We're celebrating the release of CRY BABY by Ginger Scott! One-Click today!
“Cry Baby is brilliantly written. It's hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking and will leave you thinking about it for days afterward. Bravo, Ms. Scott. This boy-man stole my heart and I don't want it back.”- L.J. Shen, Bestselling Author
Blurb
Tristan Lopez is loyal to his brothers. He doesn’t really have a choice, born into a gang that has a chokehold on every kid that roams its streets. He gave his life to them willingly, knowing if he did then one day this kingdom, led by boys drunk with power and ruled by fear, would all be his.
He was loyal through it all. Loyal when prison took his dad away. Loyal when his face was touched by the cold metal of the rival gang’s gun. Loyal even though his mom begged him to run the moment she returned home from rehab.
He thought about becoming someone else. It was hard not to crave the life of a regular 17-year-old. It’s the only reason he stayed in school—to pretend. But he always fell back in line.
Loyal.
Riley Rojas didn’t belong in Tristan’s real world. She should have only been part of the fantasy, one of the many faces he got to pretend with amidst rows of metal chairs and desks and whiteboards with assignments. But there she was, moving boxes from the back of an old pick-up into a house Tristan had shot up on a dare with his friends only a few months before.
Tall enough to look him in the eyes and strong enough to fill his shadow, Riley took up space on his streets, her loud mouth fearless in the face of the gang leaders who terrified everyone else. She pushed Tristan around on the hard court, and she balled better than his friends—better than him
sometimes. She challenged him. She needed him. He liked it. And when her pale blue eyes stared into his, he quit wanting to pretend.
He couldn’t ask her to leave because she’d only dig her heels in deeper. He couldn’t ask because he didn’t want her to go. She was blurring his lines. She was testing his loyalty.
He was falling in love.
And it was going to tear him apart.
Review
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When it comes to writing raw, gritty stories, Ginger Scott does it so well. I barely have to read the blurb to know that I'll read her latest no matter what. With Cry Baby, she moves me out of my comfort zone - my quiet, suburban neighbourhood - and transplants me in one that frankly scares the hell out of me. A world where violence is commonplace and lives are automatically tainted by it. Where a smart, sweet kid like Tristan grows up connected to a gang and does just enough to stay under the radar to survive. School, as much as he tries to be indifferent about it, is his saving grace by giving him a sense of normalcy. But he doesn't know what to do with an adult's kindness or belief that he is smart enough to have a future beyond the life he knows. Then a ballsy, beautiful girl moves in down the street and things start to change. Riley's not fearful of her rough new neighbourhood or of the people who live there. That outspoken makes her stand out and maybe that's not such a good thing for her if she wants to stay safe and out of trouble in this area. She wants to be his friend, play ball and be included but he'll have none of that for her sake. He can't drag her into his world even by casual association. But Riley is tough as nails and won't give up on him so how can he resist the pull of someone who believes in him wholeheartedly?
This is a bleak story for the most part simply because of the world it's set in. But Riley who's like a freak storm coming in with ideas, challenges the status quo whether it's at school or on the basketball courts, and makes things happen. Her storyline gives the plot a forward momentum. When she and Tristan face off it's like there's a split screen in front of you; that if he just takes her hand and steps to the other side he could be a happier person able to dream for himself. Obviously it's not as easy as that but I needed to cling to that hope for him. And if there's one thing I love about Ginger Scott is that she writes about strong females who face their fair share of adversity in some form or another. Riley is her own playmaker, a master of her own life and doesn't succumb to self pity. I felt like I could she her demolishing every wall Tristan put up and it's fun to have these two polar opposite personalities have such friction between them. The suckerpuch comes when you realize how far reaching the destruction at the hands of the gang can be.
Ginger Scott is a an autobuy and autoread for me. Unafraid of tackling issues, Cry Baby is proof that she knows how to write about kids facing impossible odds, who are ultimately fighters and creators of their own destiny.
~ Bel
Source: advance e-galley provided in exchange for an honest review
Ginger Scott is an Amazon-bestselling and Goodreads Choice Award-nominated author of several young and new adult romances, including Waiting on the Sidelines, Going Long, Blindness, How We Deal With Gravity, This Is Falling, You and Everything After, The Girl I Was Before, Wild Reckless, Wicked Restless, In Your Dreams, The Hard Count, Hold My Breath, A Boy Like You and A Girl Like Me.
A sucker for a good romance, Ginger’s other passion is sports, and she often blends the two in her stories. (She’s also a sucker for a hot quarterback, catcher, pitcher, point guard…the list goes on.) Ginger has been writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and blogs for more than 15 years. She has told the stories of Olympians, politicians, actors, scientists, cowboys, criminals and towns. For more on her and her work, visit her website at http://www.littlemisswrite.com.
When she's not writing, the odds are high that she's somewhere near a baseball diamond, either watching her son field pop flies like Bryce Harper or cheering on her favorite baseball team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. Ginger lives in Arizona and is married to her college sweetheart whom she met at ASU (fork 'em, Devils).
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