BOOK: Autumn Rising by Seth King

In some ways Autumn Rising by Seth King feels like an authors apology for breaking our hearts. In this novella you'll find the exploration of two minor characters from the book The Summer Remains. Autumn and Hank are mourning the loss of a dear friend and they find that doing so together is much better than grieving separately.

While The Summer Remains was told in the thoughtful perspective of Summer Johnson, Autumn Rising is told in the more colorful perspective of Autumn Mahal. Autumn was Summer's best friend and in many ways they were opposites. Summer was pensive, reserved, calm, caring and thoughtful and Autumn is talkative, opinionated, self-obsessed, loud, vibrant and at times laugh out loud funny with a hint of self deprecating humor. Simply put... Autumn Mahal is a hand full! However, they shared one very important truth. They both knew the fear and pain of fighting for their life when their bodies had betrayed them. Summer was born with a rare condition, while Autumn finds herself in remission from an aggressive bout of cancer. They were best friend until Summer lost her fight.

Now, what about Hank?

Hank knew both Summer and Autumn from the anti-support group Summer had formed for people with disabilities, illnesses and those who just didn't fit in. They would gather together and share with one another how unfair the world could be. Hank like Summer, Autumn and the other attendees had scars. As a veteran of war, he had lost his arm overseas but his biggest scars were emotional ones. Summer's anti-support group, primarily Summer herself, brought Hank hope and light during some of his darkest days following his return home.

So enough background, why should you read this book?

You should read this book because Autumn Rising is about two characters so unalike in almost every way possible except one -- they need each other! Autumn is Hank's kaleidoscope, while Hank grounds the sometimes outrages Autumn. More importantly they love each other in that "I can't explain why, but my world would be nothing without you" kind of way. Unlike the whirlwind of Summer and Cooper's love story, Autumn and Hank's relationship is splendidly average. They awkwardly flirt, they date, they move in together, and before they know it they are in the comfort zone. (You know "the comfort zone"... that point in a relationship when she gives up on wearing makeup most of the time, except for special occasions and trips to the grocery store, while he pretends not to know the difference. And, he walks around the house in just his boxers most of the time because she's now so special and important to him that pants are too formal for their everyday interactions. Yeah, that place!)

There is only one thing that could ruin this relationship... fear. Fear is an enemy of love. Fear can convinces you that you deserve less, that you're worthless and unlovable. Fear can make you do irrational, hurtful and manipulative things. It can make you hide when you know you've done wrong and make you settle for less than you deserve. Autumn Mahal is living in fear. Will her cancer return? Will she run from what's good for her? Will the past repeat itself? Will she ever quit her miserable day job to pursue her passion? Will Hank come to his senses, realize he doesn't love her and leave her? Will she ever get over Summer's death? These are just a few of the thoughts running through Autumn's mind as she attempts to hold on to the best thing in her life -- Hank Basara.

Autumn Rising is the story of how love overcame fear!

Some Favorite Quotes:

"She suffered from a condition Autumn liked to call Kanye Face, wherein someone looked so smug and obnoxious all the time, you got the urge to punch them in the face even when they weren't saying anything." 

"And just like that, he unlocked her like a passcode." 

"I'm all dark, and you're a kaleidoscope." 

"You get cancer forever, it's the rest of the world that thinks you're cured. And the fear never really went away -- it picked and prodded at you until sometimes, on your coldest nights, you wondered if there would be anything at all left to take away if it did return." 

"But they had absolutely one thing in common: they were getting lost in each other. He brought her down, and she brought him up. They met in the middle, and that middle became their own little heaven." 

"Because life breaks your heart. That is how this place works. What you must do is find someone who will fall into bed next to you every night and stare at you with burning eyes and put you back together again." 

"When you find someone who understands your pain, who looks into your eyes and sees what you are feeling, you don't have to say anything. They know." 

"People are like fireworks: blink, and they're gone. And you will never be able to hug them again."

Have you read this book or will you? Leave your thoughts on Autumn Rising in the comment section below!

BONUS: Autumn Rising Soundtrack here! 

