The Year of Living Awkwardly by Emma Chastain (Guest Post & #Giveaway)


Welcome to my tour stop! Check out the fun guest post from the author and a giveaway below...

The Year of Living Awkwardly
(Chloe Snow's Diary #2)
By Emma Chastain
YA Contemporary
Hardcover & ebook, 384 Pages
July 10th 2018 by Simon Pulse

Summary

High school student Chloe Snow chronicles another year in her life while she navigates the highs and lows of family, friendship, school, and love in her diary.

It’s Chloe Snow’s sophomore year of high school, and life has only grown more complicated.

Last year, Chloe was the star of the musical. This year, after an audition so disastrous she runs off the stage in tears, she’s cast as a lowly member of the ensemble. Will she be able to make it through the show knowing everyone’s either pitying her or reveling in her downfall?

Chloe’s best friend, Hannah, is no help: she’s been sucked into the orbit of Lex, the velvet-gloved, iron-fisted ruler of the sophomore class. Chloe’s dad is busy falling in love with Miss Murphy, and Chloe is no longer speaking to her mother, who is sending her increasingly desperate and unhinged emails from Mexico. As her parents’ divorce negotiations unravel, a custody battle looms.

If only Chloe could talk to Grady about it: his parents are divorced, and he’s easy to talk to. Or he was, until he declared his love for Chloe, and she turned him down because despite all her rational brain cells she can’t seem to get over Mac, and then Grady promptly started going out with Lex.

As the performance of the show approaches, Chloe must find a way to navigate all the messy elements of her life and make it through to the end of the year.

(Affiliate links included - I receive a small kickback if you make a purchase using my links.)

Chloe Snow's Top 10 Rules for Surviving High School

I don’t know much about much, but I’ve learned a few things about how to survive high school. Ten things, to be exact:

1. Don’t go out with people you know are awful. If your brain is telling you “this person is mean and doesn’t actually like you,” listen to your brain, even if your bathing suit area is telling you “who cares about mean?? This person is HOT!”

2. And don’t hang out with mean people, period. Unless they’re also interesting and sometimes nice. Even then, it’s probably a bad idea.

3. If your best friend’s boyfriend is cheating on her, tell her. Or maybe don’t. Maybe it’s none of your business! Wouldn’t she just get mad at you, or decide she doesn’t believe you? And are you POSITIVE he’s cheating, or are you just passing on a rumor? OK, this one is less of a survival rule and more of a question.

4. Sleep as much as you can. Grownups make us get up at 6 a.m. because they’re in charge and they don’t care that teenagers are biologically programmed to fall asleep at midnight and wake up at 11 a.m. Or maybe they want us to be grumpy zombies so they can control us more easily. Spite them by going to bed at 8 p.m. and waking up cheerful and well-rested.

5. Don’t let your parents get in your head. They’re right about some things, but not about everything. They’re not infallible just because they’re adults. Some of them are monsters, in fact. If you have monster parents, you might be stuck loving them, because it’s hard not to, but don’t feel guilty about not liking them.

6. Don’t be embarrassed. About anything! The way you look, the things you like, the person you are, the weirdos you’ve hooked up with. None of it’s bad or uncool. (Don’t get me wrong—I’m constantly embarrassed about every aspect of myself. But I know I shouldn’t be.)

7. When things get bad, hide your phone from yourself. Say, for example, half your class is subtweeting you and hashtagging mean jokes about your name. Get out a stepladder, put your phone in the very back of the messiest closet in your house, and then ask your mom to put the stepladder somewhere you’ll never find it. (You could also delete Instagram, Twitter, etc. I could do that too. I mean, we all COULD do that, in theory, right?)

8. Pretend you’re OK. Even if you’re dying on the inside, walk around school smiling calmly. Don’t let them see you sweat. If you have to cry, do it in the bathroom.

9. Remember that high school won’t last forever. In a few short years, you’ll escape! You’ll move somewhere else, somewhere where you don’t have to see every single one of your exes and enemies every single day.

10. If you need to escape right this minute, read a book. A funny one, a sad one, a strange one. Any good one will work.

Other Books in the Series


About the Author


Emma Chastain is a graduate of Barnard College and the creative writing MFA program at Boston University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children.


Tour Schedule
Tour-Wide Giveaway

• 3 copies of THE YEAR OF LIVING AWKWARDLY
• US ONLY
• Ends: 7/18

a Rafflecopter giveaway



No comments

Post a Comment

I love comments! I try to read and reply to them all. Feel free to agree or disagree and generally share your thoughts with me.