Blog Tour (Review + Guest Post + Giveaway): Stitch by Samantha Durante

\

Click here for the complete blog tour schedule.

Stitch by Samantha Durante, paperback edition book cover

Stitch

by Samantha Durante

Series: Stitch #1
Genre: YA, new adult, dystopian, sci-fi, romance, paranormal
Editions available: Paperback, ebook, Kindle
Date published: August 1, 2012
Publisher: Samantha Durante
Source: author
Buy: Amazon * Barnes & Noble
* Indiebound * iTunes * Smashwords
Rating:

Summary (Goodreads):

Her heart races, her muscles coil, and every impulse in Alessa's body screams at her to run... but yet she's powerless to move.

Still struggling to find her footing after the sudden death of her parents, the last thing college freshman Alessa has the strength to deal with is the inexplicable visceral pull drawing her to a handsome ghostly presence. In between grappling with exams and sorority soirees - and disturbing recurring dreams of being captive in a futuristic prison hell - Alessa is determined to unravel the mystery of the apparition who leaves her breathless. But the terrifying secret she uncovers will find her groping desperately through her nightmares for answers.

Because what Alessa hasn't figured out yet is that she's not really a student, the object of her obsession is no ghost, and her sneaking suspicions that something sinister is lurking behind the walls of her university's idyllic campus are only just scratching the surface...

The opening installment in a twist-laden trilogy, Stitch spans the genres of paranormal romance and dystopian sci-fi to explore the challenges of a society in transition, where morality, vision, and pragmatism collide leaving the average citizen to suffer the results.

My Thoughts:

Can I first tell you how lucky I am to be part of this tour? This tour is hosted by the author herself, Samantha Durante. I've got an event invitation from Goodreads and I checked out the book before signing in. I saw that it has very nice feedback from the readers, the sypnosis is intriguing and it caught my interest. Man, they were right. Glad I signed up.

The book started with a mystery that made my heart pound. Already. I was instantly in love with it. The first chapter confuses me because it jumped to a world different from the prologue. I thought the author had got it wrong. But I kept reading, because I wanted to find out.

I was beginning to worry because the world from the prologue didn't came back. I'm like, Was I reading the wrong book? But that's impossible, of course. And then a revelation came up halfway through the book and I. Was. Not. Prepared. I was shocked, you could say that. And I almost screamed, Ohmygod. This is SO good! But really, it is.

Stitch took a big swerve and turned to be a book I wasn't expecting. The world and story building is just so good and it keeps me wanting more. Though there are few things that I didn't quite grew fond of. The third POV is fine but I hope it has less narration and more scenes/events/talking for the characters. I also want to learn more about the characters and their world.

Just like this book having several genres, it also offers you a lot of ingredients such as a feeling of thriller and mystery, amazing sci-fi world and sweet romance. I would definitely wanted to find out what will happen next on the second installment of the trilogy, Shudder. I feel like I will be getting more answers and more heart-stopping scenes from the promise it made on the ending of Stitch. 

Recommendations:

For everyone who likes dystopian-sci-fi-paranormal-romance read. You should really try this.

Book cover comment/s:

I think it was amazing. I loved the emphasis made to their green and blue eyes. I thought it would caught anyone's own eyes.

***

For the guest post, I asked author Samantha Durante if she can tell why she chose the Stitch's genre on her first book. And look at the irony, there are two of us bloggers who is scheduled for the tour stop today--and we have asked the same thing (genre) for the guest post. Samantha talks about why she chose dystopian here, while she discusses why she chose paranormal to Stephanie @ A Dream Within A Dream. Check it also out!

Why I Chose Dystopian by Samantha Durante, author of Stitch

Thanks so much to Michelle for hosting the Stitch Blog Tour today! I’m so excited to be here and to share a little about why I chose to write Stitch – my very first book – in the dystopian genre.

