Once Upon a Twilight!: Blog Tour: Shallow Graves by Kali Wallace | Guest Post

Welcome to our stop on Shallow Graves tour for Kali Wallace. This tour is hosted by The Fantastic Flying Book Club Tours.

Shallow Graves
Author: Kali Wallace
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Paranormal
Released: January 26th 2016
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

For fans of Holly Black and Nova Ren Suma, a gripping, hauntingly atmospheric novel about murder, revenge, and a world where monsters—human and otherwise—lurk at the fringes.

When seventeen-year-old Breezy Lin wakes up in a shallow grave one year after her death, she doesn’t remember who killed her or why. All she knows is that she’s somehow conscious—and not only that, she’s able to sense who around her is hiding a murderous past. In life, Breezy was always drawn to the elegance of the universe and the mystery of the stars. Now she must set out to find answers and discover what is to become of her in the gritty, dangerous world to which she now belongs—where killers hide in plain sight and a sinister cult is hunting for strange creatures like her. What she finds is at once empowering, redemptive, and dangerous.

Tense, complex, and wholly engaging, Shallow Graves is a stunning first novel from Kali Wallace.

My 5 Favorite Moments from Shallow Graves

1. "The first time I killed a man it was an accident." The first line and the whole first chapter. Man, I sure do like my first chapter, and I don't care who knows it.

2. The flashback in Chapter 15. Look, I love flashback scenes and chapters anyway, and I am not ashamed of my love, but this one I love particularly. Summer days, astronomy, crushes. What more do you need?

3. The monster in the basement, which is impossible to explain out of context, because there is nothing to explain except that there is a monster in the basement and I love it. I love it so much, in fact, I kept it in the story even when people (beta readers, editors, you know, people) gently suggested that I might want to reconsider.

I have many favorite moments from the end of the book, and forcing me to choose is like forcing me to pick a favorite dessert or favorite kitten or favorite picture of frolicking baby bears but I think I can narrow it down to just two for list-making purposes:

4. The moment when my main character meets the monster she has been waiting to meet for the entire book. I love that moment.

5. And I love the moment very close to the end when she is reflecting on what her life might have been like if she hadn't been inconveniently murdered, if she had been allowed to grow up and graduate high school and go to college and chase her dreams. That one is my favorite part of the entire book.

Kali Wallace studied geology and geophysics before she decided she enjoyed inventing imaginary worlds as much as she liked researching the real one. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, F&SF, Asimov's, Lightspeed Magazine, and Tor.com. Her first novel will be published by Katherine Tegen Books in 2016. She lives in southern California.