Girl on the
Brink
by Christina Hoag
Genre: YA Romance/Thriller
Release date: August 30th 2016
Fire and Ice YA/Melange Books
Summary:
Sometimes the one you love isn’t the one you’re meant to be with.
The summer before senior year, Chloe starts an internship as a reporter at a local newspaper. While on assignment, she meets Kieran, a quirky aspiring actor. Chloe becomes smitten with Kieran’s charisma and his ability to soothe her soul, torn over her parents’ impending divorce. But as their bond deepens, Kieran becomes smothering and flies into terrifying rages. He confides in Chloe that he suffered a traumatic childhood, and Chloe is moved to help him. If only he could be healed, she thinks, their relationship would be perfect. But her efforts backfire, and Kieran turns violent. Chloe breaks up with him, but Kieran pursues her relentlessly to make up. Chloe must make the heartrending choice between saving herself or saving Kieran, until Kieran’s mission of remorse turns into a quest for revenge.
by Christina Hoag
Genre: YA Romance/Thriller
Release date: August 30th 2016
Fire and Ice YA/Melange Books
Summary:
Sometimes the one you love isn’t the one you’re meant to be with.
The summer before senior year, Chloe starts an internship as a reporter at a local newspaper. While on assignment, she meets Kieran, a quirky aspiring actor. Chloe becomes smitten with Kieran’s charisma and his ability to soothe her soul, torn over her parents’ impending divorce. But as their bond deepens, Kieran becomes smothering and flies into terrifying rages. He confides in Chloe that he suffered a traumatic childhood, and Chloe is moved to help him. If only he could be healed, she thinks, their relationship would be perfect. But her efforts backfire, and Kieran turns violent. Chloe breaks up with him, but Kieran pursues her relentlessly to make up. Chloe must make the heartrending choice between saving herself or saving Kieran, until Kieran’s mission of remorse turns into a quest for revenge.
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Advance Praise:
“An engrossing tale of a dangerous teen
romance.” -- Kirkus Reviews
“Girl on the Brink is a must have
for every high school and public library.” – Isabelle Kane, Wisconsin
high school librarian
What
inspired you to write “Girl on the Brink”?
My motivation to write “Girl on the Brink” was simple: I really feel
that girls need to know the red flags of abusive guys early on. There’s a very
set pattern of behavior that once you become attuned to it, you can pick out
the signs right away. If you don’t know these red flags, you can misread them,
as I did.
Controlling behavior, for example, can be misconstrued as “he’s really
into me” or “he really cares about me.” Clingy-ness can be read as “he needs me”
instead of “he’s smothering me.” You can really believe that he’s sorry and
he’ll “never do it again,” but guaranteed, he will and it will likely be worse.
Unfortunately, these things aren’t taught in school (although I think
they should be) and most girls and women don’t familiarize themselves with how
abusive relationships develop until after the fact. Getting involved with the wrong guy is
surprisingly common and can happen to anyone at any age.
I also wanted to show how hard the aftermath of these relationships
can be and how important it is to overcome that sense of shame and seek help in
order to safely get out of the relationship. Ending the relationship is the
most dangerous time as the abuser knows he’s losing his control and often
resorts to revenge of some sort, as Kieran in the novel does.
I chose a novel as the way to tell this story because I think it’s
more engaging to read a narrative rather than be lectured to, although book
also features a resource page at the back. So far I’ve had a number of readers
tell me that they went through similar experiences and really appreciated
seeing this story told. There’s a lot of power in seeing yourself reflected in
someone else’s story. So I’m hoping that this novel can be useful to readers in
two ways: cautioning them away from abusive guys, as well as validating the
girls and women who have had this experience.
ABOUT TEEN DATING VIOLENCE
Abusive relationships are widespread, cutting
across socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, religious and gender preference lines.
One in three high school girls experience dating violence, while more than half of
college-aged women reported experiencing controlling behavior in a
relationship. Eighty-nine percent of female college students said they were
unable to recognize the signs of an abusive relationship, and a third of teens
involved in intimate partner violence ever told anyone about it.
GIRL ON THE BRINK By
Christina Hoag
EXCERPT
The carnival sets up
for two weeks every summer in a field outside town. Everyone goes. It’s
something to vary Indian Valley’s monotonous diet of bowling, the single-screen
movie theatre, miniature golf, and hanging out at the Dairy Cream.
Kieran grabs my hand
as we stroll into the fair. It’s a riot of dazzling lights, whirling rides and
thumping music. I scan the crowd, hunting for Morgan and Jade, who I spot
waiting for funnel cakes.
“Hey, there are my
friends.” I wave frantically at them with my free hand as I tug Kieran with the
other. Morgan sees me, points me out to Jade and they both look my way.
Kieran yanks my hand
in the opposite direction. “We’ll catch up with them later.”
“I want you to meet
them. I told them all about you.”
“I just want to play
my favorite game for you first.”
