Today, we have the Official Blog Tour for Going Places by Kathryn Berla! On our tour stop today, we have an exclusive excerpt to share! There's even a tour-wide giveaway, too! So... Check out all the tour festivities and grab your copy now! Don't forget to follow the tour, HERE!!!
Genre:
Young Adult
Contemporary
Publish Date:
March 20, 2018
Publisher:
Amberjack Publishing
Synopsis:
Everyone had high expectations for Hudson Wheeler. His fourth grade teacher even wrote to his parents that Hudson was “going places.” But everything went downhill after his father died on the battlefield of Iraq one year later. Now facing his senior year of high school without his two best friends by his side and with his teacher’s letter still haunting him, Hudson seizes homeschooling as an opportunity to retreat from the world.
What happens during this year will prove to be anything but a retreat, as Hudson experiences love and rejection for the first time and solves the painful mystery of the “girl in the window”—an apparition seen only by the WWII vet whose poignant plight forces Hudson out of the comfort zone of boyhood.
Going Places is a peek into what male adolescence looks like today for those who don’t follow traditional paths as they strive to find themselves.
✭EXCERPT✭
The first day of school arrived without the usual pit in my stomach. Only two classes meant I’d be in and out in less than two hours. I could actually wait to eat breakfast until after getting home.
Nothing was going to ruin the high I had walking into yoga class. Except maybe Gus Ligety. There he was, posed on his yoga mat like Buddha, surrounded by girls. Girls. Girls. And more girls. Girls dressed in skintight outfits—some of them really revealing. Sleepy-eyed girls. Sleek-haired girls. An ocean of girls. I tried my best to block out Gus and the two other guys in the room. They weren’t exactly chick-magnet types of guys, but then neither was I. The guys those girls really wanted to be with wouldn’t be caught dead in a yoga class. Later in the year, those same guys would make a point to stop and stare into our classroom, pointing and laughing at us (me and Gus) until the teacher turned around and shooed them away with a dirty look.
When I arrived (late) to class, everyone was already lotus-style on three neatly spaced rows of yoga mats. I realized two things: 1. As an unfairly vertically-challenged male, being barefoot in class did nothing to disguise my short stature. “Unfairly,” I say, because my father was tall. But my mom’s short, and at seventeen I was taking after her in that depart-ment. 2. The loose basketball shorts I had on weren’t going to cut it in yoga class. Even Gus knew that. He was decked out in what I assumed were men’s yoga pants—at least they were long and didn’t slide away to reveal everything no guy wants to show at school. I did some fast thinking and made a decision to take my place all the way in the back, hidden behind two rows of girls from the teacher’s forward facing view.
“Hud-man!” Gus called out, prompting a harsh look from Ms. Senger, our youngish and semi-hot instructor. “What’s up, bro? Come sit over here with me. We dudes have to stick together.”
Ms. Senger brought a slender finger up to her pursed lips.
“Mr . . .?”
“Wheeler.” Why was I stupidly late on my first day? I was breaking my own rule of blending into the background. I’d known since middle school that you don’t call attention to yourself by walking into a class-room late.
“Mr. Wheeler, please find a space. There are mats in the back.”
I unrolled a mat and inserted myself between two girls who giggled while they moved aside to let me squeeze in.
Once seated, I could check out everyone else from the safe vantage point of the back of the room. It was a beginner’s class so I assumed everyone was going to be as bad as me, but I knew the girls had an advan-tage when it came to flexibility. Gus, I knew, unfor-tunately since preschool. He seemed to have a magic mirror that gave him confidence beyond anything he deserved. He was annoying but basically a nice guy in very small doses.
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**About the Author**
Kathryn Berla likes to write in a variety of genres including light fantasy, contemporary literary fiction, and even horror. She is the author of the young adult novels: 12 Hours in Paradise, Dream Me, The House at 758, and Going Places. The Kitty Committee is her first novel written for adult readers.
Kathryn grew up in India, Syria, Europe, and Africa. Her love for experiencing new cultures runs deep, and she gives into it whenever she can. She has been an avid movie buff since childhood, and often sees the movie in her head before she writes the book.
Kathryn graduated from the University of California in Berkeley with a degree in English. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Stay connected with Kathryn Berla
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***The Giveaway***
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Thanks for being on the tour! :)
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