Tag: Cinderella Boy by Kristina Meister

In The Contemporary Fiction Spotlight : Cinderella Boy by Kristina Meister (Exclusive Excerpt and Fabulous Giveaway)

Cinderella Boy by Kristina Meister

Riptide Publishing

Cover Art: Shayne Leighton

Sales Links:  Riptide Publishing | Amazon

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host Kristina Meister here today on tour with her new release, Cinderella Boy.  She’s brought an exclusive excerpt and an outstanding  giveaway for all to enter.  Make sure to leave your email address where you can be reached if chosen along with a comment.

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About Cinderella Boy

 

Being perfect isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

 

Sixteen-year-old Declan is the perfect son . . . except for one tiny issue. When his sister Delia comes home to find him trying on her clothes, he fears her judgment, but she only fears his fashion choices. One quick makeover later, Declan is transformed into Delia’s mysterious cousin Layla and dragged to the party of the year, hosted by Carter, the most popular boy in school.

 

When Carter meets Layla, he fumbles to charm her. He adores her sense of humor and her poise. But when she vanishes in the middle of the night, he’s left confused and determined to solve the mystery of who she is.

 

As their school year begins, their high school embraces a policy of intolerance, and both Declan and Carter know they must stand up. Carter is tired of being a coward and wants to prove he can be a knight in shining armor. Declan is sick of being bullied and wants desperately to be himself. If they team up, it could be a fairy-tale ending, or a very unhappy ever after.

Exclusive Excerpt

 

“He wants to know if he freaked you out,” Delia said, looking at her phone.

The den was warm despite the air-conditioning. They languished over the huge sectional like a couple of marooned polar bears. Declan watched the blades of the ceiling fan circle, his smooth legs stretched out over her lap. She had lent him one of her tank tops and a pair of denim shorts so that he would feel comfortable during his mental breakdown.

“Gee, I don’t know. Is it customary for your first kiss to make you feel simultaneously amazing and like the shittiest person on earth?”

“So . . . I’ll tell him it’s not him, it’s you?”

Declan covered his face with a pillow. “I can’t go out with him on a date. Number one, it’s wrong. Number two, we don’t have enough prop versatility.”

Dee threw his legs off and slid over so that they were wedged side by side. She had her eBay app open and was scrolling through several listings for his benefit.

“I can have these overnighted,” she whispered in his ear.

“You’re totally instigating.” But the thought stuck, and unconsciously, he began picking through the search. “Wow, they’re really reasonably priced.”

She giggled softly. “I’m so buying them. Call them an early birthday present. It’s the perfect time, because we won’t have to worry about Mom taking the delivery.”

He managed a smile, and then her phone beeped and the message from Carter scrolled across the top of the screen.

“I’m not some horny goof-off. Please don’t Friend-zone me for a thank-you kiss.”

They shared a glance.

“He’s not, you know. He’s extremely focused. He’s in the running for valedictorian. He’s class president. He’s on the swim and track team. And, just in case you were wondering, he’s a really good—”

“No! Do not finish that sentence.”

“We didn’t have sex.”

He gasped. “You dated for two years!”

She shrugged. “Didn’t say we didn’t fool around.”

“Gaaahhh!”

Delia brought up the keyboard. She. Got. The. Message. Calm. The. Eff. Down.

Seconds later, Carter’s reply arrived, laden with exclamation marks and a squinty face. Declan read it and smothered himself with the pillow.

“I ran away because I had second thoughts about dragging him into my life.”

“He says he’s texted your phone like fifty times and he’s sorry if he’s coming off like a stalker, but he got a feeling about you. Ohhh! A feeling. Those are so complicated with him.”

“Gah!”

“There’s really only one way to solve this problem.”

Peeking out, Declan eyed her suspiciously. “What’s that?”

“Carter’s mom only lets him throw these parties because he works his ass off to keep her house in one piece.”

“Okay.”

“Usually, I go over and help. Then the maid service comes in the afternoon.”

“Uh-huh.”

She made a face. “Let me work my magic on you.” She tackled him as he pulled the pillow back over his head, and unmasked him. “Let me dress you casually. We’ll see what he thinks of you in full sunlight, and if he still shows interest, we deal with it. If he thinks better of his new obsession, then there’s no sitch.”

Declan screwed up his face in metaphysical anguish, but he knew he couldn’t say no.

About Kristina Meister

 

Kristina Meister is an author of fiction that blurs genre. There’s usually some myth, some mayhem, and some monsters. While Kristina’s unique voice and creative swearing give life to dialogue, her obsession with folklore and pop culture make for humor and complexity.

