BOLDLY BOOKISH Blog Tour: The Leaving by Tara Altebrando | Guest Post | Giveaway

Welcome tour our stop on THE LEAVING for author Tara Altebrando. This tour is hosted by The Irish Banana Tour!

---

The Leaving
Author: Tara Altebrando
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Mystery
Release Date: June 7th 2016
Review Source: Bloomsbury USA Childrens

Six were taken. Eleven years later, five come back--with no idea of where they've been.

Eleven years ago, six kindergarteners went missing without a trace. After all that time, the people left behind moved on, or tried to.

Until today. Today five of those kids return. They're sixteen, and they are . . . fine. Scarlett comes home and finds a mom she barely recognizes, and doesn't really recognize the person she's supposed to be, either. But she thinks she remembers Lucas. Lucas remembers Scarlett, too, except they're entirely unable to recall where they've been or what happened to them. Neither of them remember the sixth victim, Max. He doesn't come back. Everyone wants answers. Most of all Max's sister Avery, who needs to find her brother--dead or alive--and isn't buying this whole memory-loss story.

10 Totally Random Things About Me

I collect spoons.
I’m actually a third generation spoon collector and have spoons from the many places I’ve travelled (Paris! Switzerland! Italy! Ireland! More!) and also spoons that friends have brought me back from places I’ve get to visit (China, Brazil…). I have more than 150 spoons at this point, with the most recent addition being Niagara Falls.

I’ve never had a full-time job. 
Even when I worked full time for a music magazine in Dublin, we had a week off between issues. So I’ve never worked full time, 9-5. I’ve always cobbled together part time and freelance gigs and then switched to writing full time about eight years ago.

I can’t sing.
It’s surprising to me every night that my younger daughter still wants me to sing to her, because I’m really bad at it. My older daughter has a lovely singing voice and I’m sort of in awe of it.

I don’t really like babies. 
I mean, they’re cute and all, but they’re exhausting. Now that my kids are “kids,” I enjoy their company more. Does that make me sound awful?

I’ll talk to anybody.
My husband once described me as “conversationally gifted,” which I thought was a sly dig—like a funny way of saying that I talk too much. But what he meant was that I’m able to have a conversation with pretty much anyone I encounter. Sometimes to the mortification of my children. My friends that went to high school with me (an all girls catholic school) are very much the same way so it must have something to do with the nuns.

I’m afraid of bees/wasps.
Like I will run screaming from a room, flailing in such a way that I am likely to injure myself and thus inflict more pain on myself than any bee or wasp could if they stung me.

My daughter gave me the idea for The Leaving
She fully expects a royalty check, all because she said a bunch of creepy things when she was five.

I was captain of my high school math team.
I was not thought to be an especially good writer back then.

I haven’t gotten my hair cut in almost a year.
Many months ago, the woman who had been cutting my hair quit the salon, so I let a long time pass without getting a haircut and then decided that it would be fun, even funny, to have long hair since I’d had short hair for like ten years. Turns out my hair grows painfully slowly, though. No one will mistake me for Rapunzel, that is for sure.

I cry during things.
Like Matilda the Musical and Sing Street.

---

Tara Altebrando is the author of numerous books for young adult and middle-grade readers. Her upcoming book, THE LEAVING (Bloomsbury), is a YA thriller that received a starred PW review and is a Junior Library Guild selection. Her other YA novels include ROOMIES, coauthored with Sara Zarr; Dreamland Social Club (A Kirkus Reviews Best Books for Teens), The Best Night of (Your) Pathetic Life, What Happens Here, and The Pursuit of Happiness.

Tara is a Harvard graduate who lives in Queens, NY, with her husband and children.

FOLLOW THE TOUR!

6/21: Literary Lover - Review

6/22: That Artsy Reader Girl - Review

6/23: Novel Ink - Q&A

6/24: The Irish Banana Review - Top 10

1 set of the BOLDLY BOOKISH 2 Tour books (US Only)
Books include: Hold Me Like a Breath & Break Me Like A Promise by Tiffany Schmidt, The Fixer & The Long Game by Jennifer Lynn Barnes & The Leaving by Tara Altebrando


a Rafflecopter giveaway