Book Blitz: Excerpt - Giveaway - No Such Thing as Perfect by Sarah Daltry
Book Details
No Such Thing as Perfect by Sarah Daltry
Publication date: December 11th 2014
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Synopsis:
College was supposed to be perfect. She was supposed to be perfect.
For Lily Drummond, life is about following the rules. To be specific, her mother’s rules. College fit into the plan – maintain perfect grades, date the perfect guy, and live the perfect life. On her own, though, Lily realizes that she doesn’t actually have a plan. Without being told what to think and do, she keeps making mistakes.
Away from home, the perfect facade is beginning to shatter. When Lily herself starts to break, it’s the support of an unlikely friend that teaches her how much of a lie perfect really is – and how to be whole on her own terms.
For Lily Drummond, life is about following the rules. To be specific, her mother’s rules. College fit into the plan – maintain perfect grades, date the perfect guy, and live the perfect life. On her own, though, Lily realizes that she doesn’t actually have a plan. Without being told what to think and do, she keeps making mistakes.
Away from home, the perfect facade is beginning to shatter. When Lily herself starts to break, it’s the support of an unlikely friend that teaches her how much of a lie perfect really is – and how to be whole on her own terms.
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EXCERPT
Amazon - Smashwords
EXCERPT
“I was thinking of trying out for the school play,” I told my parents at dinner. Jon looked at me and rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything.
“That sounds great, honey,” my dad said, but my mom’s face grew tight. I knew I had said something wrong, although I didn’t know what was wrong with school plays.
“Is that okay, Mom?” I asked.
She didn’t answer right away, her knife growing faster as she cut her chicken. I wanted her to nod, to say she’d be proud, but her lips were pinched and she finally sighed, dropping the silverware loudly against the plate. I felt the crashing in my skin, the sound of being wrong bleeding in my veins.
“Lily, you have a lot of responsibilities. I just can’t understand why you would want to sacrifice your grades and what you’ve worked for. Have you even thought this through?” she asked.
“They said rehearsals are from 3-5 a few days a week. I can still go to NHS and Student Council meetings and I already asked Coach Hillary about alternating.”
“And when are you going to do your homework? Between running, workouts, your clubs, and learning lines, you don’t think your grades will slip?”
I looked at my brother, who was eating and not paying attention. He played sports, but he barely passed his classes. No one cared. He never needed to study. He was always out with his friends and my mother bragged about him endlessly, especially when he started dating Brianna Graves. She couldn’t get enough of telling him how great Brianna was. Brianna, the valedictorian cheerleader who had no flaws. Brianna, who came over after school when my parents weren’t around and locked herself in my brother’s room with him, doing things I always found out about later when it filtered back to me through gossip. Things that led to her and Jon skipping school to go to a clinic out of town where they could pay someone to make sure no one else knew that they weren’t perfect.
“I’m a junior. You won’t let me work. It’s only a few hours a week. I can ask for a small part,” I argued.
“And what’s the point then?” my mother snapped. “You’re going to sacrifice for what? To get five minutes on stage? Do what you like, Lily, but I’m not going to sit there and pretend to be proud that you’re an elf. If I thought you could handle a leading role, I might consider it, but you know what you’ll do. It will all end up being too much and then you’ll be here one night crying that you can’t keep up with everything. I just don’t want to hear it when you screw this up.”
That was the end of the conversation, as far as she was concerned, although I did go to auditions. I practiced for two weeks after everyone was in bed, memorizing the monologue I’d found online. But on the day of auditions, I sat in the back of the auditorium. The girls were all so much more talented
than I was, full of confidence and sure that they belonged on stage. They all knew they had something to say and that someone wanted to listen.
I was the last person to go. I waited until the end and all I could think about was how I wouldn’t be able to get it right, how I’d forget the lines, how I would make a mistake and everyone would laugh. But when they called my name, I walked up on stage and pretended it didn’t terrify me. The lights drilled their ghostly white through my skull and the kids directing were only fuzzy shapes, orbs of flickering color surrounded by faded darkness. My throat was dry, my tongue too big and stuck to the roof of my mouth. We weren’t given anything but a stool, which I leaned on to stop the vertigo. But then I paused and breathed and I looked at the words in my shaking hand.
Inside the words, I could hide. I could become and the stage lights reminded me of what had sparked the desire in the first place. Becoming – not acting, not pretending, but becoming. That was what this was for me. And as I shed myself, a girl spoke… and everyone listened.
No Such Thing as Perfect was inspired by Sarah's Flowering series, but it stands completely alone as its own title. The same characters appear and some situations are similar, but this was written with a different goal in mind. There is NO on-camera sex in this novel and it is not a "romance" novel by most standards, but a story of growing up and being okay with who you are.
For more info, visit Sarah's website
AUTHOR BIO
Sarah Daltry is a varied author, known best for the contemporary New Adult series, 'Flowering', a six-title series that explores the complexities of relationships, including how we survive the damage from our pasts with the support of those who love us. Although the books are no longer in print, they are being rewritten and redeveloped for future publication. Please visit Sarah's website for more details. As a former English teacher and YA library coordinator, Sarah has always loved Young Adult literature and 'Dust', an epic fantasy novel where romance blends with the blood and grit of war, is her second official foray into YA, following the gamer geek romantic comedy, 'Backward Compatible'. Most of Sarah's work is about teens and college students, as it's what she knows well.
Sarah's passion in life is writing - weaving tales of magic and beauty. The modern and vast social networking world is an alternative universe that she makes infrequent trips to, but when she does, readers will find her attentive, friendly and happy to discuss the magic of stories and reading. Please stop by and say hello anywhere Sarah is online! You can find these places at http://sarahdaltry.com . Sarah has moved back and forth between independent and traditional publishing. Her first novel, 'Bitter Fruits', is with Escape, an imprint of Harlequin Australia, and she signed with Little Bird Publishing in the spring of 2014.
Sarah has also written 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' a reimagining of one of her favorite poems in a contemporary setting. She is an obsessive Anglophile who spends more time watching BBC TV than any human being should, as well as a hardcore gamer and sarcastic nerd.
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