Heart in a Box
YA contemporary romance
Inkspell Teen
Catherine Stine
Each heartbeat leads Joss closer to a shocking truth that will change everything.
Joss Olstad has finally talked her clingy, stoner mom into springing Joss from her stifling private school and into the labyrinth of a prestigious Brooklyn public high. Searching for “a way out, a way in, and something I can’t even put into words, yet” Joss longs to find missing pieces of herself she lost when the father she never met died on a faraway road in India. All she has of him is a painted box he made. Joss is also itching to escape the hippie hell of her mother’s bong shop, and the hypocrisy that is her life. With her honey skin, and long brown hair, she passes for white, even though she’s half Indian. This culturally diverse school will be her chance to find out who she really is.
Day one, and Joss is terrified by how different things are. Has she made a horrible mistake? Before long, she gets into the pace. Her sights are set on her own “Bobcat in black denim”, the tall, handsome Will Torres. She’s met Katya too, a popular glam queen, who’s a blast to hang out with. She’s even joined an Indian Culture Club, who invites her to live music clubs. Life is perfect!
Or is it? Her friend, Katya starts acting like a royal slut, her mom’s flinging insults and lies at her, and the Club girls are pressuring Joss to reveal her sketchy pedigree. Joss finds herself spinning stories about her past to fill in the holes. Even Will becomes leery of her. And the Personal Iconography class that Joss signed on for because kids claimed the teacher was “nuts in a good way” is the toughest class she’s ever taken. In it, Joss starts to make her own, heart-shaped boxes, with private messages in them. They help guide her forward. Not only is she forced to figure out who she is beyond the “nice girl” she always hid behind, her search leads her to the fringes of the outer boroughs, to a scary industrial section of Queens, and a shocking family secret that changes everything.
Amazon: http://amzn.com/B017VM7250
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27830593-heart-in-a-box
Join the giveaway by clicking the Rafflecopter link below!
Giveaway
includes $40 gift card, signed paperback of Catherine’s Heart in a Box, signed paperback of Catherine’s Dorianna, ebooks of Catherine’s Amazon
bestselling YA futuristic thrillers Fireseed
One & Ruby’s Fire, super-pack
of cool YA eBooks (Danaan Trilogy by
Howard, Changeling by Herbert and Drawn by Ledbetter).
Thoughts
on school veer off when I spot the box on my mother’s night table. The box. I know its black, lacquered form by heart. It’s the size of a large
jewelry box. My father painted it with Bengali pink roses and a tangle of red
cardinal vines. He must’ve used the tiniest brush, as if the objects inside
were treasures—emeralds from Mumbai or silk doll clothes from Kancheepuram.
The box
sits next to Mom’s organic remedies: tea-tree oil, Saint John’s Wort,
aromatherapy ampules, zinc, monster-dose wheat grass capsules. She thinks these
keep her functional. But I see how one accelerates her and the next slows her
down, adding up to zero. The box is close enough she doesn’t even have to get
out of bed in the morning. She can reach, with trembling fingers, light up and
space out even before her first cup of black tea.
I crack
open the box. Pre-rolled blunts sit like tainted royalty on a plush, purple
pillow. Their sharp floral resin makes me sneeze.
Once
when I was twelve, Mom offered me a doob after closing the store for the night.
She claimed to be worried about how uptight I was getting. It was around the
time when I was sprouting zits, boobs, hips and my period. Who wouldn’t be down
in the dumps? Mom claimed that if I got stoned I might relax. “Cave women
probably used it for cramps, before all these greedy pharmacists crawled on the
earth, trying to sell Midol and Tylenol and—”
“Gee,
thanks,” I snapped. “Are you serious? You want me to be a stoner too?”
“Darling,
I want you to be less anxious, that’s all. I want you to be whoever you want to
be,” Mom answered cryptically. “Look, weed is superior to all those
anti-depressants shrinks prescribe to kids these days. It won’t poison your
liver like Prozac. It’s organic.”
“Arsenic’s
organic too,” I argued. Plus, some kids at my school would bounce off the walls
without their so-called evil-shrink pills. But maybe I was too stiff.
Soon after, I opened the
box, took one and lit up. After only two inhales, I felt trapped inside a thick
glass room. Then, when I ventured down to the street for a soda, people seemed
in a galaxy eons away. It scared me. I vowed not to try it again. How could my
mother stand to feel so cut off? Or was it different for her?
About the Author:
Catherine Stine writes YA and romance. Her novels span the range from futuristic to supernatural to contemporary. Her YA sci-fi thrillers Fireseed One and Ruby’s Fire are Amazon bestsellers and indie award winners. Her YA, Dorianna won Best Horror Book in the Kindle Hub Awards. She also writes romance as Kitsy Clare. Her Art of Love series includes Model Position and Private Internship. She suspects her love of dark fantasy came from her father reading Edgar Allen Poe to her as a child, and her love of contemporary fiction comes from being a jubilant realist. Visit her at catherinestine.com and subscribe to her newsletter for news of releases, workshops and appearances.
Catherine’s Media links:
Subscribe to Catherine’s newsletter: http://catherinestine.us6.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=1fe566b1e53f7d3e95b7443e4&id=93554d599e
Catherine’s Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/Catherine-Stine/e/B001H9TXJC/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1439242205&sr=8-2-ent
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