{Review} {GuestPost} Liv, Forever by @amytalkington {Giveaway} {Published} @soho_teen

When Liv Bloom lands an art scholarship at Wickham Hall, it’s her ticket out of the foster system. Liv isn’t sure what to make of the school’s weird traditions and rituals, but she couldn’t be happier—especially when Malcolm Astor, fellow artist and scion of one of the school’s original families, starts falling for her. Fellow scholarship kid Gabe Nichols warns her not to get involved with a “Wicky,” but things are finally going Liv’s way, and all she wants to do is enjoy it.

But Liv’s bliss is cut short when she is viciously murdered. In death, she discovers that she’s the latest victim of a dark conspiracy that spans 150 years and many, many lives. Gabe, cursed with the ability to see their ghosts, turns out to be Liv’s only link to the world of the living.

Liv must rely on Gabe’s help to prove to Malcolm that she’s still present… lingering with the other spirits. Together, Liv, Gabe, and Malcolm fight to expose the terrible truth that haunts the halls of Wickham before more lives are lost.

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Biography

Amy Talkington is an award-winning screenwriter and director living in Los Angeles. Before all that she wrote about music for magazines like Spin, Ray Gun, Interview, and Seventeen (mostly just as a way to get to hang out with rock stars). As a teenager in Dallas, Texas, Amy painted lots of angsty self-portraits, listened to The Velvet Underground and was difficult enough that her parents finally let her go to boarding school on the East Coast. Liv, Forever is her first novel.

Visit her website www.amytalkington.com, @amytalkington on Twitter, and on Tumblr.

A YA Mystery with a hint of Paranormal.  Which was a recipe for a great book.  Although this one had a little more fluff than what I would have liked.  It was a wonderful read.  And I love that the cover really ties into the books main character.  This one will draw in both teens and adults so deff pick it up and give it a try.  It was deff worth the read!

"*I received a copy of this book for free to review, this in no way influenced my review, all opinions are 100% honest and my own."

Guest Post with Amy Talkington 

When not writing books (or blog posts), I’m a screenwriter (and filmmaker). At this point,  I’ve written more than fifteen scripts “for hire” and several others for myself (not to mention the many short films I’ve written and directed). And now I’ve written my first book, Liv, Forever. People have asked me why I decided to write a book and what the difference is between screenwriting and book writing so I thought I’d share some thoughts about that with you here.

I actually first imagined Liv, Forever as a screenplay. I wrote up a fifteen page treatment on the characters and story before I realized I needed to write it as a book. Why? I think the answers to that question will help illuminate some of the differences between writing books and movies.

A)  I really wanted to explore Liv’s voice.

Screenwriting is incredibly prescriptive. You cannot go into someone’s head. You cannot even describe a room beyond the bare essentials. Looking at the story I’d crafted for Liv, I realized that I really wanted to go deeper. I wanted to explore the thoughts in Liv’s head. I wanted to know how she felt when she realized she was dead. I wanted to understand why she felt no capacity for love. I wanted to know how she saw the world. I knew I could get so much deeper into her thoughts and her unique perspective in a book.

B) I wanted to create a layered ghost mythology and history for the school.

I knew that I needed a detailed and twisty history and mythology for the school. This was something that I hadn’t cracked in the outline and I knew would be tough to crack in a screenplay without practically writing a book about it first. So, I decided I might as well just write that book!

C.) I’d always wanted to write a book.

Most screenwriters I know would like to write a book someday. At least just one. We are writers after all and we love books as well as movies. But there is another, more practical, reason (in two parts): books don’t get messed with and books get published. Working as a screenwriter for the studios (as I have for about ten years) can be very challenging because we’re constantly (and nearly always) rewritten. No matter who you are or how big your credits, your writing is rarely considered sacred (or even very important!).

And not only are you rewritten, but your work is seldom produced. Of those fifteen scripts I mentioned that I’ve written, only three have been produced. Just imagine writing fifteen novels for publishing houses (doing all the multiple revisions) but having only three actually published. (Side note: I have several studio projects in “active development” and hope to see at least one made this year!)

So you can imagine the appeal of having a book that will be published (just as I wrote it!). This is an uncommon experience for a screenwriter. And, I want to do it again, no doubt. But, at the same time, I’m also busy trying to turn Liv, Forever into a movie!

If you want to know all the latest on Liv, Forever follow me on Twitter @amytalkington and Tumblr http://amytalkington.tumblr.com/

Disclaimer: Thanks to Goodreads and Amazon for the book cover, about the book, and author information.

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Posted in: 4 Stars, Giveaway, Review, SohoTeen, Young Adult