Good morning! I am so excited to be a part of the blog tour for Gretchen McNeil's newest book, I'm Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl! This book is really fantastic, and I've got an excerpt for you to read so you can get just as hooked! There's also a giveaway, so be sure to enter to win your very own copy at the end of this post. Also, don't forget to hit all the other stops in the tour to not miss out on the release fun!
About the Book
I'm Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl by Gretchen McNeil
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From acclaimed author Gretchen McNeil comes her first
realistic contemporary romance—perfect for fans of Kody Keplinger’s The Duff
and Morgan Matson’s Since You've Been Gone.
Beatrice Maria Estrella Giovannini has life all figured out.
She's starting senior year at the top of her class, she’s a shoo-in for a
scholarship to M.I.T., and she’s got a new boyfriend she’s crazy about. The
only problem: All through high school Bea and her best friends Spencer and Gabe
have been the targets of horrific bullying.
So Bea uses her math skills to come up with The Formula, a
100% mathematically guaranteed path to social happiness in high school. Now
Gabe is on his way to becoming Student Body President, and Spencer is finally
getting his art noticed. But when her boyfriend Jesse dumps her for Toile, the
quirky new girl at school, Bea realizes it's time to use The Formula for
herself. She'll be reinvented as the eccentric and lovable Trixie—a
quintessential manic pixie dream girl—in order to win Jesse back and beat new-girl
Toile at her own game.
Unfortunately, being a manic pixie dream girl isn't all it's
cracked up to be, and “Trixie” is causing unexpected consequences for her
friends. As The Formula begins to break down, can Bea find a way to reclaim her
true identity and fix everything she's messed up? Or will the casualties of her
manic pixie experiment go far deeper than she could possibly imagine.
Gretchen McNeil is an opera singer, a writer, and a clown.
She is also the author of Get Even as well as Ten, which was a 2013 YALSA Top
Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, a Romantic Times Top Pick,
and an ALA Booklist Top Ten Horror Fiction for Youth and was nominated for Best
Young Adult Contemporary Novel of 2012 by Romantic Times. Gretchen blogs with the
Enchanted Inkpot and is a founding member of the vlog group the YARebels.
Meet the Author
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| Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | YouTube | Instagram |
Gretchen McNeil is an opera singer, writer and clown. Her YA horror POSSESS about a teen exorcist debuted with Balzer + Bray for HarperCollins in 2011. Gretchen’s follow up TEN – YA horror/suspense about ten teens trapped on a remote island with a serial killer – was a 2013 YALSA Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, a Romantic Times Top Pick, a Booklist Top Ten Horror Fiction for Youth, a finalist for Washington state’s 2015 Evergreen Young Adult Book Award and Vermont’s 2014-2015 Green Mountain Book Award, and was nominated for “Best Young Adult Contemporary Novel of 2012″ by Romantic Times. In 2013, she released 3:59, a sci-fi doppelganger horror about two girls who are the same girl in parallel dimensions who decide to switch places.
In 2014, Gretchen debuted her first series, Don’t Get Mad (pitched as “John Hughes with a body count”) also with Balzer + Bray. GET EVEN and GET DIRTY follow four very different girls who form a secret society where they get revenge on bullies and mean girls at their elite prep school.
Gretchen published two novels with HarperCollins in 2016: RELIC, a horror novel about a group of teens who, while exploring an old mine, accidentally unleash a creature who is hunting them down and cannibalizing their bodies; and I’M NOT YOUR MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL, a YA contemporary novel about a math-minded control freak who loses her boyfriend to the quirky new girl in school and sets out to reinvent herself as a classic manic pixie dream girl in order to win him back.
Gretchen’s novels have been optioned by Hollywood production companies, and have sold internationally in Chinese, Spanish, Turkish, and Czech. In addition to her novels, Gretchen has contributed an essay to the Dear Teen Me anthology from Zest Books.
