Thursday, February 21, 2013

'Saving Casey' by Liza O'Connor Book Tour & Review

Title: Saving Casey
Author: Liza O'Connor
Genre: YA, Suspense, Coming of Age, Sweet Romance,
Publisher: Decadent Publishing
Format: Ebook
Length: 63,700 words

Book Description:

Having been diagnosed with cancer, Cass Goldman decides to opt out of any futile medical care and end her life. While she has some thoughts on afterlife, she never expects to reincarnate into the body of a seventeen-year-old girl named Casey Davidson.

When she awakens in a hospital, Cass discovers two disturbing facts: One, she is now inside the body of a troubled teenager, and two, the former owner of this body committed suicide, but only Cass knows that. Everyone else believes Casey has survived, but suffered a complete memory loss. Cass has two choices: to take on Casey’s life and turn it around, or to confess the truth about her reincarnation and end up in a mental asylum. Given this second chance to life, Cass decides to take on the future life of Casey—the frightening ghoul-faced teen with short, black, spiky hair.

Every person around Cass has an ulterior motive and discovering the truth of Old Casey’s life is more complicated than the “new math” she is forced to learn in school. In addition, Cass has to contend with raging teenage hormones and the prior crimes of Old Casey, which she might not remember, but everyone else certainly does. However, her biggest frustration concerns her feelings for her father’s rugged security specialist who sees her only as a teenager and doesn’t want to explore the mutual attraction between them.

Will her second chance at life prove to be worth the struggles she has to overcome?

Excerpt:
Upon settling down on the toilet, Cass noticed the floor to ceiling mirror facing her and screamed at the sight of the creature within it. Short black hair spouted about its head, black circles surrounded both eyes and fell like triangular knives down the cheeks. Black lips, stretched in horror as if in a nightmare. Pulling up her pants, she moved closer to the mirror.
She was a ghoul, an honest to God ghoul!
The door crashed open and her father stared at her, fear and panic clear in his eyes.
She touched her face. “Please tell me these aren’t permanent.”
His panic remained a second longer as her words filtered into his brain and then he pulled her into his arms. “Don’t worry, we will get them removed—if you want to…”
“If? Oh, I definitely want them removed,” she said.
How can I turn around my life if I look like the walking dead from a low-grade monster movie?


**My thoughts**

This book really grabbed my attention from the beginning and I had a hard time putting it down. 80 year-old Cass feels like she has lived her life and doesn't want to have that life dragged out with chemotherapy and lots of pain. She takes the "easy way out" and commits suicide. Only, she wakes up in the body of a seventeen year-old who had tried to do the same thing. She quickly realizes that she is now Casey and has to conform to being this girl. Of course, she cannot remember anything that happened to her before, because those are Casey's memories. An amnesia claim serves her well and she quickly strives to show everyone that she has changed. She is determined to save this young girl.

Cass does a lot of research about Casey, which is easy via the Internet, because of the family's socialite status. What she finds out is horrifying. While she is in the middle of the research, I am a little surprised that she didn't take a side trip quickly to look up her former self. I think I would have definitely been grabbed by Casey's story, but a small part of me would have been a little curious about what happened after my former self had passed away. I kept waiting for her to do that, and then quickly get back to the task at hand. Perhaps that would have been too much of a rabbit trail, depending on how it was done.

The lengths that some people will go to in order to cover up something as horrible as what had happened to Casey astonishes me. Yes, this is a fiction story, but people do this in real life, too. I felt bad for Cass as she tries to sort it all out and tries to figure out whom she can trust. I seemed to get upset with the proper people all the way through. My gut didn't quite pick up on all of the bad guys, though, or at least their roles.

I really liked this book. I don't often say it, but I would even love to see this play out on the big screen. I think it could make for a good movie. But you would have to promise to read the book first. :-)

Purchase: Bonobookstore | Amazon | B&N |

About the Author:

I live in Denville, NJ with my dog, Jess. We hike in fabulous woods every day, rain or shine, sleet or snow. Having an adventurous nature, I learned to fly small cessnas in NJ, hang-glide in New Zealand, kayak in Pennsylvania, ski in New York, scuba dive with great white sharks in Australia, dig up dinosaur bones in Montana, sky dive in Indiana, and raft a class four river in Tasmania. I’m an avid gardener, amateur photographer, and dabbler in watercolors and graphic arts. Yet through my entire life, my first love has and always will be writing novels. I love to create interesting characters, set them loose, and scribe what happens.

Website/Blog | Twitter @Liza0Connor | Facebook | Facebook Author Page |

Decadent Publishing


For more information about Decadent Publishing authors, books, and their submissions guidelines, visit www.decadentpublishing.com.
Decadent Publishing is current accepting submissions in all sub-genres of romance, including their ongoing series.

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