Rockstar Tours: LIVE YOUR BEST LIE (Jessie Weaver), Excerpt & Giveaway! ~US ONLY

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the LIVE YOUR BEST LIE by Jessie Weaver Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

About The Book:

Title: LIVE YOUR BEST LIE (Volume 1) (Like Me Block You)

Author: Jessie Weaver

Pub. Date: January 24, 2023

Publisher: Melissa de la Cruz Studio

Formats: Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook

Pages: 368

Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/LIVE-YOUR-BEST-LIE 

Sometimes the prettiest Instagram
feeds mask the darkest, and bloodiest, secrets.

Social media influencer Summer Cartwright leads a very charmed life:
millions of followers, the hottest designer and vintage clothes at her
fingertips, a newly minted book deal, the coolest friends, and, until recently,
the hottest boyfriend at her über-elite prep school. Every moment of her life has
been carefully planned and cultivated to complement her “imperfectly perfect”
social media persona. She is truly #LivingHerBestLife.

But when Summer goes missing during her annual Halloween party and then an
unscheduled post appears on her feed stating that she’ll be dead within the
next five minutes, those closest to Summer know something isn’t quite right―or
on-brand. Grace, Summer’s camera-shy best friend; Adam, Summer’s gamer
ex-boyfriend; Laney, Summer’s moody camp roommate; and Cora, an influencer
wannabe, all decide to investigate. And when they come upon Summer’s lifeless
body, they soon realize that no filter is strong enough to mask the lies we
tell ourselves.


Told in multiple POVs interspersed with social media posts and
flashbacks, Live Your Best Lie has twists and turns that will
keep readers turning the page and no one will be able to guess the ending.

Excerpt:

Live Your Best Lie

PART 1

#TooPrettyToDie

The_Summer_Cartwright 

Update post from #SummerLand

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K, first of all, I don’t photoshop my lips or my butt, but  thanks to so many of you for thinking I do. You’re the  sweetest everrrr!!! You should see my food baby after the  burger I just scarfed. Hah!

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This Wednesday at 10 a.m. PT is the next

#SCYogiAdventure. A dozen of my closest friends are  coming to my loft to do yoga in my living room with  @SierraDitmer of @HomeGYM, and you can, too, via my  livestream!! After, we’ll make green smoothies with protein  powder from @PowerBoost. Link to recipe in bio. #ad  #PowerBoost #selfcare 

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Prepare yourself for the most embarrassing moment  of my life in this week’s posts. It involves my green  smoothie and Ryan Gosling’s labradoodle. Literally  dying of shame. Oh, and there’s a paparazzi photo to  go with it. Cringe!! Also keep an eye out for my next  #SummerAlwaysDatesTheWrongGuy reel in which I react  to A and I breaking up dramatically in the courtyard at  school. Ugh. Someone bring me Rocky Road and a giant  spoon?

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This week in #SummerLoves . . . * Soy lattes from the  Beanery * Lying in the grass with daisies in my hair bc

#Cali * Sushi * Reading your DMs!!! * Posting no-makeup  makeup secrets for youuuu * Dirty little secrets that I’ll take  to my grave . . . or will I? *

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Speaking of graves . . . it’s #spookyszn! Stay  posted for stories from my Halloween party tonight for all  things spooktacular. It’s going to be scary fun. .

You guys are the best. I wish I could give you all the biggest  hug ever. squeeze

Love,

SumSum

₪ Y 4

POSTED 7 HOURS AGO

ONE

Grace Godwin

Saturday, October 31 

5:17 p.m. 

Grace buzzes Summer’s loft with one hand and tugs the hem of her dress with the other. If she’d taken a second to think before  calling her Lyft, she would have brought her color-blocked water melon costume to change into instead of wearing it. She’s two hours  early for Summer’s Halloween party, because she promised she’d help  set up.

