Happy Monday, everyone! After a much-needed break last week to help clear my head, Pop! Goes The Reader is back to its regularly-scheduled blog posts and I can think of no better way to start things off than with an exciting, exclusive cover reveal! Today, I have the immense pleasure of hosting the exclusive cover reveal for literary agent and author, Rebecca Podos, and her sophomore YA release, Like Water! Coming to a bookstore and library near you October 17th, 2017 from Balzer + Bray, Like Water tells the story of Savannah “Vanni” Espinoza, a lost, unsure girl performing as a mermaid in a small town while caring for her ailing father who eventually meets Leigh, a girl who changes her life and makes her question everything she once thought true. The cover of Like Water was illustrated by Xaviera López and was designed by Sarah Kaufman. Please read on to learn more about this captivating 2017 contemporary release, including an exclusive cover reveal and a personal note from the author about the novel’s origins and inspiration, as well as an opportunity for two lucky readers to win advance reader copies of Rebecca Podos’ sophomore release.
Like Water used to be a very different book.
In its previous incarnation, it was…strange. It was set after the Aflockalypse of 2011, that fleeting moment when people kept obsessive watch as flocks of birds dropped from the sky onto front lawns across the U.S. Vanni’s parents were an avian physiologist and an ornithologist, her father the author of texts like “The Definitive Monograph on the Birds of Paradise of Papua New Guinea,” and the bulk of the novel took place on her uncle’s ostrich farm. It was a weird little world where all the flighted birds had fallen and died off, and impractical earthbound birds were suddenly precious.
This was not a good book. Maybe it could’ve been okay, but I just could never answer the big “Who cares?” Who cared that the price of turkey had skyrocketed? Who cared that Vanni’s favorite ostrich had feather mites? I couldn’t even care.
So after months of writing and rethinking and flopping, I sat down, took the novel and cut out its heart, the one thing I truly cared about, and that was the relationship between Vanni and Leigh. It was Vanni’s disillusionment and Leigh’s secrets and the pain that brought them together. And it was Vanni’s awe in her newfound bisexuality, in her first real love, and in the possibility of a bigger life.
Vanni and Leigh are all that survived that first draft (it was called The Laying Season, folks!) and the rest of their world, the crappy c-list water parks and puerco pibil and amateur fireworks, was built around them. I hope that readers will like this world, and find a lot to care about in Vanni, who was beautifully captured by Xaviera on this book cover. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it, because I looked at it and thought “Yep, there it is. There’s the heart.”
About Rebecca Podos
Rebecca Podos is the author of The Mystery Of Hollow Places. By day, she works as an MG and YA agent at the Rees Literary in Boston, where she fangirls relentlessly over each and every author she represents.
Title Like Water
Author Rebecca Podos
Pages 304 Pages
Intended Target Audience Young Adult
To Be Published October 17th, 2017 by Balzer + Bray
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon.com ● Chapters ● The Book Depository
In Savannah Espinoza’s small New Mexico hometown, kids either flee after graduation or they’re trapped there forever. Vanni never planned to get stuck — but that was before her father was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, leaving her and her mother to care for him. Now she doesn’t have much of a plan at all: living at home, working as a performing mermaid at a second-rate water park, distracting herself with one boy after another.
That changes the day she meets Leigh. Disillusioned with small-town life and looking for something greater, Leigh is not a “nice girl.” She is unlike anyone Vanni has met, and a friend when Vanni desperately needs one. Soon enough, Leigh is much more than a friend. But caring about another person threatens the walls Vanni has carefully constructed to protect herself, and brings up the big questions she’s hidden from for so long.
As an extra, exciting bonus, Rebecca has been kind enough to offer two lucky readers the opportunity to win advance reader copies of Like Water! This contest is open to residents of the U.S. and Canada and the prize will be distributed once advance reader copies become available. Please fill out the Rafflecopter form below to enter!
One Response
I love this cover so much!!!!
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