Blind Spot Blog Tour: Excerpt + Giveaway

Welcome to my stop on the Blind Spot official blog tour! Today I have a fantastic excerpt from the book to share with you - and don't forget to enter the giveaway! To follow the rest of the tour, click on the banner above.

Blind Spot

Author: Laura Ellen

Genre: YA Contemporary Mystery/Thriller

Release Date: June 10, 2014 (paperback release)

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers

Description:

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

Seventeen-year-old Tricia Farni’s body floated to the surface of Alaska’s Birch River six months after the night she disappeared. The night Roz Hart had a fight with her. The night Roz can’t remember. Roz, who struggles with macular degeneration, is used to assembling fragments to make sense of the world around her. But this time it’s her memory that needs piecing together—to clear her name . . . to find a murderer.

This unflinchingly emotional novel is written in the powerful first-person voice of a legally blind teen who just wants to be like everyone else.

Revelation

Winter stopped hiding Tricia Farni on Good Friday.

A truck driver, anxious to shave forty minutes off his commute, ventured across the shallow section of the Birch River used as an ice bridge all winter. His truck plunged into the frigid water, and as rescuers worked to save him and his semi, Tricia’s body floated to the surface.

She’d been missing since the incident in the loft six months ago. But honestly, she didn’t come to mind when I heard that a girl’s body had been found. I was that sure she was alive somewhere, making someone else’s life miserable. Maybe she was shacking up with some drug dealer, or hooking her way across the state, or whatever. But she was definitely alive.

On Easter morning, that changed.

The body of seventeen-year-old Tricia Farni was pulled from the Birch River Friday night. A junior at Chance High School, Tricia disappeared October 6 after leaving a homecoming party at Birch Hill. Police believe her body has been in the water since the night she disappeared.

I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. Tricia was a lot of things, a drug addict, a bitch, a freak. But dead? No. She was a survivor. Something — the only thing — I admired about her. I stared at my clock radio, disbelieving the news reporter. Ninety percent talk, AM 760 was supposed to provide refuge from my own wrecked life that weekend. I thought all those old songs with their sha-lala-las and da-doo-run-runs couldn’t possibly trigger any painful memories. I guess when a dead girl is found in Birch, Alaska, and you were the last one to see her alive, even AM 760 can’t save you from bad memories.

While the rest of Chance High spent Easter Sunday shopping for bargains on prom dresses and making meals of pink marshmallow chicks, I lay on my bed, images of Tricia flooding my brain. I tried to cling to the macabre ones — the way I imagined her when she was found: her body stiff and lifeless, her brown cloak spread like wings, her black, kohl-rimmed eyes staring up through the cracks in the ice that had been her coffin all winter. These images made me feel sad and sympathetic, how one should feel about a dead girl.

Another image kept shoving its way in, though. It was the last time I’d seen Tricia. The last thing I remembered clearly from that night, minutes before she disappeared. She and Jonathan in the loft. It made me despise her all over again. And I didn’t want to despise her anymore. She was dead.

What happened to her that night? And why couldn’t I remember anything after the loft, not even going home? All I had were quick snapshots, like traces of a dream: Jonathan’s body against mine; arms, way too many arms; and Mr. Dellian’s face. Puzzle pieces that wouldn’t fit together.

I’m used to piecing things together. My central vision is blocked by dots that hide things from me, leaving my brain to fill in the blanks. My brain doesn’t always get it right. I misinterpret, make mistakes. But my memory? It’s always been the one thing I could count on, saving me time after time from major humiliation. I can see something once and remember it exactly — the layout of a room, the contents of a page, anything. My visual memory makes it less necessary to see, and I rely on it to pick up where my vision fails.

How could my memory be failing me now?

I went over that night again, much as I would with my vision, putting the pieces together to make something sensible and concrete.

But the more I focused on those tiny snippets, the farther they slipped from my grasp.

Then “Copacabana” started playing on the radio.

I slammed my fingers down on the power button to stop the lyrics, but my mind went there anyway. A replay of the day Tricia did a striptease during lunch. The day I helped her buy drugs... 

Laura Ellen writes YA contemporary mysteries and thrillers from her home in Arizona, while also freelancing as a manuscript consultant for aspiring authors. She has a MA in Children’s Literature and began her career as a teacher in both Language Arts and special education. Diagnosed with juvenile macular degeneration as a teen, she drew upon her own experiences with vision loss to write her debut YA thriller Blind Spot, an emotional and suspenseful page-turner. Laura is represented by Jill Corcoran at Jill Corcoran Literary Agency and is part of the Sleuths, Spies, and Alibis blog crew. Want to know more about Laura Ellen? Go to www.lauraellenbooks.com or catch her on twitter @lauraellenbooks or Facebook.

Available now at these fine retailers in eBook and Hardcover, and in paperback on June 10th 2014!

AMAZON | BARNES AND NOBLE | INDIEBOUND

One Winner will get signed copies of BLIND SPOT and DEAR TEEN ME as well as a BLIND SPOT swag pack that includes, gum, magnet and magnifying glass bookmark.

Open to US Only | Must Be 13 + to enter.

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