 

She and her mad-scientist husband live in California with their poodles Khan and Lana, and their daughter Kira Stormageddon, where they hoard Nerf toys, books, and swords—in case of zombie apocalypse.

 

Connect with Kristina:

 

To celebrate the release of Cinderella Boy, Kristina is giving away a canvas swag bag (with cover art) that  includes a t-shirt, an engraved pen, and a tiara! (Yes, really!) Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on July 7, 2018. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

A Caryn Review: Cinderella Boy by Kristina Meister

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

I have been actively looking for books with non-binary characters, and so was very excited to read about a gender fluid person, especially one in high school, because I wanted to see their journey through that very difficult time of life.  And when I read the first chapter, I was thinking this was going to be a great book.  Unfortunately, it went downhill from there.

The book jumped right in to introducing Declan as gender fluid – his sister found him putting on her dress and shoes when he thought she was out for the evening.  He braced himself for ridicule and misery, and was thrilled when instead she was instantly supportive and worked with him to create Layla – his beautiful, confident, female alter ego.  They went to a party where Layla met Carter, the most popular guy in school, whom Declan had had a crush on for years.  Carter was smitten with Layla, and instantly started pursuing her.  Layla agreed to a few dates because she just couldn’t resist, but underneath Declan was trying to keep things casual because he didn’t like the lie, and didn’t want to hurt Carter, and his plan was to have some fun before Layla disappeared and the school year started.  The dates turned into anything but casual, and though physically they were somewhat restrained, conversation was always deep and meaningful (and much more mature than I would realistically expect a 16 and 18 year old to be).

At this point I started having my first niggles about the book.  Layla and Carter discussed the nature of love, in the context of Carter’s father having cheated on his mother for years before they divorced, and his mother still having trouble letting go.  Layla commented:

Because that’s the nature of the thing:  to care so much that it doesn’t matter if they ever reciprocate.  If you really feel that way, you can’t hurt them.  You just can’t.  And when they hurt you, you forget it right away.

Hmmm….  sounds like true love requires you to be a doormat, and to me very reminiscent of how battered women justify staying with abusive men.  There was more along that line, and I was getting pretty uncomfortable with it.  They discussed lying in relationships, Layla admitted that she was lying about something but wouldn’t admit what it was.  Carter insisted that he would accept any secret, even if Layla had killed someone – as long as there was a reason.  Yikes!

Layla disappeared right before school started, a little over a third of the way into the book.  After she had schooled all of Carter’s friends on how to treat women right, and demonstrated her superior skillz with her professional paintball rifle.  Oh, and after she and Carter declared their love to each other.  Declan showed up at school and made a splash from the start.  He had been going to a private school where he was bullied and beaten on a regular basis, and his defense had always been to strive for anonymity and inconspicuousness. At the new school, Carter and Declan’s sister Delia turned him into a sort of mascot for the non-popular crowd, and suddenly Declan was popular with everyone, with no bullying in sight.  And he managed to beat up the quarterback of his school’s major rival – which made me wonder why he was beaten up so regularly before when now he could kick the ass of guys twice his size – so everyone loved him.  Snap, bullying over, nothing to it.  The rest of the book involved Carter, Declan, and Delia standing up to the principal’s homophobia and bigotry, and concludes at the homecoming dance which Carter attends with Declan, both openly in love with each other.

By the last third of the book, I was sitting back and finding fault with everything.  Carter and Declan both waffled between uber-confident and meek and doubtful, to the point that they no longer seemed like separate characters.  There was a lot of pointless psychobabble on the nature of love, relationships, truth-telling, labels, bigotry, bullying, etc. with overly simplistic resolution of all their problems.  The dialogue was frequently ridiculous – even adults don’t talk that way, much less teenagers.  There were weird descriptions and misspelled words:  “The pack of dissenters had congealed beside the wheelchair ramp in their purposefully drab color pallet”.  (I hope she meant palette, and how did the pack congeal?).  Another good one – “her warm appearance belied a voice like an ordained opera singer that could strip flesh off the unabashed.”  WTF does that even mean?

In the end, I didn’t even care that Declan a champion of gender non-conforming people, or that Carter was the perfect man for whom gender didn’t even matter when it came to love.  There was so much potential for these characters, and I was so disappointed that the terrible writing ruined it all for me.

Cover art by Shayne Leighton is interesting, the model was androgynous in a way that I saw Declan

Sales Links:  Riptide Publishing | Amazon

Book Details:

ebook, 335 pages
Expected publication: July 2nd 2018 by Triton Books (an imprint of Riptide Publishing) (first published February 5th 2017)
Original TitleCinderella Boy
ISBN 1626497982 (ISBN13: 9781626497986)
Edition LanguageEnglish