BOOK TOUR - GUEST POST + GIVEAWAY: Betrayed By Shadows by Nancy Gideon

Why I Love a Young Adult Series

When I was a child, I never read as a child. My imagination reached far beyond Nancy Drew and her snappy red roadster, but found nothing to satisfy it upon the conservative shelves of young adult fiction. To feed my creative curiosity, I had to reach higher, onto adult books with themes often outside what was considered ‘age appropriate.’ Fortunately, I had a progressive mother who never censored (though she did scrutinize) my book choices. While other girls my age were sighing over Trixie Belden and Little Women, I was chapter deep in the Foundation Trilogy, soaring with Where Eagles Dare, or tucked away with Frank Yerby and Arthur Hailey. I was into big sagas and action series even back then.

When my sons were middle school aged, they discovered Goosebumps and Christopher Pike books. While critics scoffed and grumbled, I was beyond thrilled. My BOYS were READING! They were asking for books! My hard and fast rule was never say no to a book. My oldest son still reminds me of that to the dismay of my Amazon ‘One Click’, and my younger has my grandson surrounded by adventure bedtime stories.

What a lucky generation we have today! I remember bundling up for that every other Tuesday night walk to the Bookmobile (uphill both ways!) so I could bring home everything I could carry. Today, the imagination is just one click away. And what wonderful leaps of the imagination they are! Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork and Bones series, and, okay I’ll reluctantly include Twilight, have young people devouring the world of words and coming back for more. Books no longer treat young adults as, well, children. The stories are sophisticated, the characters heroic, the larger-than-life situations relatable. And even adults love them.

And the best part, we’re growing our next generation of adult readers! Books, no matter what form they take, will be an important part of their lives, and as a reader, as well as an author, that delights me tremendously!

Read it to them. Read it with them. Buy it for them. Never say no to a book.

What were your favorite books as a young adult? What are your children reading?

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Balancing a criminal empire and a preternatural clan war, reluctant front man Giles St. Clair doesn’t need a problem like Brigit MacCreedy . . . How much trouble can the head-strong and manipulative Shifter beauty get into in two weeks? Plenty when her schemes range from kidnapping to fleeing the retribution of her dead lover’s clan.  

With her family’s lives on the line, Brigit is willing to do whatever it takes to save them. The only thing standing in her way is an immovable stone wall of a man she can’t bully or beguile . . . a human, no less, who has promised to protect her from the secrets and dangers she conceals.  

Risking her own safety gets complicated when an honorable and annoyingly desirable man puts himself between her and her powerful enemies in a battle he can’t win in this Taming of the Shrew meets Shifter Goodfellas on the Bayou tale of consequences, redemption and finding love in all the wrong places.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

An author of over fifty novels since 1987, Nancy Gideon thrives on variety. Under her own name and several pseudonyms, she’s written award-winning series suspense, historical and paranormal bestsellers, earned a “Career Achievement for Historical Adventure”, and has had two original horror screenplays optioned for film. A Michigan native, she works full time as a legal administrative assistant and feeds a NetFlix addiction. (twitter) (website) (blog) (facebook)

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