Today we’re offering a sneak peek of Sarah Comb’s novel, The Light Fantastic!
Read on for more about Comb’s, her novel, exclusive chapter reveal, plus a giveaway!
Meet Sarah Combs!
Sarah Combs is the author of Breakfast Served Anytime, her debut novel. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
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Meet The Light Fantastic!
Seven tightly interwoven narratives. Three harrowing hours. One fateful day that changes everything.
Delaware, the morning of April 19. Senior Skip Day, and April Donovan’s eighteenth birthday. Four days after the Boston Marathon bombing, the country is still reeling, and April’s rare memory condition has her recounting all the tragedies that have cursed her birth month. And just what was that mysterious gathering under the bleachers about? Meanwhile, in Nebraska, Lincoln Evans struggles to pay attention in Honors English, distracted by the enigmatic presence of Laura Echols, capturer of his heart. His teacher tries to hold her class’s interest, but she can’t keep her mind off what Adrian George told her earlier. Over in Idaho, Phoebe is having second thoughts about the Plan mere hours before the start of a cross-country ploy led by an Internet savant known as the Mastermind. Is all her heartache worth the cost of the Assassins’ machinations? The Light Fantastic is a tense, shocking, and beautifully wrought exploration of the pain and pathos of a generation of teenagers on the brink—and the hope of moving from shame and isolation into the light of redemption.
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GAG, BUT MISSING
THEIR A
(11: 47 AM EDT )
Gina and I are in the broom closet eating some more of those red-velvet cupcakes from April’s birthday, and April should be in here with us because this is how we roll and all, this is one of our official and top-secret meeting spots, but April is nowhere. April’s up and gone #MIA, and it’s making me nervous. She’s probably just in physics class, but hey, what if her weird-ass April mind somehow knew something about whatever it was I maybe saw or didn’t see underneath the bleachers this morning? What about that?
“Stop worrying,” Gina says. “Dude. I didn’t even say anything.”
“Whatever. I can hear you worrying, like, from inside your head. That’s how loud it is. Who even was it?”
“I couldn’t really see,” I say, which is the truth, and which is half of why I’m worried about it in the first place.
April and Gina and me have known everybody around here since birth, and April always promised we had nothing to sweat, that nobody at our school is the shoot-’em-up type, but then what about that one guy? What about that effer, effing with a school that wasn’t even his? An elementary school, man, don’t even talk to me about it. Don’t even talk to me about how there’s nothing in this world as innocent as a first-grader. Since then April’s had a whole nother layer of paranoia. Since then it’s been good guy with a gun wtf ! at the school entrance every day and it’s been periodic trips to the Lockdown Closet, which let me tell you is one tiny- ass claustrophobia-making hellhole but you can fit twenty- eight seniors and one teacher in here, #ishityounot.
Only right now it’s just me and Gina, ditching Government.
There’s a thirty-six-pack of generic toilet paper in here and about twenty bottles of Pine-Sol and that yellow bucket thing with a sour mop in it and this whole place smells like antiseptic cleaner mixed with the total ass smell of filthy mop and I could just about gag, so I’m shoving a cupcake in my mouth to keep from retching, that’s how gross it is. The light above our heads is all fluorescent-nasty and is flickering like to give a person a seizure and it’s all sort of greenish and makes me and Gina both look like we’re about to puke, which I think maybe I could, like any minute now, look out.
“Man, where is she?” I wanna know.
“I’ve texted her eight million times,” Gina says. “Relax.”
Relax. Right. In the Lockdown Closet. Because this is the world now, ladies and gentlemen. Every day of high school is a game of #russianroulette.
Gina’s actually painting her nails. In the Lockdown Closet! Because it’s not like we can breathe in here already or anything like that. The polish is this awful shade of throw-up green. Gina wants to do mine but I’m like, are you kidding me?
“We’re almost out of here,” Gina muses. “Pretty soon you and April are going to go off to your fancy smart-people schools, and then what? What’s going to become of me?”
Gina’s going to the University of Delaware, and there are lots of days when I wish I were going with her. Newark is far enough to feel distant but close enough to feel like home. It’s a #bestofbothworlds scenario, is what it is, but Gina’s a little irritated that it’s not Hollywood.
“You’ll be the hottest Blue Hen around, is what will become of you. Maybe after graduation you’ll end up an assistant for that washed-up magician of yours. Who knows? The future is a big place, Gina Marie.”
Gina fans her nails in the air, spins neatly around so I can rub her back. “I’d study magic if I could,” she says. “I totally would. Learn how to turn the world on its ear, learn how to disappear. Those are some freaking marketable skills right there.”
Gina! She kills me. She goes around rhyming without even trying to do it. Girl is made of rhythm.
“Honey,” I say, “let me tell you something. There’s not anybody in this world doesn’t wish to God they lived at Hogwarts. Come up with something new to bitch about.”
Gina laughs, all sad but happy, then turns around to look at me. “I’ve got an idea,” she says, like she’s never had such a great idea before, like this is the #bestoneevah. “Gavin! Let’s go to prom.”
Man, I knew this was coming. Sooner or later everybody caves and decides they want to go to prom. “Like you and me together? Like ironically or for real?”
“You and me and April. The three of us as dates. Totally un-ironic. You can wear two boutonnieres and we can thrift shop for some old-school prom gear and it will be epic and please please say yes, Gavin. Do this one thing for me, please?”
Of course I have to act all put upon and offended, so I roll my eyes and pretend the world’s ending. The truth is, though, that I can’t wait. Deep down I have always, always wanted to go to #prom.
“Okay,” I say, and already I’m dreaming about it.
It’s not more than three seconds later that we hear the first round of shots, and three more seconds after that Mr. Goodrich’s physics class — April’s physics class, only she’s nowhere, nowhere, and this kills me — is piling into the Lockdown Closet.
Only this isn’t a drill. You can tell because Mr. Goodrich doesn’t even ask Gina and me what we’re doing in the closet. You can tell because somebody turns off the light, and in the dark nobody’s laughing, and also nobody’s screaming because by now we all know the rules for survival, and the most important very first rule is this:
#nobodymakeasound.
The Light Fantastic
By: Sarah Combs
Release Date: September 13, 2016
Publisher: Candlewick Press
*GIVEAWAY DETAILS*
Five winners will receive a copy of The Light Fantastic (US only).
*Click the Rafflecopter link below to enter the giveaway*
I had chills after reading the chapter. The cover is really interesting, and kind of hides the fact that this is such a terror-laden book. The synopsis doesn’t really give it away, either. But that first chapter!!
Fantastic, Fantastic, Fantastic!! (no spoiler!)
I like how the dynamo plot seems almost secondary to the clear emphasis on multidimensional, rich character development. Cheers, Kara S
I’m curious as to how these narratives are interwoven. 🙂
I saw some buzz about this book on the blog for the Kentucky Book Festival in November: http://kybookfair.blogspot.com/ I love stories that involve lots of characters who experience the same thing but yet the story is told from their individual perspectives. Looking forward to this book!
I find the cover to be attractive and would pick it off the shelf. I love contemporary and this really is up-to-date.
The cover is eye catching. The synopsis makes me want to read about the characters and their stories.