Books On My To-Read List #2 - Teary Eyed Love Stories

Looking for your next great read? Here is a list of a few book I have my eye on...


If I Stay by Gayle Forman

In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly beautiful, this will change the way you look at life, love, and family.

You Before Me by Jojo Moyes

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. 

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

A Thousand Boy Kisses by Tillie Cole

One kiss lasts a moment.But a thousand kisses can last a lifetime.One boy. One girl. A bond that is forged in an instant and cherished for a decade. A bond that neither time nor distance can break. A bond that will last forever. Or so they believe.

When seventeen-year-old Rune Kristiansen returns from his native Norway to the sleepy town of Blossom Grove, Georgia, where he befriended Poppy Litchfield as a child, he has just one thing on his mind. Why did the girl who was one half of his soul, who promised to wait faithfully for his return, cut him off without a word of explanation?

Rune’s heart was broken two years ago when Poppy fell silent. When he discovers the truth, he finds that the greatest heartache is yet to come.

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him. 

Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.

When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.

This is an intense, gripping novel perfect for fans of Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, John Green, Gayle Forman, and Jenny Downham from a talented new voice in YA, Jennifer Niven.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Two misfits.

One extraordinary love.

Eleanor... Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough...Eleanor.

Park... He knows she'll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises...Park.

Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

Seventeen-year-old Lennie Walker, bookworm and band geek, plays second clarinet and spends her time tucked safely and happily in the shadow of her fiery older sister, Bailey. But when Bailey dies abruptly, Lennie is catapulted to center stage of her own life - and, despite her nonexistent history with boys, suddenly finds herself struggling to balance two. Toby was Bailey's boyfriend; his grief mirrors Lennie's own. Joe is the new boy in town, a transplant from Paris whose nearly magical grin is matched only by his musical talent. For Lennie, they're the sun and the moon; one boy takes her out of her sorrow, the other comforts her in it. But just like their celestial counterparts, they can't collide without the whole wide world exploding.

This remarkable debut is perfect for fans of Sarah Dessen, Deb Caletti, and Francesca Lia Block. Just as much a celebration of love as it is a portrait of loss, Lennie's struggle to sort her own melody out of the noise around her is always honest, often hilarious, and ultimately unforgettable.

Have you read any of these books? If not, what books are on your teary eyed love story list? Let me know your thoughts in the comment sections below!

Music Monday - April 2016 - #2 - Fall Together

This #MusicMonday I'm featuring the song "Fall Together" by The Temper Trap. You might know how much I love the song "Trembling Hands" by the same band... Well, when I heard their latest single I knew I would have to feature it as well! I love the dreamy haunting quality of the music but I think this song has an uplifting message. The chorus is powerful and makes you feel hopeful about the future. I already have plans to include the song in a book review coming very soon, but I thought this song was too good not to share it with you as a #MusicMonday. Enjoy!

Out on the streets 

Our colors bleed 

Are you the one to speak to me? 

 Here I am, give me something I could follow 

So I can find my way out from the shadows 

Raise your voice cause the time is now or never 

And if we have to fall, we'll fall together

Books On My To-Read List #1 - Funny Women

Looking for your next great read? Here is a list of a few book I have my eye on...

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV. 

She has seen both these dreams come true. 

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon—from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence. 

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day

From online entertainment mogul, actress, and “queen of the geeks” Felicia Day, a funny, quirky, and inspiring memoir about her unusual upbringing, her rise to Internet-stardom, and embracing her individuality to find success in Hollywood. 

The Internet isn’t all cat videos. There’s also Felicia Day—violinist, filmmaker, Internet entrepreneur, compulsive gamer, hoagie specialist, and former lonely homeschooled girl who overcame her isolated childhood to become the ruler of a new world... or at least semi-influential in the world of Internet Geeks and Goodreads book clubs. 

 After growing up in the south where she was "home-schooled for hippie reasons", Felicia moved to Hollywood to pursue her dream of becoming an actress and was immediately typecast as a crazy cat-lady secretary. But Felicia’s misadventures in Hollywood led her to produce her own web series, own her own production company, and become an Internet star. 

