I'm happy to announce a brand new cover for Angela Carling's contemporary young adult novel Becoming Bryn.
For
months, Jesse has been envious of her twin sister Bryn and even has a crush on
Bryn’s gorgeous, popular boyfriend, Quinton. When Jesse awakens from a coma to
learn that everyone thinks she IS Bryn, the option of actually taking over her
sister’s life is beyond tempting, but there’s a downside. She’d have to give up
her relationship with Ethan, her best friend and the only person she trusts.
Could she actually live as Bryn for the rest of her life? And if her family and
friends found out, would they ever forgive her?
Here are two reviews of Bryn:
Becoming Bryn went to places I didn't expect. You want to laugh
and cry and swoon (yes, very much swooning indeed... there was an excellent
kiss... not telling you with WHO though!) and not be able to put the book down
because of it. Angela Carling knows how to hold together an intricate story and
tell it in the best way possible.
-Jessica L Sankiewicz
The book is beautifully written very well done from start to
finish. I ended up staying up super late till three in the morning reading,
even had tears in my eyes because the end is just so amazing.
-Mandy Sickle
Here is an excerpt from Becoming Bryn that will leave you wanting to read more:
The night air was balmy, and after awhile we turned off the
air conditioning and opened the sunroof. Last summer Bryn and I had spent hours
shopping with our dad, looking for a car we could live with and Dad could
afford. Neither of us had seen a Honda four-door from the nineties as our dream
car, but the sunroof had made it all better. The sunroof was the only reason we
begged Dad to get it for us. He bought it on one condition, that Bryn and I
would be willing to share the vehicle. Tonight as we drove down the weathered
two-lane road toward the corn maze, warm air slipped in through the sunroof,
brushing against our cheeks and dancing through our hair. Between the smell of
freshly cut corn and alfalfa and the open sunroof, I felt so alive, almost
untouchable. “Turn on the radio,” Bryn said loudly over the moving air above
us. I reached over and pushed the plastic knob. Inside the car, the air was
instantly charged with the pounding beat of a dance song. We both belted out
the lyrics, singing badly but joyously over the radio. I looked over at Bryn as
she sang. Pieces of her carefully done hair had escaped from their bobby pin
prison and now flew wildly around her face. She looked happy and surprisingly,
for a moment, I felt a sense of contentment. It wasn’t genuine happiness, but
it was enough for tonight.
Up ahead on the right side of
the road, I could see the tall stalks of the corn maze. Next to the maze sat a
small organic supermarket. I’d been to the store with my mom to buy local honey
a couple of years ago. That day, I’d ended up waiting an extra thirty minutes
while she chatted with the owner as if they were old friends. I’d tuned out a
lot of the conversation but I did learn that the same family who grew the corn
maze owned the store and a citrus orchard just behind that. Tonight the market
was decorated with long strands of small orange and purple lights. Out front,
leaning up against a weathered picket fence that ran the perimeter of the
property, was a large hand painted sign that read: Haunted Corn Maze, $8.00. As
we got closer, I could see that just beyond the fence, waiting for the maze to
open up was a large crowd of people dressed up as everything from doctors to
vampires. We knew somewhere in the mass of people were our friends.
There was no turn lane on the narrow road, so I flipped on my
turn signal and began to slow down just before the dirt entrance that led to
the market came into view. Bryn, who had been straining to look past me for her
friends, finally gave up and undid her seatbelt. By the time we stopped, she
was hanging out of the sunroof, waving wildly and yelling across the street to
a couple of the girls I recognized as cheerleaders on Bryn’s squad. I looked up
at her, smiling, so excited and confident… Then as I glanced in the rear view
mirror I saw another car coming up behind us. The car was weaving all over the
road and driving way too fast. Worst of all, I could see from the headlights
behind him that the driver wasn’t paying attention, that he was looking down at
something in his lap.
Like a voice in my head, I
remembered my mom complaining about the fact that there was no turn lane to get
into the farmer’s market, talking about how dangerous it was. “Someone’s going
to die out here,” she’d said. I thought she was being melodramatic.
I watched helplessly as the car
barreled towards us. There was nowhere to go. There were only two lanes and a
constant stream of cars came from the other direction. Even if I’d wanted to
pull off the road, a huge canal filled with irrigation water made it
impossible. Panic began to surge through my veins in the form of adrenaline;
yet suddenly, simultaneously, time seemed to crawl, putting everything around
me into slow motion. The approaching car, the screaming teenagers across the
street, my sister calling out to them – it felt choppy, like an old silent
movie. I could imagine in my head a black and white version of the scene with
comments added like, “Oh no, we’re going to die!” written in old typewriter
text against a flimsy screen.
Just before the car behind us
made impact, I could feel myself laughing darkly at my own imagery. Then, in my
ears and in my bones I heard and felt the crushing of metal as the car struck
us with full force from behind, launching us like a pinball in a classic pinball
machine, shooting us forward with deadly aim right into oncoming traffic. For a
second, or maybe half a second, I was aware of my sister’s legs being lifted
from the seat she was standing on, and I knew somewhere above me she was being
thrown around like a ragdoll. Then I saw nothing but the enormous cement truck
right in front of us. Somehow I knew the truck driver had no time to change his
course, and my heart, which suddenly felt as if it was made of lead, plummeted
into my stomach. With only feet between us, I noticed that the word “Rock
Solid” had been plastered across the black exterior paint of the truck. Clever,
I thought morbidly, remembering that I had seen similar trucks in our
neighborhood. Then before total panic could even really set in, before I could
scream or cry, or move out of his path, our tiny economy car and his massive
cement truck collided and all of my thoughts and fears and impulses slipped
away into total blackness.
 |
| Angela Carling |
Buy
Becoming Bryn at these Internet locations
Angela Carling was raised in Palm Springs California, but lives Arizona
with her husband, three kids and five felines. After years of denial she finally admitted that she is a
hopeless romantic which led her to write her first Young Adult book Unbreakable
Love. Since then she’s published three more books, Shackled, Becoming Bryn and
The Secret Keeper. Shackled won the silver IPGA award in 2012 and has been
optioned as a screenplay. She always eats the frosting off her cake and leaves
the rest, and can be caught singing in public bathrooms just for the
acoustics. When she’s not writing
YA novels, she’s mentoring teen writers, making pizza with her family or
dreaming of taking a nap, not necessarily in that order.
Stock Angela on her sites:
