BIR2010: Anastasia Hopcus- Shadow Hills

BIR2010

Welcome to back to the BEST I'VE READ 2010! BIR2010 will run from December 6th through December 14th. This will be a annual event and this year its compromised of 9 blogs. Each day each blog will have multiple post and giveaways happening each day until its over. Then on the last day there will also be a Grand Prize Giveaway on the BIR2010 Blog.

We start of this Friday with one of the nicest Authors out there, Anastasia Hopcus author of Shadow Hills. Anastasia was kind enough to give us a Christmas treat. So enjoy and lets hear the comments below. Anastasia also kindly donated a book and poster for 1 winner. 

Christmas Memories

One of my family's’ holiday traditions was going to midnight mass.  I always enjoyed getting to stay up late, and I liked driving through the quiet, empty streets.  All the stoplights would be flashing yellow, and the light from the church would spill out into the darkness, making it look special and different from normal.

            Every year one of my Christmas presents would be a new dress specifically for the occasion and I’d get to open it on Christmas Eve. The dresses were always fancy---which I loved---and usually red, but I remember one in particular that was green velvet.  The dress had a delicate white lace collar and lace trim around the hem, and I absolutely adored it.  (Partly because I also wore it later that year when my class went to see Les Miserables and I got to sit next to the boy I had a huge crush on!)

            But most of my memories of Christmas day involve sitting on the floor opening presents with my mom and dad while our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel ran around us in excited circles. (He can’t find my parents' house without a leash and a guide, but he remembers that the ripping and crinkling of wrapping paper means that soon there will be pie.) Since our big family get-togethers were usually at Thanksgiving, our present opening was pretty low key. But even so, my dad always had to record it. Camcorders are his favorite technological gadget and they were often Christmas presents themselves. He’d ask for one and then open it first so he could use it the same day. And after we opened the rest of our presents (each held up so my dad could capture every angle in great detail), we'd have Christmas dinner with family---including one very happy, table scrap-eating dog.

Shadow Hills

Author: Anastasia Hopcus

Publisher: Egmont USA

Released: July 13th 2010

Anastasia Hopcus Blog

Anastasia Hopcus Website

Summary: After her sister Athena's tragic death, it's obvious that grief-stricken Persephone "Phe" Archer no longer belongs in Los Angeles. Hoping to make sense of her sister's sudden demise and the cryptic dreams following it, Phe abandons her bubbly LA life to attend an uptight East Coast preparatory school in Shadow Hills, MA — a school which her sister mysteriously mentioned in her last diary entry before she died. 

Once there, Phe quickly realizes that something is deeply amiss in her new town. Not only does Shadow Hills' history boast an unexplained epidemic that decimated hundreds of its citizens in the 1700s, but its modern townies also seem eerily psychic, with the bizarre ability to bend metal. Even Zach — the gorgeous stranger Phe meets and immediately begins to lust after — seems as if he is hiding something serious. Phe is determined to get to the bottom of it. The longer she stays there, the more she suspects that her sister's untimely death and her own destiny are intricately linked to those who reside in Shadow Hills.

To Enter:

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Thank you to Anastasia once again!