Halloween is about little atmospheric touches, Summer said when  she texted her on Thursday. No one’s better at detail stuff than you,  Gracie Grace. You know you owe me. Pleaaassseee? She followed it up  with, With a pineapple on top? and a picture of her pouting in the pine

apple dress she bought as her costume. Ever since Summer met that  fruitarian on her trip to Bali in June, she’s been almost religiously into  fruit and swears she’d be a fruitarian, too, if the scientists of the world  would get their act together and create a fruit replacement for cheese.

She also has a spiritual relationship with Gouda.

Summer’s pouty face picture was overkill. Grace would have helped  her set up without any begging, because she’s always been the girl  willing to stream streamers or blow up balloons or do calligraphy  on envelopes. Feeling needed is a rush. Besides, after her fight with  Summer a few days ago, she’s been going above and beyond, even  measuring on a scale of one to Grace. She’s lucky Summer is even talking to her. Tonight has to go smoothly.

So she texted Summer back, saying, No biggie, I can be there a few  hours early, even though it was kind of a biggie because she had to call  out sick from her shift at the taco truck. Grace feels awful about lying  to her boss Sofia, but she’s deemed this lie a necessary evil. Though  she really, really hopes Sofia doesn’t bring get-well tacos to her house.  Her mom would murder her for ditching work.

Not to mention that Grace should be using tonight to work on her  A Separate Peace essay for AP Lit. Her teacher told her it might stand  a chance in some scholarship contest hosted by the College Board, and  Grace needs all the scholarship money she can get. College isn’t cheap.

Still, she and Summer have been friends since middle school. You  make sacrifices for long-term relationships.

A gust of wind glues a long strand of Grace’s brown hair to her  lip gloss. Shivering, she unpeels it, then hugs her arms around her  chest. Even in Los Angeles, the October air has enough bite that she  wishes she could have worn the polka-dotted tights she picked out to  go under her watermelon dress, but apparently, polka-dotted tights  aren’t sexy. And why be a whimsical fruit if you can be a sexy fruit?

While she waits for Summer to buzz her up to her fifth-floor pent house loft, Grace glares at the jack-o’-lantern that leers at her from  its stoop pedestal. Stop being such a perv, Jack, she thinks. My eyes are  up here, then automatically feels bad for being rude. In her head. To a pumpkin. She blames her dress, which hangs off one shoulder, for  being way shorter than is comfortable. It’s why she bought tights in  the first place. She’s pretty sure if she moves the wrong way, everyone  will see her butt, or at least the hot-pink underwear that Summer  sling-shotted at her from across her bedroom yesterday when Grace  mentioned her predicament.

“Match your panties and no one will notice,” Summer told her.  “I think they might.”

“Whatever.” Summer rolled her eyes when Grace tried to protest.  “If anyone posts photos of your ass online, I’ll hunt them down and  destroy them.”

Grace wasn’t sure if she meant the photos or the photographer. With  Summer, it could go either way. Summer shimmied so the feathery  headband atop her blond hair bobbed. “You like my pineapple top?”  “Gorg.”

And it really was. Unsurprising, because Summer makes any thing look fabulous. Her closet is packed with Prada and Gucci but  also with vintage finds from the secondhand shop, because . . . the  environment. One time she wore a boxy skirt from 1991 with the  buttons undone halfway up her thigh, and suddenly on TikTok, girls  modeled cute-again 90s items from thrift stores for the #Summer CartwrightChallenge. Her closet fan account reposted her pics with  comments like OMFGGGG this is everything! and True beauty inside  and out!! 

So if Summer has a fruitarian revelation and says Grace should be a  watermelon, she’ll be a freaking watermelon. Besides, she can’t afford  to piss Summer off again.

Just as Grace is beginning to think Summer isn’t home—her mem ory is famously short, which sometimes makes Grace feel like a walking  reminder app—Summer’s voice echoes tinny through the call box.

“Gracie! You said you’d be here at five.”

“Sorry! Traffic.”

For a moment, Grace thinks Summer might not let her in, then the  door buzzes. Relieved, Grace takes the elevator to the top floor. Summer meets her at the front door to her loft, barefoot and fastening her  earrings. In her yellow-and-gold dress, her tanned legs seem longer,  and her hair is pure sunshine. She looks much older than sixteen.

