Blog Tour: She Runs Away by Jessica Calla

Book: She Runs Away (Sheridan Hall #2)
Author: Jessica Calla
Published: November 15, 2016
Publisher: BookFish Books
Number of Pages: 308
Format: ebook (.mobi)
Source: Received from publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 4 Stars
Tags: NA, ARC, Love Story, Romance, Contemporary

Goodreads/Amazon 

Synopsis: After tragedy strikes New Jersey University's Sheridan Hall, freshman quarterback Ben Riley’s stable, normal life is turned upside down. Sidelined from playing the game he loves and on the verge of losing his scholarship, Ben wants nothing more than to escape the chaos of college and return home to rural Pennsylvania and his family.

Yet, there is something that keeps him from running. Or someone. A cute blonde he had a chance with but blew off for all the wrong reasons.

Megan Smith has secrets. Secrets that have burned her in the past. Secrets she’s unwilling to share with anyone at Sheridan Hall—especially Ben, her sexy, rough around the edges floormate who broke her heart in a matter of days after moving into Sheridan. Meg decided early on that it’s easier to live life on her own than to share her secrets and let people in.

Meg runs and Ben follows, but sooner or later the clock on their chance at love will expire. With inner demons dragging them both down, they must find a way to stop running and trust one another, or risk losing their perfectly-matched love forever.

-MY REVIEW-

"And, you're right. This year has been nothing but drama. But guess what? That's life. Life is nothing but drama."

I loved this book. The group of characters in these books are so special, and there is something that I love about everyone of them. They are so real and normal. If Calla wrote a story for everyone in that basement, I would read every, single, one.

In this book we follow Ben and Megan after the events of November have played out. They're both lonely, and Ben wants Megan to give him another chance. Ben doesn't tell Megan that he likes her upfront, and so they make a contract. Let the games begin. 

I absolutely loved the first 50-60% of this book. It was just so fun! It was nice to see their relationship be really casual because you don't see that a lot in books! I loved their banter, and their fights were so much fun to read about. I loved the scene where Ben was confronting Meg, and they just start ripping of their cloths trying to distract each other, I was laughing really hard. And yes, I am team beard. #KeepTheBeardBen

The first half of the book went by really fast, but the second half of the book is defiantly slower. Which is good, because there were issues that needed to be taken at a slower pace. I guess that it just caught me off guard, and so I wasn't sure how the rest of the book would play out. I did find that the second half did drag at times, and I wish that it would have been a little faster in pace.

It was so cool to see the rest of the gang again! It was cool seeing everybody again, especially Chase and Juliet. I really hope that Calla writes more books for the rest of the group because they all need to be happy! But next, I want Maggie's story! 

So overall I loved this book! I loved the characters, and it was awesome to see some old characters again. I hope that there are more books in this series, because I will be waiting!

              

-GUEST POST BY JESSICA CALLA-

Thank you, Anna, for hosting me during the SHE RUNS AWAY release tour! You've always been so supportive of me (and my pubisher, BookFish Books), which is much appreciated :)

It made me smile to read on this blog that Anna is trying NaNoWriMo this year. I'm a big fan and I've committed to NaNo this year myself, working on a new romantic suspense series centered around women lawyers at a firm in New York. I thought I'd use this space to talk about what makes National Novel Writing Month so special.

My new release, SHE RUNS AWAY, is Book 2 of my new adult series, the Sheridan Hall Series. Book 1 of the series, SHE LAUGHS IN PINK, was my NaNo project in November 2013. Drafted and redrafted about, oh, a million or so times, queried, rejected, accepted, edited, designed, etc., SHE LAUGHS made it to print in May of 2016.

If it weren't for NaNo, my idea for SHE LAUGHS would be living happily in my head, gnawing at my brain trying to get out. NaNo helped motivate me. How? Well, I signed up on the NaNo website and I have to admit, seeing that line graph rise every time I added in my new word count kind of gave me a weird writer's high. Also, some writer friends signed up on the site to be my "buddies," and seeing them work hard helped me suck it up.

Also, NaNo taught me the art of "barfing it out," which is still my practice three years later. I whole-heartedly believe in barfing out the words on the first draft. Whether or not they suck, whether or not they will end up being in your story at all, getting them down means something. It means that the story in your mind exists on the outside realm. Advice for NaNo, nobody writes a perfect first draft—not J.K. Rowling, not Nora Roberts, not Stephen King. Nobody. So accept that your draft will be a piece of crap, get over that fact, and keep going!

For example, when I did NaNo in 2013, I was actively blogging. I recall posting about my NaNo experience and including the first chapter of my draft of SHE LAUGHS for my followers to read. Guess what? That chapter didn’t even make it to draft two of SHE LAUGHS, never mind the final version. It had nothing to do with the main couple of the book. It was all backstory about Juliet and Ben (the book is about Juliet and Chase). In my mind I could (and still) see that prom scene so perfectly. I loved it so much (it was a flashback (yikes almighty!) prom scene with Juliet asking Ben to give them a chance at love), but it didn't belong in my book. It didn't belong in the story of Chase and Juliet. I ended up ditching it. Let me tell you, it was painful to watch all those words disappear off the screen, but the book is better for it.

So in my mind, winning NaNo is not about finishing a book in record time. NaNo is for barfing out 50,000 words that have some relation to each other. Think of NaNo like a giant shopping bag filled with 50,000 marbles. NaNo is the success of taking that bag, lifting it over your head, and dumping the marbles all over the floor. Considering the weight of 50,000 marbles, that's a feat in and of itself. If you can do that, kudos! You freaking rock!

But the real work comes afterward—for example, when you have to get on your hands and knees and pick out all of the blue marbles. Search through the mess, crawl under the table, keep your balance as you slide and roll over the marble-lined floor. Where are those blasted blue marbles? Is this blue or purple? Did that one roll under the fridge? Maybe this is too difficult. I don’t have time for this. You power through, find the blue ones, the good ones, and keep them.

Oh no. It's not over though. Next you learn that not only did you have to pick out the blue marbles, but you have to find more blue marbles to refill the bag again, just to dump them into the mix, too. Gah! Really? I thought I was done. Nope. Not even close.

So my advice as a NaNo-winner-turned-published-author? Let NaNo be your step one. You have to take the first step to take the last. You can't pick out the blue marbles until you dump them all out. There will be hundreds of steps in between NaNo and seeing your book in print, some easier than others. But you still have to take step one and barf out that first draft.

Is it easy? Absolutely not. If someone tells you it is, they're lying. It's not easy, but it's fun, and fulfilling, and trust me when I say, it's all worth it in the end.

Thanks for reading, and thank you again, Anna, for hosting me! Good luck NaNo-ing everyone!

-ABOUT THE AUTHOR-

About the Author: Jessica Calla is a contemporary romance and women's fiction author who moonlights during the day as an attorney. If she's not writing, lawyering, or parenting, you'll most likely find her at the movies, scrolling through her Twitter feed, or gulping down various forms of caffeine (sometimes all three at once).

Jessica is a member of Romance Writers of America, involved in the Contemporary, Young Adult, and New Jersey Chapters, and is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She also has the honor of being the oldest marketing intern ever at BookFish Books. A Jersey girl through and through, she resides in the central part of the state with her husband, two sons, and dog.

Find Jessica on Twitter (@jess_calla) or at her website (www.jessicacalla.com). She loves to make reader and writer friends.

You can find Jessica on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.

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