Blog Tour – Lightning Rider by Jen Greyson ~ Guest post on New Adult and review

For Evy Rivera, thunderstorms have always caused her physical pain, but she’s never known why. When a record-setting storm arrives on the same night her father finds ancient ancestral documents, Evy is set aglow with mysterious tiny lightnings she can command.

Even worse, she alerts some people in the universe who’ve been looking for her family for a very long time.

Thrown back into ancient Spain and tasked with killing a Spanish legend, she must train alongside Constantine, a sexy yet obstinate Roman warrior. He teaches her how to wield her lightning as a weapon, through more errors than trials. With a relationship as explosive as their late-night training sessions, Evy and Constantine battle their push-pull relationship while trying to ignore the two-thousand-year difference in their birthdates.

Ilif Rotiart, her quasi-mentor, is appalled at Evy’s skill. He would prefer to train her father and keep Evy on the sidelines—where women belong. Evy has a feeling Ilif is keeping something from them, but she must play nice until she uncovers the truth. And if he’s lying, it will be the worst day of his four-hundred-year life.

Penya Sepadas claims she’s Evy’s rightful trainer, and she has the prophecy to prove it. Penya doesn’t share Ilif’s misogynistic attitude, but she does have her own agenda…and her own secrets.

Evy must sort through the lies and find the truth behind her family’s time-traveling past before the wrong history obliterates the future. She’s spent her whole life fighting for her place. Now, as the first female lightning rider, she’ll dedicate her existence to fighting to save the world.

But will Evy learn to manage her lightning and find the truth before it’s too late?

Available from The Writer’s Coffee Shop Amazon Kobo iTunes and B&N

Check out the reviews on Goodreads and The Writer’s Coffee Shop

Jen’s Guest Post on the New Adult Category… 

Taking New Adult Beyond Contemporary 

I could just dance about for endless hours when I think about the new adult genre and how it’s exploded lately. Over the weekend, I had my launch party for my new adult fantasy, Lightning Rider, and someone asked if I knew I was writing this genre when I started.

Well, when I started this book two years ago, this genre didn’t exist. (BTW, don’t take 2 years to write a book – bad idea.) I’ve always written new adult. Agents and editors harped on me to change their ages, either to YA or adult but I couldn’t do it. I love writing NA, always have. There’s something so optimistic about this age. The characters are free from parental rules for the first time, they’re making their own decisions, the world is absolutely at their feet. Sure, those things exist at other ages, but not like they do in NA, not in such mass quantity.

For me, adding a fantastical element to an age group I’d always written about wasn’t a huge stretch. I just wanted to write something other than a romance (BAHA! says my panster brain, like I had a choice). Panster brain is right though, I had an idea and I wrote it like I do all my others—with new adult characters.

I think there are a lot of books that would have fallen in to the NA category had it been around for longer. If you look at Karen Marie Moning’s FaeFever series, her main character, MacKayla, is 22 at the beginning of the series. But urban fantasy is huge, and it fits there. But Mac deals with all the usual NA topics: leaving home, first trip abroad, first real relationship, first superpower.

The thing about genre is that it’s really about emotion (David Farland taught me that.). Romance is about the only one that closely resembles it’s emotion, love/lust. Fantasy is about wonder. Horror and suspense are about fear. I think NA is about courage. Courage to defy the odds, embrace your dreams, hurdle your obstacles, love bigger, laugh harder, dare more.

To me, NA isn’t about an age. It’s about an attitude. Are publishers going to stick everything in NA that’s about characters between the ages of 18-26? Yep. Will it be the NA we’ve grown to love? Maybe.

In the end, bringing other elements like fantasy and horror and science fiction to NA will happen because of the readers. If readers want to see their courageous NA characters battle aliens or explore space or discover new planets or fight off serial killers in a uniquely NA way, they’re going to have to demand it.

So when NA readers find those kinds of books, they need to shout it from the rooftops. Make authors listen. Make publishers take notice. I’m doing my part by telling my fantasy writing friends that NA needs more flavor beyond contemporary romance, and they’re starting to listen.

We’ve already worked together to make NA a category. Let’s keep this momentum going.

A tremendous thank you to Book Nerds Anonymous for letting me come visit, and a giant shout-out to all the NA readers for giving my books a place to belong.

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 My review…

I gave Lightning Rider 4 out of 5 Book Nerds

I’d like to thank the author for giving an ARC of this book, in exchange for my honest review.

Firstly, this book was totally unique. I have never heard of a story that used lightning as a means for time travel. I loved it. I couldn’t wait to see how it all played out. I was really confused at first, but the further along I read in the story, the more I figured things out. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, but it is a series so that isn’t unexpected. Either way, I’m loving the idea.

The main character, Evy, wasn’t one I immediately liked. She was way too stubborn, know-it-all,  and hard-headed. She was also rash and impulsive, and it made me question her a lot throughout the beginning of the book. However, she does grow, and I loved watching that process. She starts off as this stubborn girl, who wants to act recklessly, and mess with things that she really has no idea about. By the end of the story, though, she’s a really different person. I love when an author can pull that off. One more thing I liked was the fact that Evy was Latina. That isn’t too common in books, so it’s really refreshing when you come across a heroine who isn’t white and thin. I loved that about her. All of this makes Evy a pretty compelling main character through which to view the events in this book.

As for other major characters in the story, I thought Constantine was intriguing. I didn’t really see when and how he turned from teacher to something more, but I like how he inspired Evy to change some of her ways of thinking. It’s easy to see how much he influenced her, and he was a good character with a great background.

I liked Evy’s father, too. It’s great to see parental figures in books, because they’re not so common. This is especially true when they aren’t the villains of the story. Speaking of which, Ilif was a great villain. There is still so much to learn about him, but when he was around, I was in full agreement with Evy’s thoughts about him, even when I wasn’t sure I quite liked her. For example, he had me hating him, and being offended with his views on women, right along with her, and that’s how you know that the author has done a great job in writing a villain.

Finally, there’s the actual plot of this story. It was interesting, because Evy had to learn about her abilities as a lightning rider, but she also had to accomplish a mission. Therefore, we got to see her testing her abilities in a lot of ways, but we also got to see her change the way she thought about right and wrong, and also how she approached life. I loved it.

Overall, this story was really good. The pace was pretty even and I can’t think of a time when I was bored, or thought that things were progressing too slowly. The only reason that this book isn’t one of my favorites is because of the romance between Evy and Constantine being so sudden, and also because Evy was so reckless and arrogant in the beginning. Other than that, there isn’t anything at all wrong with this book. With a totally original premise, solid storytelling, and good writing, this story is one you won’t want to miss.