“The party is in less than two hours, and the decorations are . . .  ugh.”

Grace knows her job. When Summer fishes, Grace takes the bait.  “I’m sure they look amazing.”

“And I’ve posted so many reminders about this party on Insta gram, and I’m going live right at seven, and I look like a banana. I  can’t look like a banana in front of five million people, one, because  I’m supposed to be a pineapple, and two, aren’t bananas slutty?”

The word banana sounds weird to Grace. If she hears a word too  many times over, she either becomes certain that it isn’t actually a  word, or her brain overloads with fun facts about the word until she  goes on a Jeopardy!-level rant. For example, bananas are scientifically  considered berries, because their seeds are inside. Also, banana peels,  when applied daily, can cure warts.

“Bananas aren’t slutty, Sum, they’re fruit,” Grace says. “Anyway,  does it matter?”

“You don’t have five million people judging your every move. No  one cares what you do.”

Grace has less than a thousand followers on Instagram, most of  whom followed her after Summer tagged her in pictures, and she’s  logged onto TikTok exactly one time to see what the fuss is about. So  no, she doesn’t really care what people online think, because no one  online cares about her.

“Well, you look like a pineapple to me,” she says. Because Summer  has told her a thousand times she has to cut it with the fun facts, Grace  doesn’t tell her that pineapples can be used to tenderize meat.

When Summer motions for Grace to follow her from the foyer into  the living room, Grace’s jaw drops. The Cartwrights’ luxury loft is  always impressive with its cathedral ceilings and museum-quality art.  But wow. These decorations are not “ugh,” especially compared to  the Halloween dances Grace went to in her middle school gym, which  involved punch bowls shaped like skulls and orange streamers strewn  over the basketball hoops.

In the living room, floor-to-ceiling black fabric drapes over the  windows, and sheets cover the furniture. Someone’s managed to  hoist an actual Phantom-of-the-Opera-style chandelier above every thing. The DJ platform in the corner is the only reminder that it’s the  twenty-first century. The overall vibe is . . . Grace takes a moment to  consider. Sumptuously undead?

It is incongruous with Summer’s pineapple costume.  “Sum.” Grace widens her eyes. “Your place looks—”  “Like a funeral parlor? I know.”

“I was going to say like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.”  “I guess? The decorator thought we should go more refined, but  people are going to be too depressed to, like, dance or anything. And  this might be my last party, so it has to be perfect.”

Grace is confused. “What? Why do you say that?”

Summer shrugs. “You don’t think the decor is too much?”  “No.” Grace doesn’t miss that Summer ignored her question, and  she feels a moment of anxiety that she forces herself to swallow down.  Panicking won’t help her fix things with Summer. “You got black lights, right?”

“Yeah, and some colored ones.”

_{LIVE YOUR BEST LIE} 9

“Perfect. Lighting will make the room.” Grace perches on the edge  of a sheet-draped sofa. “Your family coming tonight?”  Summer flops beside her. “Julian and Miranda are in Dubai until  next Friday.”

“Business trip?”

“For my dad, yeah. He’s meeting with some sheikh about using  his land for that new movie he’s making next spring? She Falls Hard or something like that. Mom’s going for the spas.” She rolls her eyes  at the word spas, but who knows with Summer’s mom. She’s probably  sleeping in a salt cave for the duration of her trip.

“So you’re alone?” Grace asks.

“No. Harrison is staying here while my parents are gone.” Summer  narrows her eyes. “He’s coming to the party, too, if that’s what you’re  asking.”

Grace rolls her shoulders and takes a deep breath. She hasn’t seen  much of Summer’s brother this month, what with everything she’s  had going on, but for the past year Summer has been trying to set her  up with him. Grace wants to date him. She really does. Or maybe she  wants to want to date him.