I can’t refuse. I
let myself be pulled and make an apologetic face at them. Morgan’s expression
hardens. She says something to Jade. The crowd swarms between us, and I lose
sight of them.
Kieran steers me to
a shooting-at-moving-ducks game and grabs a rifle. He’s a good shot and soon
wins a white teddy bear with a red satin heart sewn on its chest. He hands it
to me.
“For you.”
“Thank you. It’s
adorable.” I proudly tuck it under my arm.
“Just like you. Hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Me, too.”
We make for the food
concessions. “Carnival hot dogs are the best,” Kieran says. “The pizza and
hamburgers blow.”
“Totally,” I say as
we line up.
We buy hot dogs
slathered with relish—and root beer, of course—and sit at a picnic table.
Kieran straddles the bench, patting the seat in front of him. I sit astride
like him. He inches closer so our knees touch.
“Open wide,” he
orders, looking at my mouth.
I obey. He feeds one
end of the hot dog to me, then leans in and bites the other end. I crack up and
almost choke.
“Don’t laugh,” which
comes out something like “doan waf” through Kieran’s mouthful of hot dog.
No hands, he chews,
swallows and takes another bite. I do the same. We manage to eat the hot dog,
and at the end, our lips touch. Kieran presses mine into a kiss.
“So that’s why you
like carnival hot dogs,” I say when we break apart. “To steal kisses.”
“Hey, I told you
they were the best. Hold on, you have mustard on your face.” He swoops in and
licks the side of my mouth.
I wipe off his
wetness. “Ew, Kieran!”
“Mmmm, salty.”
I giggle. He swoops
in again and licks all around my mouth and lips. His tongue tickles, and I
laugh as I shake my head, sucking in my lips, trying to get him off me as I
crack up harder, which only encourages him. He slurps my cheeks and chin, and I
try to recoil out of his reach, but he pulls me to him. Finally, he backs off
and dabs my face with a napkin as I recover my breath.
“You’re worse than a
puppy,” I say.
“Ruff, ruff.” He
pants and holds up his hands like paws, then jumps to his feet, holding out his palm. “Come on. Time for
rides.”
We run like it’s an
emergency.
“Cup of tea, Madam?”
Kieran points to the tea cups, then pushes
open the just-closing gate and leaps in a cup.
We spin madly in the
tea cups, chase, block and slam each other
in the bumper cars, cling to each other in the haunted house. We finish with a ride on the Ferris
wheel.
It’s getting late,
and the crowd has swelled with rowdy revelers who obviously made a pitstop at a bar before the carnival.
“Let’s go,” Kieran
says, after a guy, drunk or stoned, stumbles in front of us.
“I really wanted you
to meet my friends.”
“We’ve got plenty of
time for that. It gets nasty this time of
night, a lot of fights.”
“Okay.” I give a
last three-sixty turn in case Jade and Morgan appear. Kieran’s right. Cliques
of older guys and girls hang around the perimeter, smoking and drinking from
paper bags.
We swing our clasped
hands as we walk to the parking lot. I wish the night would never end. When we
get in the truck, he blasts the air conditioning and rolls down the windows. We
pull out into the street, and as the AC chills, I close my window. Using his
control, Kieran buzzes it down again.
“The AC’s on,” I
say.
“I know, but doesn’t
it feel great? To feel cold air and warm air at the same time?”
He accelerates.
Bathtub-temperature air whooshes along the side of my body, while my chest is
cooled by the AC. The combination feels luxurious.
“You’re right. It
does feel great!”
He grins. “Told ya.”
“My mom would kill
me for doing this.”
“That’s why you’re
hanging with me, not with her.”
He snakes an arm
over and slides off the elastic holding my ponytail. I shake my hair loose and
let the wind whip it.
“That’s it, sweetpea, be free.”
About the
Author
Christina Hoag is the author of Girl on the Brink, a romantic thriller for young adults (Fire and Ice YA/Melange Books, August 2016) and Skin of Tattoos, a literary thriller set in L.A.’s gang underworld (Martin Brown Publishing, September 2016). She is a former reporter for the Associated Press and Miami Herald and worked as a correspondent in Latin America writing for major media outlets including Time, Business Week, Financial Times, the Houston Chronicle and The New York Times. She is the co-author of Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence, a groundbreaking book on gang intervention (Turner Publishing, 2014). She resides in Los Angeles. For more information, see www.christinahoag.com.
Christina Hoag is the author of Girl on the Brink, a romantic thriller for young adults (Fire and Ice YA/Melange Books, August 2016) and Skin of Tattoos, a literary thriller set in L.A.’s gang underworld (Martin Brown Publishing, September 2016). She is a former reporter for the Associated Press and Miami Herald and worked as a correspondent in Latin America writing for major media outlets including Time, Business Week, Financial Times, the Houston Chronicle and The New York Times. She is the co-author of Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence, a groundbreaking book on gang intervention (Turner Publishing, 2014). She resides in Los Angeles. For more information, see www.christinahoag.com.
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Thanks for hosting me on your blog, Dana, and for taking the time to review my book!
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