The Cold Is in Her Bones Blog Tour: Review, Excerpt + Giveaway

 The Cold Is in Her Bones
Author: Peternelle van Arsdale
Release Date: January 22, 2019
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Age Range: 12 and up
Grade Level: 7 - 9

Description:

One girl must uncover secrets of the past to save her friend from a terrible curse in this dark and mesmerizing story of love, revenge, and redemption inspired by the myth of Medusa.

Milla knows two things to be true: Demons are real, and fear will keep her safe.

Milla’s whole world is her family’s farm. She is never allowed to travel to the village and her only friend is her beloved older brother, Niklas. When a bright-eyed girl named Iris comes to stay, Milla hopes her loneliness might finally be coming to an end. But Iris has a secret she’s forbidden to share: The village is cursed by a demon who possesses girls at random, and the townspeople live in terror of who it will come for next.

Now, it seems, the demon has come for Iris. When Iris is captured and imprisoned with other possessed girls, Milla leaves home to rescue her and break the curse forever. Her only company on the journey is a terrible new secret of her own: Milla is changing, too, and may soon be a demon herself.

Suspenseful and vividly imagined, The Cold Is in Her Bones is a novel about the dark, reverberating power of pain, the yearning to be seen and understood, and the fragile optimism of love.  Praise for THE COLD IS IN HER BONES:

"A dark and enchanting tale about friendship, pain, revenge, and the power of love, The Cold Is in Her Bones is the perfect read for Greek mythology fans and YA readers alike." ―Bustle

“Fiercely written and beautifully feminist, The Cold is in Her Bones reminds us of the power of loyalty and love in the face of ignorance and fear. I loved this tale of dangerous girls with wild hair and tangled hearts.” ―Lisa Maxwell, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Magician

“A fresh, eerily compelling tale of betrayal, revenge, and the ties that bind. When van Arsdale paints a world, you can feel the fog against your skin.” ―Elly Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Frostblood Saga

You can purchase The Cold Is in Her Bone at the following Retailers:

       

 

This scene gives a little hint of one of the ways the Medusa story comes out in my novel. This is a scene involving Milla, my sixteen year old protagonist, and her mother, Gitta.

Gitta stood behind Milla’s chair, pulling her comb through Milla’s dense, nearly black coils of hair.

Then Gitta stopped. “What is…”

Milla felt Gitta’s fingertips searching her scalp just above her left ear. Then a sharp pinch. “Ouch, Mamma!”

Gitta sucked in her breath. “Lord protect us from demons Lord protect us from demons Lord protect us from demons.” Gitta held something that squirmed between her two fingers. A tiny, emerald green snake, the length of her pinky, with a brilliant dot of crimson red blood on its tail end.

Milla said, “That was in my hair?”

Gitta shook her head. “No. No. Lord protect us from demons Lord protect us from demons Lord protect us from demons.” Gitta dropped the snake to the floor and crushed it beneath her heel. “It was growing from your head.”

Gitta grasped Milla by both shoulders. “You must not speak a word of this. You must behave. Be a good girl. A very good girl. It’s the only way to keep you safe. To keep you here. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mamma, I understand.”

Milla awakened the next morning just as night was paling into dawn. She touched the spot on her head, just above her left ear, where Mamma had ripped out the snake. She remembered the way the tail end of the snake had dripped blood. Was it hers or the snake’s? Or did their blood flow together—was it one and the same?

She expected to find a sore spot there. A break in the skin. A tender place. Instead, she sensed movement that wasn’t her own, and something smooth and cool and dry wrapped itself around her finger.

The snake had grown back.

Copyright © 2019 by Peternelle van Arsdale

The Cold Is in Her Bones is an exciting new take on the myth of Medusa wound together with important topics like family, friendship, love, hate, and accepting who you really are - even if it's not who others want you to be. To be completely honest, this had less supernatural than I expected and a lot more in depth look at how women were viewed and how they had to act in history. That turned me off a bit, mostly because I was really excited to read a new twist on Medusa and it sounded like it was going to be really paranormal. Don't get me wrong, there's supernatural elements, but not enough for me to be happy I guess. That's completely my own opinion and I know others won't feel the same. I just wanted to share my own thoughts and feelings honestly.

Milla was a pretty good main character. Her life would have driven me crazy and I could definitely empathize with her throughout the story. She was realistic and I found it easy to connect with her from early on in the novel. The other characters in the book were a mix of rounded and flat characters - stereotypes mostly. One of the other things that was a negative for me was the writing style. The book is told in the third person point of view, which is my least favorite and the hardest for me to connect with. If it had been written in the first person POV from Milla's perspective, I would've had a completely different reading experience and it definitely would've changed my opinion in a positive way. Overall, this was a solid novel that will appeal to fans of historical fiction, myths, retellings, paranormal, and young adult fiction.

Photo Content from Elena Seibert

Peternelle van Arsdale grew up in Newark, New Jersey, where she attended public school through the eighth grade. After that she attended three high schools in three different towns in four years, was deeply unpopular, and counted the seconds until graduation. She majored in English literature at Bryn Mawr College, and then landed in book publishing, thinking it was a good way to be paid to do what she liked to do anyway (she was only partly wrong). She worked her way up from editorial assistant to executive editor of adult fiction and nonfiction, and eventually struck out on her own as an independent editor.

Her first young adult novel, The Beast Is an Animal, is being developed by Amazon Studios for a feature film produced by Ridley Scott’s Scott Free and directed by Bert & Bertie. Her essays have been published by LitHub, Hypable.com, and Culturefly, and her short fiction has been published by The Whitefish Review.

Her second novel, The Cold is in Her Bones , will be published in January 2019. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she continues to edit and is at work on her third novel.

         

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