Harrison, a film studies major at UCLA, has no problem shoving  a camera into Grace’s face when she’s doing things like eating cereal  first thing in the morning or brushing her teeth, because he thinks  unguarded moments are the most real. He and Summer argue about  that a lot, actually—whether or not what she does is reality. Harrison  says her page is too cultivated, too look-at-me-being-perfectly-flawed.  Summer says she’s putting her best foot forward. Grace refuses to be  the tiebreaker because she thinks both of them are dead wrong. Even  though she hasn’t always been able to keep her business offline, it  hasn’t stopped her from trying. With Harrison at the party, she doubts  she’ll be able to stay off camera.

Summer and Grace spend the next hour applying their makeup  (black seed-shaped freckles on pink cheeks for Grace, and glittery gold  eyelids and lips for Sum) and sipping smoothies, Summer’s current  obsession. Green for Summer, strawberry-banana for Grace. Then  while Grace sets up the blacklights and calls the DJ to make sure he  isn’t running late, Summer samples the food the caterer prepared.

“Oh my god, Gracie,” Summer says. “The lobster crostini are to  die for. Don’t forget to try some before they’re all gone. Laney’s coming, and I know how much she eats.”

Grace pins her cellphone between her shoulder and face to give  Summer a thumbs-up. The DJ needs driving directions. She also tries  to ignore Summer’s comment about Laney, who probably eats a very  normal amount.

Once the DJ arrives and starts the music, the loft buzzes with  potential energy—the kinetic will come later once the guests arrive— but Grace’s stomach burns like she chugged acid or, like, a gallon of  coffee. Maybe she should have eaten something when Sum offered  while they were doing their makeup. It probably wouldn’t have helped  though, because it’s butterflies that are making her feel sick. Adam is  coming tonight. Grace hasn’t seen him since he and Summer broke up  at school last week, and she’s not a hundred percent certain she can  keep it together around him all evening. Summer should have uninvited him. Secretly, though, Grace is glad she didn’t. Even though she  and Adam have been weird with each other for months, she still likes  knowing he’s there.

Five minutes before seven o’clock, Grace shuts off the main lights  and turns on the blacklights. Summer drops dry ice into the punch to  make it smoke. They both slide their feet into impossible heels.  They take simultaneous deep breaths.

Then the doorbell rings, and the party begins.

The_Summer_Cartwright 

#Bestie appreciation post!!!

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My best friend G is the actual best. For real, though, I know  you guys think your best friend is better than she is, and  I’m so happy for you. But you’re sadly deluded, because no  one is more loyal, more supportive, more awesome than  G. She’s the girl you call in a pinch, because she’s always  willing to do what needs to be done.

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You know how I went live last week from the back of that  ambulance because I had a cramp in my side and thought  I was dying? Turns out, I kind of was. I had #appendicitis!!  Literally, if I hadn’t gotten to the hospital when I did, I could  have died.

#tooyoung #toopretty #jkIswear  

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Anyway, I had promised you guys a tour of my renovated  bedroom, and G made it happen. That voice you heard  narrating when “I” went live? Obvs not mine. Haha! I just  didn’t want to let you down while I was slurping Jell-O in a  hospital bed. Drop a comment below to tell me what you  think of the new room!

#homedecor #renovating #interiordesign 

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So seriously, let’s all take a minute for gratitude. Everyone  say “Thank you, G!” I’ll wait. Good job. Anyway, I’m back  now, better than ever, ready to be with you, my other

besties, on the Gram.

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Love you muchly!! SumSum

About Jessie Weaver:

Before
writing about flawed, funny teens with big hearts, Jessie Weaver spent ten
years teaching them English. She completed the Stanford University online novel
writing program in 2019. Though she’s an East Coast girl at heart, originally
from Baltimore, MD, she currently lives just outside Denver, Colorado with her
husband and two daughters. Live Your Best Lie is her first novel.

Website |  Instagram | TikTok | Goodreads | Amazon

Giveaway Details:

1 winner will receive a finished copy of LIVE YOUR BEST LIE, US Only.

Ends February 14th, midnight EST.

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