Felicia’s short-ish life and her rags-to-riches rise to Internet fame launched her career as one of the most influential creators in new media. Now, Felicia’s strange world is filled with thoughts on creativity, video games, and a dash of mild feminist activism—just like her memoir. 

 Hilarious and inspirational, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) is proof that everyone should embrace what makes them different and be brave enough to share it with the world, because anything is possible now—even for a digital misfit.

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

Do you want to get to know the woman we first came to love on Comedy Central's Upright Citizens Brigade? Do you want to spend some time with the lady who made you howl with laughter on Saturday Night Live, and in movies like Baby Mama, Blades of Glory, and They Came Together? Do you find yourself daydreaming about hanging out with the actor behind the brilliant Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation? Did you wish you were in the audience at the last two Golden Globes ceremonies, so you could bask in the hilarity of Amy's one-liners? 

If your answer to these questions is "Yes Please!" then you are in luck. In her first book, one of our most beloved funny folk delivers a smart, pointed, and ultimately inspirational read. Full of the comedic skill that makes us all love Amy, Yes Please is a rich and varied collection of stories, lists, poetry (Plastic Surgery Haiku, to be specific), photographs, mantras and advice. With chapters like "Treat Your Career Like a Bad Boyfriend," "Plain Girl Versus the Demon" and "The Robots Will Kill Us All" Yes Please will make you think as much as it will make you laugh. Honest, personal, real, and righteous, Yes Please is full of words to live by.

Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling

In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you. 

In “How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet’s Confessions,” Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty, (“Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn’t the land of appropriate–this is Hollywood, baby. Out here, a dark-skinned woman’s traditional hair color is honey blonde.”) “Player” tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. (“I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs.”) In “Unlikely Leading Lady,” she muses on America’s fixation with the weight of actresses, (“Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they’re walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture.”) And in “Soup Snakes,” Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend, B.J. Novak (“I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell.”) 

 Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.

Have you read any of these books? Let me know what you thought of them in the comment sections below!

Music Monday - April 2016 - #1 - The Wolves

This #MusicMonday I'm featuring the song "The Wolves" by JJ and The Pillars. I stumbled upon this song on Spotify and I just had to share it. I have a lot going on this week and this high energy song is perfect to start off my Monday. Enjoy!

So run run run the wolves are coming for you. 

Be quiet as the wind because he's tracking you. 

So run, run, run the wolves are coming for you. 

Be quiet as the wind because he's tracking you.

BOOK: The Summer Remains by Seth King

A scar is a mark left on the skin or within the body tissue where a wound has not healed completely. 


At its core The Summer Remains by Seth King is a book about scars -- physical scars and emotional scars, the scars on the surface and below, scars that define us and scars that we live in spite of. And in this book you’ll find a story of summer love.

Summer Martin Johnson is a deeply logical and rational twenty-four-year-old who is running out of time. She has scars -- some were bestowed upon her at birth, some were created by the hands of healers, some were unintentional and other intentional, some were made by those closest to her and some by strangers, and some were of her own making -- but in spite of all her scars, Summer is determined to find love before it’s too late.

Cooper Nichols is a handsome sun-kissed twenty-five-year-old with a shy smile, sparkling eyes and messy brown hair. One night he stumbles across an odd profile on a social media dating app, “Come dislike the world with me” she wrote. Just like that Cooper enters Summer’s life with the swipe of a finger on a ‘four-inch piece of glass and metal’. However, don’t get the wrong idea. Cooper is not a knight in shining armor, he is only a man with scars of his own.

If you take a closer look at all the character in this book you will see that everyone carries their own scars -- some more obvious than others. (I’ll leave it up to you, a fellow reader, to decide what they are.) Beyond that, what struck me about these characters is that they felt like real people. With all their flaws, scars, and baggage I couldn’t help but feel the humanity. Each character, no matter how small, had a unique voice and more importantly had heart. Too often in a book you’ll find supporting characters without personal motivation or worse without feeling. I knew instantly (well… maybe not always instantly, but soon after) who these people were and why they talked, walked and acted the way they did -- even if Summer couldn’t see it herself.

