Happy Monday and welcome to my stop on the blog tour for A CHORUS RISES by Bethany C. Morrow! I’m so excited because today I have an excerpt of the book to share with you! This book is truly amazing and I’m so excited to for you to find out more about it, PLUS enter for a chance to win a print copy!
A Chorus Rises by Bethany C. Morrow Series: A Song Below Water #2
Published on June 1, 2021 by Tor Teen
Genres: Contemporary, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Mythology, Queer, YA
Pages: 272
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Author Links: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram
Teen influencer Naema Bradshaw has it all: she's famous, privileged, has “the good hair”— and she’s an Eloko, a person who’s gifted with a song that woos anyone who hears it. Everyone loves her — well, until she's cast as the awful person who exposed Tavia’s secret siren powers.
Now, she's being dragged by the media. No one understands her side: not her boyfriend, not her friends, nor her Eloko community. But Naema knows the truth and is determined to build herself back up — no matter what.
When a new, flourishing segment of Naema’s online supporters start targeting black girls, however, Naema must discover the true purpose of her magical voice.
“Effie,” I hear her say, and even though her voice is calm, it carries a telltale vibrato that I register too late. I’m standing across from a siren and there’s a call in her voice. Whatever she says next will have power.
“Stone her.”
There’s no time after that. Not to think, she wouldn’t dare do this to me, and not to dare her. To tell her that I am through playing nice, that you don’t threaten Eloko, and that she and her snake sister had better start thinking of what comes after Portland because they are never going to live this night down.
There’s no time to run, when what was a wobbling pillar of scales and haunted hair stiffens—and then I do too.
It hits me in my core. Deep inside my body, something goes hard.
I gasp, but the air doesn’t get in. Not really. It comes into my throat but then stops. I can’t get it into my chest. That’s where my panic starts. Am I going to suffocate? Is being Stoned by a siren and her snake sister actually dying? No one knows. No one’s ever come back from the stone. Which means the sisters don’t know either, and they’re doing it anyway.
I don’t know how long it takes from the outside. They’re watching me turn gray like the other prom-goers in this courtyard, and the man in the cemetery, and the kids in Triton Park—but I don’t know if it seems fast or slow. I just know I’m terrified that my lungs will start burning any moment from the air I can’t force into them, that the legs I can’t feel anymore aren’t there, that the stone has broken somehow even though I’ve never seen it happen. What else am I supposed to think when thinking is all I can do? I can’t feel anything, once the hardening starts. It feels like nothing, except that it’s spreading.
I want to look down, to see my body, that it’s still there. I want to look away so that the last thing I see isn’t Tavia Philips.
But there’s no time.
Copyright © 2021 by Bethany C. Morrow
About Bethany C. Morrow
Bethany C Morrow is an Indie Bestselling author who writes for adult and young adult audiences, in genres ranging from speculative literary to contemporary fantasy to historical. She is author of the novels MEM and A SONG BELOW WATER, which is an Audie, Ignyte and Locus finalist. She is editor/contributor to the young adult anthology TAKE THE MIC, the 2020 ILA Social Justice in Literature award winner. Her work has been chosen as Indies Introduce and Indie Next picks, and featured in The LA Times, Forbes, Bustle, Buzzfeed, and more. She is included on USA TODAY's list of 100 Black novelists and fiction writers you should read.
Enter here for a chance to win a print copy of A Chorus Rises by Bethany C. Morrow!
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What do you think about A Chorus Rises? Have you added it to your tbr yet? Let me know in the comments and have a splendiferous day!
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