Welcome to the 15 Days With You blog tour! There's an excerpt down there for you, as well as my thoughts on this emotionally powerful novel. Don't forget to enter the giveaway before you go!
15 Days With You
by Ara GrigorianGenre: YA Contemporary Fiction
Release Date: September 24th 2019
Summary:
“Filled with tumultuous emotions of grief, romance, guilt, secrecy and anger, 15 Days With You is an accomplished work of drama sure to be enjoyed by audiences of all ages.” 5-Star Review, K.C. Finn for Readers’ Favorite
A mother’s dying wish. A son in search of answers. A fifteen-day surf odyssey with the California girl who will dare him to rethink everything.
Alone after his mother’s unexpected death, seventeen-year-old Shep leaves Texas to crash with his uncle’s family in Malibu. Before he can hang his cowboy hat, Shep learns something that blows his mind—in her youth, his hard-working single mom was a gifted surfer on her way to international fame. And her dying wish was for him to recreate the surf tour she completed when she was eighteen—the summer she got pregnant with him.
Along with his cousin Carmen (the red-blooded competitive surfer) and her best friend Samantha (the opinionated and mildly annoying beach goddess), Shep hits the road for a surf trip up and down Pacific Coast Highway. Armed with his mother’s ashes and fifteen sealed envelopes—each containing a page from her high school diary—Shep will discover a new side of the complex woman he’d only thought of as Mom, and might finally learn the identity of a man he’s never met—his father.
But each time he paddles out into the waves, a nagging question haunts him—the one he may not be ready to answer: Is he learning to surf because he wants to honor his mother’s dying wish, or running from the real reason he can’t go back to Texas—his own terrible mistake?
**My thoughts**
This book was very difficult for me to read. And not because there is anything wrong with it. Quite the contrary. It difficult for me to read because of the sheer emotions in it. I admit I had to put it down several times and then go back to it. But let me tell you why.
My own mother passed away last year. Three weeks later, my aunt also passed away. So as Shep is going through the grieving process, I felt every emotion and jolt so intensely. My mother didn't have cancer, but Alzheimer's. And I'm not a teenager. But you still need your mom, no matter how old you are. It isn't fair that a disease steals her from you. And you never know everything about your mom and often find out more after she is gone. And then when it comes to scattering her ashes, my aunt, who did pass away from cancer, had requested that we all do that for her. So there was a lot of real in this book for me, even though the specific storyline was quiet different from my own.
So this is the part of the book that spoke to me the most. Yes, Shep has other issues going on in his life back home. Yes, there is the romance. But all of the emotions is what really got to me. I recommend a box of tissues while you read this.
Excerpt from Chapter 3
Shep
“How was your drive up?” Carmen asks.
“Long,” I start, as someone enters the
kitchen.
I turn, assuming it’s my younger cousin
Carlo. But she is not
my cousin.
“Hey, you must be Shep,” she says,
strolling in like sunshine.
I study her, but try not to stare. Her
long light brown hair has streaks of blond. She’s got legs that go on forever
and shoulders that are worthy of an Olympic athlete. The rays of sunshine
streaming into the kitchen must be causing an optical illusion, because her
eyes are a greenish-yellow and her skin, golden.
“Shep,” Carmen says, “this is my best
friend, Sam.”
I rise. “Good afternoon.”
The Olympian grins as she strolls toward
me. “Wow, so gentleman-like. Did you see that?” she asks Carmen. “He rose for
me.”
“Yes, Sam, we all saw that,” Carmen says
with a mock tone of exasperation.
Like Carmen, Sam’s also in a bikini top
and boy shorts. She must be a surfer, too. Had they been surfing earlier today?
Sam plops right next to me, smelling like
sunscreen and sand and salt. It’s like she’s bathed in nature’s tonic.
“Nice hat,” she says as she plucks my hat
off the counter and places it on her head.
Okay, so let me say that I have this
thing—not a good thing, mind you—but I have an issue with people wearing my
hat. I mean seriously, who takes someone’s hat without permission? And although
I am tempted to say something—nothing mean, but a choice word or two—my
ten-gallon hat looks awesome on her. The words that want to come out are a mix
of how
dare you and you look
amazing.
Thankfully, she rises before I’m able to
vocalize my thoughts. She saunters toward the double-door stainless steel
refrigerator and pulls out a large container that has green liquid in it. It
looks like the type of goo you find in sewers.
I study her as she gulps down the green
mess. Her arms are toned, her back muscles, pronounced. She’s a serious
athlete, all right. I’d bet she’s also a swimmer, not just a surfer. The
slightly shifted back strap of her bikini exposes a deep tan line. I’m
beginning to forgive her for the whole hat-stealing thing.
She places her cup inside the sink, then faces
me.
She turns to Carmen. “He’s no Boricua,” she says.
A what?
“No, he’s not,” Carmen agrees.
“Sorry. I’m not a what?”
“You’re all white and blondish,” she
says.
My eyes widen. Good looks and
fully-functional eyes. She’s the whole package. “Yes, always have been.”
She grins. “What I’m getting at is that
Carmen is all dark and short and not like you. She’s a true Boricua.”
I wait for the explanation, but it’s
Carmen who interrupts. “Boricua,”
Carmen says, pronouncing it differently, rolling the ‘r.’ “From the
island—Puerto Rico.”
“Oh that,” I say. It’s true. Carmen looks
more like my mom than I do. The fact that I look nothing like my family is a
stark reminder that I am my father’s son. Whoever he may be.
Ara Grigorian is the international award-winning author of GAME OF LOVE, his debut novel. He is a technology executive in the entertainment industry. He earned his Masters in Business Administration from University of Southern California where he specialized in marketing and entrepreneurship. True to the Hollywood life, Ara wrote for a children's television pilot that could have made him rich (but didn't) and nearly sold a video game to a major publisher (who closed shop days later). Fascinated by the human species, Ara writes about choices, relationships, and second chances. Always a sucker for a hopeful ending, he writes contemporary romance stories targeted to adult and new adult readers.
Ara is committed to helping writers tell better stories. He is the co-founder of the popular Novel Intensive seminar. Also, he is a workshop leader for the Writer's Digest Novel Writing Conference, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, and the Southern California Writers' Conference (both Irvine, CA and San Diego, CA). Ara is an active member of the Romance Writers of America and its Los Angeles chapter.
He is represented by Stacey Donaghy of the Donaghy Literary Group.
Fantastic post.
ReplyDeleteReally enjoyed reading it and it held my attention all the way through! Keep it up.
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