Blog Tour (Guest Post)- If I Stay by Courtney Cole

 Title: If You Stay
Author: Courtney Cole
Pages: 220
Publisher: Lakehouse Press
Release Date: Feburary 5, 2013

Summary:

24-year old Pax Tate is an asshole.
Seriously.

He’s a tattooed, rock-hard bad-boy with a bad attitude to match.

But he’s got his reasons.

His mother died when Pax was seven, leaving a hole in his heart filled with guilt although he doesn’t understand why. What he does know is that he and his dad are left alone and with more issues than they can count.

As Pax grew up, he tried to be the kid his father always wanted; the perfect golden boy, but it didn’t work. His dad couldn’t overcome his grief long enough to notice and Pax couldn’t keep up the impossible perfect façade.
So he slipped far, far from it.

Now, he uses drugs and women to cope with the ugliness, the black void that he doesn’t want to deal with. If he pretends that the emptiness isn’t there, then it isn’t, right?
Wrong.

And it’s never more apparent than when he meets Mila.
Sweet, beautiful Mila Hill is the fresh air to his hardened frown, the beauty to his ugly heart. He doesn’t know how to not hurt her, but he quickly realizes that he’s got to figure it out because he needs her to breathe.

When memories of his mother’s death resurface from where he’s repressed them for so long, Mila is there to catch him when the guilt starts making sense. Mila is the one…the one who can save him from his broken troubled heart; from his issues, from the emptiness.

But only if he can stop being an asshole long enough to allow it.

He knows that. And he’s working on it.

But is that enough to make her stay?

Author Bio:

Courtney Cole is a novelist who would eat mythology for breakfast if she could. She has a degree in Business, but has since discovered that corporate America is not nearly as fun to live in as fictional worlds. She loves chocolate and roller coasters and hates waiting and rude people.

Courtney lives in quiet suburbia, close to Lake Michigan, with her real-life Prince Charming, her ornery kids (there is a small chance that they get their orneriness from their mother) and a small domestic zoo.

Website: http://courtneycolewrites.com/

Author Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/courtneycolewrites

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/courtwritesYA

Novel Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17032328-if-you-stay

Author Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3112212.Courtney_Cole

Top Ten Books Ever Written and Why

By Courtney Cole

Holy cow.  This is a hard question.  *Thinks on it and comes back to answer two days later*.

Okay, I’m ready.  Here are my top ten books and why. 

1.       The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom.

This book was there when I needed it.  A few weeks before my dad died, he gave me this book, thinking I might like it.  I promptly forgot about it until a few weeks after he died, when I was in the middle of overwhelming grief.  I picked it up and I read it and I instantly fell in love with Mitch Albom.  Everything he writes is magic, but he outdid himself with this one.  It tells the story of how each person is connected to another, how everything we do can affect people that we never even know.  More than telling a story, he weaves a tapestry.  It’s absolutely fantastic. 

2.     Saving Grace by Julie Garwood

This book is a romance and I read it when I was probably 18 or so.  The male lead, Gabriel McBain is who shaped my idea of the ideal man… and also first introduced me to the power of the ‘bad boy.’  As always, Julie Garwood is witty and hilarious, as well as writes a steamy sex scene. 

3.     The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Sad and poignant, but so important. A reminder to hold our kids tight and cherish each day for what it is.  A gift. 

4.     Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonothan Safran Foer

This book made me ugly-cry.  Seriously.  I had watched the movie first, one evening when I was home alone. And the movie made me ugly-cry too. And because I’m a firm believer that most books are better than the movie, I ordered the book and I’m so happy I did. The writing style is refreshing and intriguing. And absolutely amazing. 

5.     Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

This was one of the first classics that I read, when I was in high school.  I was swept away by the notion that life doesn’t always come out the way we think it should… that endings aren’t always happy.  The idea that people do struggle with everyday things, with adultery, with love, with life… it was a novel idea to someone who was still idealistic and young. 

6.     Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

I know this seems to be a strange choice.  But it was this book that showed me that even forbidden topics can be written about in such flowery and interesting ways that they are interesting.  Nabokov’s writing style is fascinating.  The book held me spell-bound from beginning to end.

7.     The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I’m not big on dystopians.  But I loved this book.  It was so unique.  It captured my attention immediately and didn’t let go until long after the last page was turned.  Katniss was such a refreshingly strong female lead. 

8.    Ann Frank:  The Diary of a Young Girl

I read this when I was a girl.  And of course, I wept for her story and the sadness of it all. But it was this book that put a face on the word injustice.  At least, for me.  It was one of my first lessons about how the world isn’t always fair and bad things really do happen.  It was a lesson I haven’t forgotten.

9.      One Thousand Paper Cranes by Ishii Takayuki

I read this as a girl and it made the same impression upon me as the Diary of Anne Frank.  It tells the story of a girl who died as a result of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  She set out to fold a thousand paper cranes before she died.  After her death, her classmates completed that mission for her.  I read this is school and I never forgot it.

10.   Harry Potter.  (Any of them) by J.K. Rowling.

The Harry Potter books are simply fabulous. They awaken our imaginations.  I can remember when I read the Sorcerer’s Stone for the first time and I could vividly see Hogwart’s and all of the magic it contained.  I was in love.  And I’m never fallen out of love with this series. 

GIVEAWAY!! WIN 5 Copies of If You Stay !! be sure to comment here to enter!!

 http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/9172c14/