I wanted to give to the reader.


That said, I like a little control myself … and I discovered that by giving this open setting for Violet’s hometown, it also opened up the possibility to use other locations around the world that would really pop off the page.

In ENTICED (the sequel, out in September!), Violet and her friends find themselves travelling to Jordan – on a quest to the place of Moses’ death – Mount Nebo. In EMBLAZE (book 3, out March 2013) they travel to the island of Santorini in Greece, which is small and stunning, and holds terrors that none of them are prepared for.

Each book, I take the characters somewhere new and as I write the series, I have discovered how very important this is to me. I want my characters to go around the world, to find the problems and be part of the solution, rather than the fight always, and too conveniently, finding themselves.


1 comment:

  1. This is actually one of my favourite angel books I've read. I'm Team Lincoln too :)I'm keen to read the sequel! It's actually sitting on my shelf right now :)

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