Possession ARC giveaway #ElanasPossessionispowerful

I received my very first ARC in the mail last week and whipped through Elana Johnson's fantastic book. Help me spread "the buzz" about this great debut. I'm giving the ARC away, see below for more details.

My Round of Words in 80 days (ROW80) update is one I'm all keen to gush about. A couple weeks I posted about one of Donald Maass' great books on writing craft, the Fire in Fiction. This past week I've been busy doing all the exercises suggested in the Fire in Fiction for my WIP and I am THRILLED with the results.  I made some major breakthroughs with my characters, especially my antagonists (yes, I have two of them. One is a false cover for the real antogonist). (Love to be sneaky like that). 

Here's ROW80 updates from my partners Susan Kaye Quinn and Sheri Larsen.

Now back to Possession.  Elana Johnson's blog was one of the very first I started following, and it has been so fun hearing about her getting an agent, then a book deal, then the whole pre-pub process. She is so friendly and helpful and enthusiastic #Elanalove! I was so excited to finally read her book and I couldn't put it down.

Have you seen the movie Inception? You know, the dream within a dream within a dream mind-bender of a movie? Possession is like the YA dystopian version of Inception, with mind-control instead of dreams. It has you constantly guessing who is controlling who, and half the characters don't even know if they are the ones controlling or being controlled. It's wild and the tension is non-stop.

There's this wicked awesome thing called "techtricity" and all sorts of cool science-fiction gadgets. The walls move and talk and OMGosh the futuristic cell-phones are scary-cool.

But the heart of the story are the characters, Violet (Vi) who is all prickly attitude on the outside, and frightened heart on the inside, and she's falling for Jag though she's scared of what he represents. He's slick and smart and heroic and always keeps you guessing. 

Here's a little snippet that I loved, which gives you an idea of the tension of their relationship:

Jag caught up and fell into step beside me. He walked close enough to hold hands and far enough away that words could never repair the damage we'd done to each other.

And yet, there is some beautiful tenderness between Vi and Jag. I loved how"Vi talk" and "Jag speak" worked between the two of them. The tenderness and tension played a constant tug-of-war throughout the book.

Here's a snippet that gives a taste of the wonderful complexity that is Vi:

Gavin's face paled, her eyes hardened, and her smile vanished. "Vi?" she asked, her eyes darting between Jag and me. "The Vi?"

Having "the" put in front of your name automatically increases your status. Like The President or The Director or The End. Think about it. It wouldn't be the same if it were just End. I felt like it was The End for me because it clearly wasn't a good The.

The end packs some great twists and a great set-up for a sequel. Yeah, it satisfies you just enough while also leaving you hanging in anticipation for more.

ARCs are all about promotion and getting the word out. So please help me spread some buzz about this great book. To enter to win Possession, you must spread the word about the book (not necessarily my giveaway - I want this to be about Elana's great book, not my blog). 

If you tweet, please put #ElanasPossessionispowerful @ElanaJ somewhere in there so I can credit you and Elana can feel the love!You get an entry for leaving me a comment telling me you promoted the book someway, plus an extra entry for every tweet, facebook, or mention on your blog (if you facebook it or link it on your blog you'll have to tell me, otherwise I won't be able to find it to give you credit)

The giveaway is open until April 30th. 

Please go spread the word about this great debut! And tell me what debut novel you want me to help spread the word about, too. I'm all for supporting debuts (hope to have a debut book someday too!)