Everyone loves him...except her.
We are so excited that Erin has taken time from her busy schedule to stop by and share some of her favorite characters with us. Without further ado, take it away Erin!!!
Characters
are always what “sells” a book for me. No matter how amazing the plot, I have
to love the characters in order to love the book.
It’s
probably no surprise that in addition to having favorite books, I also have
favorite characters. Here are a few, along with the reasons why they make my
list:
· A from David
Levithan’s Every Day – First, I loved
A because of the uniqueness of the character. By the end, I loved A because he/she
changed the way I see the other people and the world itself. This is a book
everyone should read!
· Anna and Etienne from
Stephanie Perkins’ Anna and the French
Kiss – It’s rare that I love both of the main characters equally, but that
was definitely the case with this one! Anna was so quirky and funny. I wanted
to be her friend. And Etienne…SWOON. So sweet and so perfect for Anna! Just
typing this makes me want to re-read this one…
· Alex from Annie Cardi’s
The Chance You Won’t Return – You
know those characters you want to reach through the pages of the book and hug?
Alex was one of them. Not only did I feel for everything she had going on, but
she was also one of the most authentic teen characters I’ve read in a long
time.
· Jonah from Hannah
Moskowitz’s Break – When I think
about characters who leap off the page, Jonah always comes to mind. He’s so
different from any other character I’ve ever read. I felt for him with his
quest and especially with his relationship with his brothers.
Thank you for having
me on ACME Teen Books and letting me talk about my favorite characters!
Happy
reading!
Meet Author Erin Fletcher:
Erin is a young adult author from North Carolina. She is a morning person who does most of her writing before sunrise, while drinking excessive quantities of coffee. She believes flip-flops qualify as year-round footwear, and would spend every day at the beach if she could. She has a bachelor's degree in mathematics, which is almost never useful when writing books.
All Laced Up
by Erin Fletcher
Publication Date: October 10, 2016
Publisher: Entangled Teen Crush
by Erin Fletcher
Publication Date: October 10, 2016
Publisher: Entangled Teen Crush
Everyone loves hockey superstar Pierce Miller. Everyone except Lia Bailey.
When the two are forced to teach a skating class to save the rink, Lia’s not sure she’ll survive the pressure of Nationals and Pierce’s ego. Not only can’t he remember her name, he signed her bottle of water like she was one of his groupies. Ugh.
But if there’s one thing Lia knows better than figure skating, it’s hockey. Hoping to take his ego down a notch—or seven—she logs into his team website under an anonymous name to give him pointers on his less-than-stellar playing.
Turns out, Pierce isn’t arrogant at all. And they have a lot in common. Too bad he’s falling for the anonymous girl online. No matter how much fun they’re starting to have in real life, she’s afraid he’s going to choose fake-Lia over the real one…
Disclaimer: This book contains a swoony hockey player (and his equally swoony friends!), one-too-many social media accounts, kisses that’ll melt ice, and a secret identity that might not be so secret after all…
Excerpt:
Even though it was cold in the rink, sweat
was beading on the back of my neck. Pierce hadn’t shown up, but all twenty-two
of the kids had. Twenty-one of them were currently lined up against the wall,
waiting for the workshop to start. However, I couldn’t get started because the
twenty-second child, a tiny five-year-old named Olivia, would not stop crying.
Olivia had weak ankles and seemingly zero
balance. She’d fallen the second her blades hit the ice. She fell again while
trying to get up. She fell while holding onto the wall. She fell while moving.
She fell while standing still.
And each time she fell, she cried a little
harder.
Now, I was holding Olivia up on the ice on
her wobbly ankles and trying to soothe her. The little girl wasn’t injured,
just frustrated. If I let her get off the ice now, chances were good she’d
never step back onto it again. If the tears would stop for just a few minutes,
I would be able to help get her feet under her and we could go from there. But
either one of those tasks would take individual attention I didn’t have time to
give.
“Olivia, please stop crying and I’ll help
you, okay? I’m not going to let go until you’re ready, but you have to stop
crying so I can talk to the other kids.”
Apparently Olivia interpreted this to mean
“scream at the top of your lungs.” I was about to resort to bribery in the form
of candy from the snack bar when another skater hopped on the ice from the far
door. I glanced up and relief flooded my limbs.
Pierce was here after all.
