Alight Blog Tour & Review

Welcome to my stop on the Alight tour hosted by BB Book tours.
Alight is the second book in The Peril series.  

Expected Pub: Summer 2012

When Corinne learns who the second Guardian is, she must find a way to make peace with the last person in the world she wants to deal with. As she struggles, her nemesis unleashes an otherworldly evil, and a mysterious illness strikes Corinne's friends. Faltering under the weight of her destiny, Corinne escapes to the dream world. There, she meets Zane, an Australian guy with a hot accent and a revelation that binds them together and alters the path of Corinne's life. She throws herself into fighting for everything she loves, but just as she s certain she will prevail, she's robbed of the two people she needs most.

Excerpt:

Pyxis, Book 1 in the series, Corinne learns she is destined to protect a gateway between this world and the world of dreams. Pyxis ends with Corinne and Mason bonding with each other in syndesmo, which created a telepathic link between them. In this excerpt from Chapter 1 of Alight (Book 2), Corinne and Mason are still getting used to their telepathic link, which makes for some strange and interesting situations.

Slipping through the doorway just as the late bell rang, I found a seat in the back and tried to tune into the classroom instead of my telepathic link with my boyfriend. My brother, Bradley, sat a couple of rows ahead of me. Even after three years in the same grade, it was still weird to have classes with him. Maybe at a bigger school, no one would have known or cared that he was over a year older than everyone else in his grade. But this was Tapestry. The whole school remembered when he missed most of eighth grade because of cancer.

At least Sophie Marcelle’s pouty face graced a different homeroom. If I had to watch Brad and Sophie bat their eyes at each other for an entire forty-five minutes every morning, I’d have to start carrying around one of those little white airplane barf bags. They’d been dating for about a month, and although I’d accepted the reality of it, I didn’t like it any more now than I did when I first found out.

Aww, but Brad’s so happy! Mason’s voice rang through my head, and I jumped and knocked my pen onto the floor. Stifling a laugh, I glanced around. I probably looked like a freak, jumping for no apparent reason.

Try not to scare me like that, would you? And you said you’d stop eavesdropping!

Sorry about the volume, Mason said. But I wasn’t eavesdropping. That was all you.

Really? I’ve got to get the hang of this.

Don’t worry. You will. If I can do it, so can you. Mason’s tone was warm in my mind, and I grinned. And if you don’t, well, we don’t need to hide anything from each other anyway, right?

My cheeks heated and my smile widened. But what if I want to surprise you?

Hm, yeah, that probably won’t work. You’ll just have to let me surprise you instead.

Some mornings I still woke up clawing at my ears in panic until I remembered I had not only my own thoughts running through my brain, but Mason’s too. This morning I had woken up not to a panic attack, but to Mason simulating the sound of an alarm going off in my head. It took me a few seconds to look at the clock. It was a full hour before my real alarm was supposed to go off. Just hilarious.

At times, keeping my thoughts in my own head proved difficult. Actually, most of the time I truly sucked at it. I wished I understood why, but Mason learned to control his thought projection with ease, whereas I still struggled. Although the chattery background buzz of his consciousness streamed constantly through my mind, he managed to protect his distinct thoughts, except for when he purposely communicated with me. The way Mason described it, he imagined a soundproof wall around his mind. When he wanted to talk to me through our link, he opened a little window in the wall and sent the thought through to me. He made it sound so easy, but the same kind of mental imagery didn’t seem to work as well for me.

You’re coming with me to Aunt Dorothy’s after my shift, right? I asked.

Yep. I’ll meet you at the café. Study hard. I could almost feel him smirking. He’d worked ahead while he was abroad, and had already finished his sophomore year.

I sighed, opened my notebook, and tried to focus on the discussion about the use of coincidental events in A Tale of Two Cities.

Corinne soon discovers that keeping her thoughts to herself is the least of her problems. When she learns who’s going to be helping her carry out her destiny, she couldn’t be more unpleasantly surprised. She’s going to have to find a way to bond with the last person in the world she wants to deal with. As she struggles, her nemesis unleashes an otherworldly evil, and a mysterious illness strikes her friends. Faltering under the weight of her destiny, Corinne escapes to the dream world. There, she meets Zane, an Australian guy with a hot accent and a revelation that binds them together and alters the path of Corinne’s life, but could mean danger for Mason. She throws herself into fighting for everything she loves, but her enemy is stronger than she ever imagined.

My Thoughts:

Alight picks up right where Pyxis left off.  Corrine now knows who the second guardian is and the emotional roller coaster that ensues is marvelous!  While her bond has grown deeper with Mason, the appearance of the mysterious Zane throws quite a kink into the story.  As Corrine struggles to unify her pyramidal union she discovers her enemy is growing stronger and wants to take everything she holds dear away from her.  I loved that when it came down to the biggest fight, the last person Corrine ever expected to help her overcome, ended up being her strongest ally.  Corrine really started to embrace her destiny and grow as a leader in this book.  My absolutely, most favorite part, is the history of the pyxis and pyramidal unions.  I hope so much more of that is explained and used in the next book.  If you haven’t read the first book Pyxis, get to it quickly.  Oh how bitter-sweet this book is.  I say that, since I have to wait for the next & final book to come out so I can find out what happens!

Pyxis: The Discovery (Pyxis, #1)
by K.C. Neal

Corinne lives an average teenage life working at her dad’s cafe, hanging out with her best friend, and trying to forget a falling-out with her almost-boyfriend Mason. Things take a strange turn when she uses her late grandmother’s food dyes for a bake sale, and her customers suddenly find her irresistibly alluring. Then she discovers she and Mason are haunted by the same dreams of a dark force that consumes everything in its path.
Pursued by shadowy figures and a crazy woman with secrets from the past, Corinne must find out who her grandmother really was. In her quest to unravel her family’s history, she learns she is destined to protect this world–and the dark world of her dreams. She races to find the answers she seeks before her nightmares break free.

Author Spotlight:

K.C. Neal writes YA books, works in publishing, and is co-founder of StoneHouse University, an educational resource for authors.

Most of K.C.'s days are filled with some combination of writing, reading, gardening, working, and watching stuff on Netflix with her husband and their maltipoo, Oscar. She has an irrational fixation with L.A., and during occasional trips there she pretends her life is more glamorous than it really is ("Entourage" is her guilty pleasure). She likes to surf and hang out on sandy beaches

Author Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kcnealtweets/
FB: http://www.facebook.com/KCNealFanPage
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5163997.K_C_Neal
Website:  http://kcneal.blogspot.com/

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