Book Blitz: Letters to Nowhere series by Julie Cross

Letters To Nowhere Series Julie Cross
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult


Book 1: Letters to Nowhere

From the International Bestselling Author of the Tempest Series...
Set in the tough world of Elite Gymnastics...

I've gotten used to the dead parents face. I've gotten used to living with my gymnastics coach. I've even adjusted to sharing a bathroom with his way-too-hot son. Dealing with boys is not something that's made it onto my list of experiences as of yet. But here I am, doing it. And something about Jordan--being around him, talking to him, thinking about him--makes me feel like I can finally breathe again. That's something I haven't been able to do lately. He knows what it feels like to be me right now. He knows what it's like to wonder--what now? I think about it constantly. I need answers. I need to know how to get through this. In the gym, if you're struggling, you train harder, you do drills and conditioning. How do I work hard at moving on? At being on my own? And what happens if I might be...maybe...probably falling for Jordan? I mean we live together now. That can't happen, can it? But kissing him...well, let's just say it's not an easy activity to forget.

You can find my review of book one here.

Book 2: Return to Sender

If only summer could last forever…

Karen and Jordan might be out in the open with their relationship, but that doesn't make it any easier for them to face events looming in the future. Like Jordan leaving for college halfway across the country. Or Karen's win at a big international gymnastics competition setting the bar high for her future and adding pressure like she's never experienced before.

But when Nina Jones (aka-US Gymnastics Dictator), makes plans for Karen and teammate Stevie to train at a gymnastics camp for a month—the same camp where Jordan coaches—romantic summer interludes replace their fears of being apart. Both Jordan and Karen know that when fall comes, some very tough decisions will have to be made, but for now, it’s stolen kisses, racing hearts, and whispered words.

Book 3: Return to You

Releasing December 15th 2013

How many dreams can you chase at once?

Even with bad boy, TJ, disrupting their morning workouts, Karen and Stevie’s daily battles with each other are sure to bring both of them closer to a national title at next month’s championships. It’s the kind of feud that creates winning results.

Until a fall from the uneven bars shakes Karen’s rock-solid confidence. Not only does she balk every time she so much as attempts a routine, she’s also facing all this without much support from Jordan. After receiving some bad news, Jordan’s reluctance to listen to reason causes Karen so much frustration she begins to avoid him, needing space to deal with her own issues. He needs someone to force him to make the right choice, he needs his dad to intervene and Karen knows this, but is torn between her loyalty to Jordan and her concern for her coach’s son. Even though both paths lead to the same person—Jordan—it feels like she’s choosing between two different people.

And then there’s the growing tension between TJ and Stevie. They’re obviously on the verge of either ripping each other’s heads off or ripping each other’s clothes off. It’s hard for either Jordan or Karen to tell where those two are headed. Tension is building from every possible outlet and there’s bound to be an explosion of some kind in the very near future.



Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/series/110787-letters-to-nowhere

Purchase book 1:
--Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Nowhere-Part-ebook/dp/B00EAC91YA/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1
--B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/letters-to-nowhere-julie-cross/1116289926
--Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/letters-to-nowhere

Purchase book 2:
--Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Return-Sender-Letters-Nowhere-Part-ebook/dp/B00G2G9J7G
--Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/return-to-sender-letters-to-nowhere-part-2

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AUTHOR BIO
Julie Cross is the International Bestselling author of the Tempest series, a young adult science fiction trilogy which includes Tempest, Vortex, and the final installment, Timestorm (St. Martin's Press). She's also the author of Letters to Nowhere (8/13), a mature young adult romance set in the world of elite gymnastics, as well as several forthcoming young adult and new adult novels with publishers like Entangled, Sourcebooks, HarperCollins, and St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books.

Julie lives in Central Illinois with her husband and three children. She's a former gymnast, longtime gymnastics fan, coach, and former Gymnastics  Program Director with the YMCA. She's a lover of books, devouring several novels a week, especially in the young adult and new adult genres. Outside of her reading and writing credibility's, Julie Cross is a committed--but not talented--long distance runner, creator of imaginary beach vacations, Midwest bipolar weather survivor, expired CPR certification card holder, as well as a ponytail and gym shoe addict. You can find her online via twitter, her personal website, email, facebook, Goodreads, or co-moderating the YAwriters section of reddit.