There are literally HUNDREDS of book genres to choose from, but when I started coming up

with ideas for Stitch, there were only two that I knew right away Stitch might fall into: paranormal romance and dystopian sci-fi. (And in fact, I wasn’t able to choose just one, so it’s actually a little bit of both!)

Dystopian stories have been incredibly popular lately, particularly in the young adult market (see: Hunger Games, Divergent, Pandemonium, etc.). And though I didn’t realize it until I discovered all these new dystopian series recently, I’ve always been drawn to dystopian settings – The Giver, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 were some of my favorite books as a kid. So this begs the question of what exactly it is about dystopian books that’s got me and all these other readers so excited.

And after giving it some thought, I think it comes down to a few factors: uncertainty, morality, and hope.

1. Uncertainty. We’ve all seen the news reports the past couple years – between the economy, the environment, and the unending global violence, it’s pretty obvious: our world is on a downward spiral. At least, it certainly feels like that sometimes. And when you look into the future and it’s all of a sudden unclear where things are going, it gets you thinking: what if things actually got worse? Like, much worse? What would it be like? Am I prepared? Could I survive?

2. Morality. So the media has got us down on ourselves and wondering if our civilization can

even make it, and as soon as you open that can of worms, all kind of difficult questions present themselves. What would I do to survive? With limited resources, how do you decide who gets to survive? Who makes that decision? What happens if I don’t like the answers to these questions? How could I do things differently? But am I any more qualified to come up with answers than the next guy? We all know what’s right and wrong in the normal day-to-day but what happens when the world gets turned on its head? Do the rules change?

3. Hope. And I think this is really the crux of the whole dystopian genre – when the world ends, and everything is terrible, and you’re forced to do things you don’t even want to think about just to keep on living, what do you have left? Hope. Only hope.

I think this is a fundamental feature of human beings – that inner optimism, the ability to remind ourselves that there’s something out there worth living for even when our world crumbles beyond our wildest nightmares. So we start thinking about how we can solve the problem – how would I structure our society to make something better? What could I change that would create a better outcome? After all, every dystopia is just a failed utopia – someone’s unsuccessful attempt at making the world a better place. So dystopian books force us to ask ourselves what we would have done differently, and thereby tap into that inner well of hopefulness, that unbreakable conviction that somewhere there is a right answer, even if we haven’t figured it out yet.

For me, dystopian books are all about the “What If,” and that’s a game I love to play. So with the Stitch trilogy, we’ll get to play “What If” through (the protagonist) Alessa’s eyes – to see how she answers these questions, how far she’s willing to go, and what factors will push her to bend her own rules. And as we watch Alessa struggle to find her place in a transitioning society, we get to ask ourselves: what would I do?

***

About the Author:

Samantha Durante lives in New York City with her husband, Sudeep, and her cat, Gio. Formerly an engineer at Microsoft, Samantha left the world of software in 2010 to pursue her entrepreneurial dreams and a lifelong love of writing. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology, Samantha is currently working full time for her company Medley Media Associates as a freelance business writer and communications consultant. Stitch is her first novel. Learn more about Samantha at www.samanthadurante.com.

Social Media Links:

Facebook:

Stitch - http://www.facebook.com/stitchtrilogy

Author Samantha Durante - http://www.facebook.com/authorsamanthadurante

Goodreads:

Stitch - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15779886-stitch

Author Samantha Durante  - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6453465.Samantha_Durante

LibraryThing:

Stitch - http://www.librarything.com/work/12870151/book/88297636

Author Samantha Durante - http://www.librarything.com/author/durantesamantha

Shelfari:

Stitch – http://www.shelfari.com/books/30363286/Stitch-(Stitch-Trilogy-Book-1)

Author Samantha Durante - http://www.shelfari.com/authors/a1002689147/Samantha-Durante/

GIVEAWAY!
-open internationally (!)

- 1 winner will receive ebook copy of Stitch (winner's choice of format)
- ends December 2nd

a Rafflecopter giveaway