Now let’s get back to the love story and I’m going to attempt to not ruin it for you.

Summer found it hard to believe someone like Cooper could even be interested in her. Sitting in front of her was someone so seemingly perfect, handsome, and strong that she couldn’t get past her own insecurities to imagine it was possible. The truth was, Copper saw beyond her scars. He thought she was beautiful, smart, funny, kind and thoughtful. He wasn’t about to let her push him away because she couldn’t see the truth.

As their affections for each other blossomed, they are able to learn more about each other’s lives and share with one another some of the misfortunes they had experienced. If we're being honest… we all have things in our past that affect the people we are today, but that shouldn't stop us from being loved or accepting love. As these characters find themselves drawn together in the humid summer heat of northern Florida, there love is tested in a profound way. Summer is running out of time and eventually everyone knows it.

Now, I could have said this book is about loss and grief and death and all the things that come with a book about a terminally ill character, but you know what… this book is about more than that! This book should be celebrated! Life is meant to be lived and Summer wasn’t going down without a fight. She was brave and honest enough to say to the universe, I deserve love and I deserve to live all the days of my life without restraint as long as I can. Everyone carries their own scars and we shouldn't discount ourselves because of them.

We all have people in our lives we can’t imagine life without. The one certainty we have in life is that one day it will end. It’s not always fair, it’s not always expected and it’s not always peaceful. We owe it to those who have left us behind to love one another in their stead and hold them in our hearts forever.

Simply put... this book is beautiful. This book is heartbreaking. This book is love.

You will read this book with a heavy heart, as it should be. You will read this book knowing that happily-ever-after is often only found in fairy tales. You will read this book knowing that tears will soon fall. Most importantly, you will leave this book knowing that life is good, life is hard, and you deserve love no matter the outcome and no matter the scars you bare.

Some Favorite Quotes

"...sometimes you just gotta jump, and then make your parachute on the way down." 

"Isn't it weird to think that every random person you see, ever stranger you pass on the street or whatever every single day, is their own person with their own life and problems and hopes and dreams and heartbreaks and defeats and triumphs, none of which have anything to do with you?" 

"Life is supposed to be hard. If your life is too easy, that means you're doing it wrong." 

"... these days I was pretty sure it meant accepting that the concept of adulthood didn't even really exist at all, and that everyone you'd looked up to as a child had just been elegantly faking it" 

"I enjoy reading words that attacked my soul and made me question everything I thought I knew about the world" 

"The truth means nothing if the lie is pretty enough." 

"Our culture forced perfection on you and then told you you weren't prefect enough once you attained it" 

"If eyes were windows into the soul, books were rabbit holes into the imagination." 

"Maybe the whole world is made of love, and we're just supposed to bump into love and feed off love and contribute to love and then break off and drift somewhere else and start all over again." 

"We were soul mates, this boy on the cusp of forever, this girl on the edge of oblivion."

More About This Author and His Books

This is my second Seth King book and what I have found so special about his writing is how quotable it is and that he is never without words. Just when you think you’ve heard enough about one idea he finds a new way to revisit it, describe it and make you experience it again. It never feels forced, it just feels like an amazing extension of the same idea -- a new revelation. Whether he’s writing about characters in love or overtaken by grief, King can finds the words to satisfy the emotion, move passed the obvious and give you more. His books should be read more than once to fully appreciate this aspect of his writing. When I look back at what I've read I find new favorite quotes every time!

Also, I hope in some way The Summer Remains has brought healing to the author and his family. The spirit if his brother lives on in the pages of this book and a little piece of that love is being shared with the world through the story of Summer and Cooper. We are all adrift in this life and the best we can do is continue to “float on”.

Song Dedication

Unlike my last Seth King book experience, I couldn’t come up with a soundtrack for The Summer Remains. Honestly, this book should have a soundtrack full of Saviour songs. So instead I choose to share the song that pops in my head every time I read the words “float on”.

"Float On" by Clones of Clones (Modest Mouse Cover)

If I was true to the spirit of this book, you wouldn't have just read this post. Go read The Summer Remains to find out why! And once you have, let me know your thought on this book in the comment section down below!