Gretchen is a former coloratura soprano, the voice of Mary on G4’s Code Monkeys and she sings with the LA-based circus troupe Cirque Berzerk. She is repped by Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Excerpt
Below is an excerpt from I'm Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl! I think this book sounds so cute and fun, and I think that after reading the excerpt you'll agree with me.
Above us, the glass-and-chrome facade of Fullerton Hills gleamed in the bright Southern California sunshine, its sleek, modern construction and green manicured lawns seemingly out of place on the parched hillside. The city had spent a small fortune on the newest high school in the district, and to me, it was a perfect analogy to the student body: all flashy, expensive exteriors with very little substance once you got inside.
But there had to be a way to combat the bullshit we faced every day at school. I took Jesse’s hand. Maybe he was right. Strength and confidence, those were the keys to success. Maybe if we just acted like weren’t intimidated, people would leave us alone? It was worth a shot. I pulled open the double doors and strode purposefully into the foyer, head high, unafraid. Spencer and Gabe hesitated.
“Come on, guys,” I said, trying to rally the troops. “According to Dr. Mannheim’s treatise ‘On Mathematics and Human Behavior,’ as long as we don’t act like prey, we have a sixty-two percent chance of being left alone by the predators.”
Gabe pursed his lips. “Right, because that’s totally how it works in the Serengeti.”
I elbowed him. “Stay positive.”
“I agree with Bea,” Jesse said.
“You would,” Spencer mumbled.
Gabe cleared his throat, then started to sing, “‘Where can I find a woman like that?’”
Spencer’s jaw clenched as he glared at Gabe.
“What song is that?” I asked.
“Never you mind.” Then Gabe backed down the hallway toward his homeroom, blowing us a kiss as he went. “Hello, Fullerton Hills!” he cried out, arms flung wide. “I’m here to give you a big hug.” A gaggle of girls scurried by and he pointed right at them. “You heard me. Hugs for all!” Then he half tackled them, their shrieks of laughter pinging off the highly polished tile floors.
Well, at least he was taking my advice to heart.
Spencer, Jesse, and I were in the same homeroom, so after quick stops at our lockers, we hurried upstairs to the freshmen English classroom—the same one in which I’d met Spencer years ago. We were halfway down the hall when a group of short, scrawny guys barreled toward us. One of them shouldered Spencer’s forearm so hard his book bag went flying onto the ground.
“Watch where you’re going, loser,” the jerk said, smiling at his buddies for approval.
Instead of getting angry (Spencer never got angry), he ignored them and calmly retrieved his bag. But whether it was because Jesse was with us or because I was relatively sure the perpetrator was a sophomore with absolutely no social standing of his own (or a 78 percent chance that it was both), something inside me snapped.
“You know,” I said, standing my wheelie bag on its legs and approaching the group with arms folded across my chest. “I feel sorry for you.”
“Aww, Math Girl feels sorry for me?”
I nodded. “Absolutely. Because based on the remedial level of the textbooks you’re carrying and your obvious lack of adequate adult role models as exhibited by your behavior, I estimate you have an eighty-five percent chance of living with your parents until you’re forty. So have fun with that.”
And before he could answer, I spun around, caught the handle of my bag, and strode resolutely into homeroom.
Jesse slipped his arm around my waist. “That was pretty cool.”
“Thanks.” I blushed as we snagged desks on the far side by the windows, exactly ninety three seconds before the final bell.
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Excerpted from I'M NOT YOUR MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL © Copyright 2016 by Gretchen McNeil. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Giveaway!
Would you like to win a copy of I'm Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl? If so you're in luck, there is a giveaway going on for U.S. residents. All you have to do is answer this question:
Who is your favorite “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” character from
a movie or book, and why?
You can answer in the comments below, and weigh in on the conversation on social media with #ImNotYourManicPixieDreamGirl and #GretchenMcNeil. I really hope you do because this book sounds like one you're not going to want to miss.
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