Sykosa
By
Justin Ordoñez
BLURB:
Sykosa (that's "sy"-as-in-"my" ko-sa) is
a sixteen-year-old girl trying to reclaim her identity after an act of violence
shatters her life and the life of her friends. This process is complicated by
her best friend, Niko, a hyper-ambitious, type-A personality who has started to
war with other girls for social supremacy of their school, a prestigious
preparatory academy in the Pacific Northwest of the United States . To compensate,
Sykosa has decided to fall in love with her new boyfriend, Tom, who was
involved in the act of violence. Propelled by survivor guilt, an anxiety
disorder, and her hunger for Tom and his charms, Sykosa attends a weekend-long,
unchaperoned party at Niko's posh vacation cottage, where she will finally
confront Niko on their friendship, her indecision about her friends and their
involvement in the act of violence, and she will make the biggest decision of
her life—whether or not she wants to lose her virginity to Tom. YA fiction for
the 18+ crowd.
I get to jump into the archives of my blog today to link to the review of this book written by a Pacific Northwest dweller (at least at some point--love those NW references)!
Read my 3-star review here.
Excerpt
Outside,
the sun shines. Inside, there’s only darkness. The blackness is hard to
describe, as it’s more than symptoms. It’s a nothing that becomes everything
there is. And what one sees is only a fraction of the trauma inflicted. It can
get so bad she literally goes black, and she wakes up seconds, minutes, hours—who knows—later, to the silence, and the shame, and the… The
blackness is really a panic-attack. She thinks that’s its medical definition.
She’s never consulted anyone about it, but she heard a daytime TV personality
talking about it once and all the hairs stood on up on her neck and she
thought, That’s me. The TV
personality said trauma plays a significant role. That made her feel broken, so
she decided not to listen anymore and to pretend like nothing was wrong. That’s
why no one knows about the blackness—her pretending won’t let them.
Justin Ordoñez was born in Spain ,
raised in the mid-west, and currently lives in Seattle . He's nearly thirty years old, almost
graduated from the University of Washington, and prefers to wait until TV shows
come out on DVD so he can watch them in one-shot while playing iPad games. For
fifteen years, he has written as a freelance writer, occasionally doing pieces
as interesting as an editorial, but frequently helping to craft professional
documents or assisting in the writing of recommendation letters for people who
have great praise for friends or colleagues and struggle to phrase it. Sykosa
is his debut novel.
www.facebook.com/sykosanovel
www.twitter.com/sykosanovel
www.goodreads.com/sykosa
http://sykosa.wordpress.com/
www.twitter.com/sykosanovel
www.goodreads.com/sykosa
http://sykosa.wordpress.com/
Justin will be giving away copies of the book to three randomly drawn commenter on his tour. Follow the entire tour for more chance to win.
Thank you for hosting.
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