“Sorry I’m late.” He skated over and came
to a hockey stop just a foot or two away from me, sending a spray of ice
shavings everywhere. All over me. All over Olivia. All over the closest four or
five kids on the wall. He brushed a few of them off, seemingly unsure of what
to do with his hands when he got to me. “Er…sorry.”
“Whoa,” one of the older kids said. “I want
to learn how to do that.”
Olivia stopped crying. Twenty-one jaws
dropped open, but mine wasn’t one of them. No, I was too busy gawking. You’d
think I’d never seen him before, but whoa. Pierce was hot. Possibly hotter than
the last time I’d seen him. Tall with light brown hair and a body that showed
just how much he worked out. Hazel eyes with more green than brown. Something
about his jaw made him seem older than he actually was.
But then he had to use that jaw to open his
mouth.
“It’s Mia, right?”
Four years at the same school and the same
rink and he could only get 66 percent of the letters in my name correct? “Lia.
With an L.”
Olivia started whimpering, so I hushed her
in what I hoped was a soothing way.
“Lia,” Pierce echoed. He didn’t bother
introducing himself, as if everyone knew who he was. Which they did, but still.
“You’re Pierce Miller,” said one of the
older boys who was wearing a hockey helmet way too big for his head. “My dad
says you’re going to play for the Red Wings.”
Pierce turned toward the row of young
skaters, as if noticing them for the first time. “I hope so, little man.”
“I saw you on YouTube!” one of the girls
said. Though her outfit was predominately pink, she was wearing a tiny pair of
hockey skates.
I was so distracted by the kids’
hero-worship that Olivia slipped out of my grasp, fell, and started crying
again.
“I’m sorry, Olivia,” I said as I picked the
little girl up and struggled to set her on her skate blades again. The muscles
in my back were starting to protest being stooped over for so long.
“I want to skate!” one of the kids said.
“Yeah,” another echoed.
The start of a riot. Crap. Like it or not,
I was going to have to ask Pierce for help. “Look, you can either take her,” I
said, nodding to Olivia, “or—”
Before I could finish the other option,
Pierce scooped Olivia up and settled her against his hip, her skates hanging
down toward his knees. Instantly, her tears stopped.
“Olivia, is it?” Pierce asked. “‘Atta girl.
You’re okay.”
That wasn’t what I had wanted him to do.
Picking her up was just as bad as taking her off the ice. Now he wouldn’t be
able to put her down, and when he did, she’d just fall or start crying again.
But there was nothing I could do about that now, and I had the rest of the kids
to worry about.
“Okay, everyone. I want you to let go of
the wall and step out in front of you, just like you’re walking,” I said. One
of the kids fell and knocked two others down, but the rest stayed on their
feet. “Good job, guys! Now pick up your feet, one at a time.”
The kids went back and forth across the
rink like that, sometimes falling, always crashing into the hockey boards both
because they didn’t know how to stop and because it was hilarious enough to
cause a fit of laughter every single time. Once they mastered walking, they
started pushing off with each foot and gliding, picking up a little speed. I
grabbed push bars for the few kids who fell the most, but the others seemed
okay.
Every once in a while, I glanced over at
Pierce and Olivia. He carried her in his arms for a few minutes, and then put
her back down on the ice with his hands supporting her under her armpits.
Surprisingly, there were no tears. He skated around the rink with her like that
for a while. I got distracted while trying to teach the kids forward swizzles,
and the next time I looked over, Olivia was on her own; still weak-ankled and
wobbly, but not falling. Even better, she was smiling.
Not that Pierce would have noticed. Now
that his hands were free, his phone was out of his pocket, and he was
frantically typing something with his thumbs. He was smiling, too.
Texting a girl, maybe?
“Straight to the Olympics with this one,”
he said without looking up from his phone as they skated by me and the rest of
the group.
“I want to go to the Olympics!” one of the
little girls yelled right before falling on her butt.
“Me too,” another girl said before tripping
over the first.
“Okay, okay.” I helped both of them back to
their feet. “Swizzles first. Olympics second.” And apparently not at all if
Pierce was their teacher. But I kept that comment to myself. I glanced up at
the clock on the scoreboard. Not nearly enough time had passed. I was already
more exhausted than if I’d run a long program full-out four times in a row.
It was going to be a long ten weeks.
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