Let the Blog Tour Begin!

It was a simple email, from a friend of a friend, asking if I had any interest in reading her sister’s soon to be published book and participating in a blog tour promotion. I could not respond fast enough. Of course I wanted to read something new! Plus, this was like a brush with celebrity of sorts for a bibliophile like me. This was like getting asked to sit with the cool kids at lunch in middle school, only much cooler.

Here it is...The Unraveling of Mercy Louis, by Keija Parssinen.

I had never really done anything like this before, and my enthusiasm was quickly threatened by panic. “What if I read it and don’t know what to say?” I semi-patiently awaited my copy. The day the package arrived, I was giddy ripping it open. The night I read the prologue, I realized that any concerns I had about not knowing what to say, were not warranted as I was immediately a fan. The only reason I put the book on my night stand at 10:30 p.m. was that I knew, after meeting the teenager Mercy Louis, that I was not going to sleep much at all if I read any further. I would have been swallowed whole into the early hours of morning by the pages. Suffice to say, I devoured the book over the course of that weekend. I cannot remember the last time I devoted an entire day to reading. The story just felt so important, and I had become so vested in the characters that I had to know their fates.

The words are perfectly chosen to put you in the scene - to feel the heat of the summer in Texas and the desperation brought with it. The town seems to be unraveling over a local news story, girls are unraveling both within themselves and their relationships, and the truth starts to unravel as well bringing some people closer together and some further apart. Mercy is dreading summer because it will take her away from her passion - basketball. The reasons for Mercy needing an escape are spelled out very clearly, and despite the uniqueness of her character and situation, she is still so easy to relate to from our own teen memories of angst on one level or another. I was cheering so fiercely for her! She tries so hard to keep herself together to be strong for others, to absorb their shocks. Lines like this, speaking about one of her friends, just grabbed me: “I vacuum up her words from where they hang unclaimed in the air; I perch them in the shadowed space where I keep her other confessions, a line of grackles on a bare branch by my heart.”

As Mercy and her friends struggle to find some sort of ordinary in their lives, there are lighthearted moments that offer rays of hope. The dialogue in these passages made the characters even more real and likeable. One of my favorites was a line one of Mercy’s friends states after she meets his mother: “I’m glad you got to meet her, even if it means I can now hold what remains of my dignity in a commemorative shot glass.”

This book brought me into a world I was not necessarily familiar with, especially as far as Mercy’s evangelical grandmother was concerned, but so much of the story was easy to relate to just the same. I was thrilled to be along on the journey. I don’t want to give anything away, so I am going to stop here, and hope you will check this one out for yourselves when it is released on March 10th. 

Wait! I do want to give something away...how about a copy of this book - The Unraveling of Mercy Louis! Just leave a comment telling me what book you are currently reading and I will enter you in my very technologically advanced drawing! (meaning I am either going to empty the candy dish or have the dog sniff out the winner).

In the meantime, you can check out Keija Parssinen’s first novel, The Ruins of Us.

Tomorrow, the Unraveling Mercy Louis Blog Tour stops in at Good Girl Gone Redneck and Nicole Leigh Shaw.

I received an advance copy of this book so that I could read it in order to offer an honest review. This review is truly my unbiased opinion.