Excerpt Tour & #Giveaway for Lauren Sabel's Lies I Live By

Welcome to my stop on the Excerpt Tour, presented by Goddess Fish Promotions, for Lauren Sabel's Lies I Live By.  Please leave a comment or question for Lauren to let her know you stopped by. You may enter her tour wide giveaway, where one (1) randomly chosen commenter will be awarded a $50 Amazon/BN GC, by filling out the Rafflecopter form below.  You may follow all of the stops on her tour by clicking on the banner above, the more stops you visit, the better your odds of winning.  Good Luck!

Lies I Live By

By Lauren Sabel

Publisher:  Katherine Tegen Books

Release Date: May 31, 2016

Genre: Young Adult Thriller

Format: eBook/Print

Length: 432 Pages

ISBN: 978-0062231987

ASIN: B0151UEAT0

Buy Links: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Indiebound | iTunes

About the book: 

These are the facts: My name is Callie Sinclair. I am seventeen years old. I live in San Francisco. I love my boyfriend, Charlie. I work for a secret governmental agency. I am a psychic spy. This romantic, action-packed twist on the classic spy novel is perfect for fans of Ally Carter’s Embassy Row series or for any reader who enjoys cinematic writing and stories of romance and intrigue.

At seventeen, Callie is the government’s youngest psychic spy, trained to track dangerous people and weapons in her visions. When another young—and handsome and witty—psychic joins the agency, Callie’s personal and professional lives get messy all at once. If she can’t find a way to change the events she’s seen in her visions, she could lose the people she loves most . . . and her mind. Literally.

Richly painted against the backdrop of San Francisco and Berkeley, Lauren Sabel’s enthralling novel captures the thrill of exploring a unique power in a dangerous world.

Exclusive Excerpt

“The food will be here in forty-five minutes,” Mom says. “Call me when dinner arrives.” She bounds up the stairs, checking her phone as she goes, and I sink back down on the couch and cross my legs. Charlie does the same, and I feel relieved to feel his knees pressing against mine.

“What do you want to do?” he asks. “We’ve got half an hour.”

“Let’s go to the Panhandle,” I say. “I don’t want to miss the sunset.”

Charlie and I have a tradition: we watch the sunset together several times a week. Even if we can only meet for fifteen minutes, we watch it lower its big blinking eye over the ocean. We watch night come rolling in, making us invisible to everyone but each other.

The Panhandle is that block-wide stretch of land leading up to Golden Gate Park, and eventually, Ocean Beach and the cold, growling Pacific. It isn’t wide enough for anyone to do anything with it, which is why we like it. Its uselessness, mixed with its stubborn insistence to exist, is heartwarming. And it’s just at the end of the block.

When we get there, the sun is fainting on the horizon, painting the park and the houses that line it a creamy orange. As the sunlight rolls in over the hills, consuming houses in its steady push inland, it reminds me of the red smoke from my session with Indigo, and I shiver at the thought of the Russian laser somewhere out at sea, maybe headed for our shores.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Lauren Sabel lives in the quirky dark spaces of her mind, and she tries to shed light on these spaces in her books. After publishing VIVIAN DIVINE IS DEAD in Summer 2014 with Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of Harper Collins, she confronted her lifelong fear of being psychic by writing LIES I LIVE BY. Since in this YA thriller, teenage psychic spy Callie Sinclair works undercover for the government, forced to hide her real identity from everyone she loves, Lauren is now certain she’s on the CIA watch list.

Social Networks:

Website: www.laurensabel.com

Blog: http://laurensabel.tumblr.com

Twitter: @laurensabel

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/author.laurensabel/?ref=hl

Instagram: laurensabel

A young adult thriller with paranormal elements, Lauren Sabel’s Lies I Live By combines psychic abilities, a teenage love triangle, astral projection and a light touch of humor.  Raising the question of who we are and who we can really trust, Ms. Sabel reminds us that becoming an adult is not always an easy, or painless, journey.  If you like young adult books and spy novels – you’re going to want to add this to your library.

A seventeen year old on the verge of graduating from high school, Callie Sinclair is not your normal teenager, she has a pretty big secret.  The newest, and youngest, recruit for a secret government program, Callie has psychic abilities which allow her to see electromagnetic radiation and catch the occasional glimpse of the future.  Lying to her single mother and boyfriend, Callie spends her afternoons practicing astral projection as she tries to keep the country safe from potential enemies.  I really liked Callie’s character; she’s smart, brave and hates having to lie to everyone she knows.  She’s also a teenager who questions who she is, what she wants to become and if she can really trust the people she knows.  Ms. Sabel does a good job developing her character and I enjoyed watching Callie grow and mature throughout the story.

The secondary characters are well developed and I really enjoyed getting to know her mom, her “boss” and recruiter, Indigo, at the government agency, her boyfriend Charlie, who wants them both to go to the same college on the East Coast, and Jasper, a government psychic brought in from New York to work with Callie.  Ms. Sabel used all of the secondary characters to give Callie’s character more depth, introduce a romantic element into the story and add emotional angst. They also introduced a light touch of humor and fun into Callie’s life. 

The thriller portion of the story is well developed and I enjoyed reading about how Callie used her abilities to “spy” on dangerous enemies.  Especially with the type of talent she had.  The story’s pace is a little uneven – the story starts out very slowly, but I enjoyed Ms. Sabel’s voice as an author.  Overall I thought Ms. Sabel did a good job balancing all of the elements in her story.

Will Callie continue working for the government after she graduates high school?  Or will she choose to go to college on the East Coast?  And will she have to make a choice between Charlie and Jasper?  You’ll have to read Lies I Live By to find out, I enjoyed it and look forward to reading more of Ms. Sabel’s work.   

My Rating:  3.5 out of 5 Crowns

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