Links:
http://www.juliecrossbooks.com/
https://twitter.com/Juliecross1980
https://www.facebook.com/FansOfJulieCross
http://www.amazon.com/Julie-Cross/e/B005ORUY1E
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3429117.Julie_Cross

Each blog hosting this blitz is authorized to give away one e-book copy of the first book in this series, Letters to Nowhere.  The prize will be gifted through Amazon.  To sign up, simply use the Rafflecopter widget below!


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Book review: Letters to Nowhere by Julie Cross

I've gotten used to the dead parents face. I've gotten used to living with my gymnastics coach. I've even adjusted to sharing a bathroom with his way-too-hot son. Dealing with boys is not something that's made it onto my list of experiences as of yet. But here I am, doing it. And something about Jordan--being around him, talking to him, thinking about him--makes me feel like I can finally breathe again. That's something I haven't been able to do lately. He knows what it feels like to be me right now. He knows what it's like to wonder--what now? I think about it constantly. I need answers. I need to know how to get through this. In the gym, if you're struggling, you train harder, you do drills and conditioning. How do I work hard at moving on? At being on my own? And what happens if I might be...maybe...probably falling for Jordan? I mean we live together now. That can't happen, can it? But kissing him...well, let's just say it's not an easy activity to forget.

This book was given to me in return for a review.

Letters to Nowhere is exactly the kind of book I’ve been looking for. Well, I won’t say exactly because it’s not as if it’s completely cookie-cutter within its genre and sub-genres, but I mean in terms of what the main character is going through: grief.  Karen is a griever, and a very passionate one; she doesn’t just accept that her parents are dead and move on.  She fights between what she wants and what her parents wanted for her, trying to decide if she should honor a plan they had worked out for her or just go full-tilt on her elite gymnast career now that she’s living with her coach and there’s no one to stop her or tell her that she should keep her options open.

At its core, it is a pretty good book.  It does get rather heavy on the gymnastics language and it isn’t always easy to get through or visualize, speaking as someone who knows absolutely nothing about gymnastics.  Of course fans of reading who also like gymnastics will pick this up so I can’t say it’s an entirely bad thing that the author doesn’t water-down the language; do it too much and it makes it look more like you simply threw it in as a gimmick and didn’t bother to do much more than a Wikipedia search about some names and moves.

The book is, however, a little scattered; some details don’t match up with what was said earlier, or kept consistent.  When Karen is worried about her period, for instance, she seems to flop between thinking it’s normal for girls to not have their period until seventeen, casually saying that probably only Stevie has it and then only for a few years (at nineteen) and saying she knew it was abnormal but that her parents had told her there was nothing to worry about.  Considering excessive exercise is something that can delay a girl’s period, Karen’s parents and coach probably should’ve been worried about it a long time ago (she spends hours a day in the gym, to the point where she’s there more during her waking hours than she is anywhere else).  Yet when Jordan shows her the records his father has on her, all it says is that they should start giving her a calcium supplement, which they apparently never did because she doesn’t say something like “Oh so that’s why.” And then she does finally get her period and it’s never mentioned again.  Cross was clearly going somewhere with it both as part of Karen’s character and probably as what might be a common experience for young gymnasts, but there just wasn’t enough there to make it worth it in the long run.  The book also seems to flip-flop between whether it wants Stevie as an antagonist or not, but that might be more a mix between Karen’s own thought processes and undecided characterization that wasn’t quite resolved in edits.  I realize that a good character has layers to them and they don’t always react to everything the same way, but Stevie does seem inconsistent to me to the point where I wonder if Cross had several ideas for her during the process and couldn’t decide in the end.

Still, it’s a clever and sometime heartbreaking book, and I’d definitely recommend it.  So happy reading!