Blog Tour Stop: If You Find Me

Today I am beyond excited to be taking part in the blog tour for If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch which is brought to you by The Midnight Garden.  This is by far my favorite read of 2013 so far and is a novel that I still think about to this day.  My stop features my review of the novel, an interview with Emily and a chance for US & CAN readers to win a beautiful finished copy of the novel.


TITLE If You Find Me
AUTHOR Emily Murdoch
PUBLICATION March 26th 2013 by St. Martin's Griffin
READ February 17, 2013
SOURCE St. Martin's Griffin via Netagalley for review

There are some things you can’t leave behind…

A broken-down camper hidden deep in a national forest is the only home fifteen year-old Carey can remember. The trees keep guard over her threadbare existence, with the one bright spot being Carey’s younger sister, Jenessa, who depends on Carey for her very survival. All they have is each other, as their mentally ill mother comes and goes with greater frequency. Until that one fateful day their mother disappears for good, and two strangers arrive. Suddenly, the girls are taken from the woods and thrust into a bright and perplexing new world of high school, clothes and boys.

Now, Carey must face the truth of why her mother abducted her ten years ago, while haunted by a past that won’t let her go… a dark past that hides many a secret, including the reason Jenessa hasn’t spoken a word in over a year. Carey knows she must keep her sister close, and her secrets even closer, or risk watching her new life come crashing down.

This review is probably going to be an incoherent jumble of feelings that I can’t translate eloquently into words so there are some things I want to just throw at you in the beginning to make sure that I get my point across. This book. This book is everything that I want in a book; this book is about love and it is so full of heart that I found myself teary eyed pretty much once in every chapter. This book is full of amazing characters and amazing relationships; it is bleak, it is honest, and it is a novel that will definitely stick with me for a long time to come.

Carey and Janessa are girls who have grown up living in a camper in a national forest most of their lives. There they live with their mother, but not really because she is a meth addict who disappears for weeks (sometimes months) at a time leaving Carey in charge of feeding her younger sister & herself and in charge of bringing Janessa up. The way that these girls lived is terrible. They freeze in the winters and often find themselves eating nothing but beans for days, it was shocking to see all the things that they went through growing up. Not only do they live under harsh conditions but the people that their meth addict mother brought into their life and the things she made them do to feed her meth addiction are disgusting and had me so angry that addictions like this exist. The desperation of users to get their next fix is frightening and it puts everyone around them in danger as they are used as pawns. We get most of this part of the story through memories that Carey has throughout the novel, the real story here is when they are found and taken to live with Carey’s father on his farm.

The transition to living in civilization is what really brings these characters to life for me. The bond that Carey and Janessa formed in their years of living in the wild and Carey essentially raising her younger sister is beautiful. Once they are found that bond remains and Nessa really looks to Carey for how to react and deal with everything that is going on. I loved Carey, my heart broke for her situation but she had such a big heart & her undying devotion to her younger sister made everything OK. Even in their dismal situation in the forest their relationship brought light to their life and really got them through it. Nessa was an adorable character and through her mutism we learn that something pretty bad happened that made her lose her voice. What really blew me away here was how Nessa felt like such a developed and well rounded character and for much of the novel the girl didn’t even talk. I loved her and I wanted to cuddle her. We see through Carey how she can read everything about her younger sister without words and it’s really beautiful. I also really liked Carey’s father and his wife Melissa, the effort that they put into helping the girls is so great and you really just felt the love they had for them so much in every page of this novel.

There is no way that this review will ever do this book justice and I don’t even want to think about how many times I used the word love in it but everything I think about this book is love. The characters, the relationships, just everything. There are some pretty shocking scenes, ones that are so hard to read but looking back on it love just conquers all and is what I took away from it. Read this book people, and have some tissues at the ready.

Interview with Emily Murdoch

I had the pleasure of inviting Emily over for a bit of a tea party and before we got going we had a chat about herself and the novel:

Tell us about your book Twitter style, so in 140 characters or less.

That’d be the tagline I came up with for the UK edition:

“What happens in the woods, stays in the woods ... “

If You Find Me is a very poignant and touching story, what was your inspiration behind the novel?

I’m learning as we go along that there are so many answers to this question; some I didn’t even know of consciously at the time of writing If You Find Me.

Such as how easy it was to write a portrait of an abused child, having been one, myself. The psychology of fooling myself in order to write dark and deep, and, as I’m seeing, something so necessary to the world as it stands today …

I’m honored if my darkness can shed some light. This is me paying forward all those books that saved me, as a child.

What character in If You Find Me do you identify with most?

Carey. Most definitely, Carey.

But that’s not to say that Carey is me in disguise. She isn’t. I’d call her an archetype of abused children. Her longing for love and a place to belong. Her uncertainty. Her resourcefulness. Her hero’s journey.

We have a lot in common.

What drew you to the YA genre? Why did you decide that it was the place for you?

Interesting questions! I’m not the color-within-the-lines kind of gal; I’m the by-the-seat-of-my-pants, on-a-wing-and-a-prayer type. I wrote the story I wrote, and ended up with offers from both young adult and adult Big Six publishers.

I guess fate wanted me here. I’ve met the most amazing people, here, too.

Do you have a writing room? If so, what does it look like?

One day I will have a writing room; I describe it in a recent interview on Imaginary Girls author Nova Ren Suma’s blog (Nova’s amazing new novel, 17 and Gone, releases March 21st!).

In the meantime, I write at the kitchen bar, quite happily. When I write, I enter a state of flow so complete, I have no idea what’s around me, anyway.

Who are your favorite authors?

Ooooo, love this question! I’m very old fashioned:

Frances Hodgson Burnett
Louisa May Alcott
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Charlotte Bronte
Madeleine L'Engle
Charles Dickens
Judy Blume
Madeleine Brent
Anne Frank
Rumer Godden
Carlo Collodi
J. M. Barrie
Roald Dahl
Rudyard Kipling

If you were stranded on a desert island and you could only have one book with you, what book would it be?

Merlin’s Keep by Madeleine Brent

What are some of your early influences that shaped your writing style? (novels, movies, music, etc)

Besides the authors mentioned above, I’d have to blame it on my ferocious diary and journal keeping. There’s just a place you learn to go inside, and when you write from there, your arrow flies true.

Thank you so much, Jenni, for inviting me over! It was such a pleasure chatting with you! Now for that tea party. How many lumps in your tea? Cream? I sure hope you like cupcakes!

The tea & cupcakes were great, but the company was even better. Thanks for stopping by, Emily!

Giveaway

St. Martin's Griffin has been kind enough to offer up one finished hardcover copy of If You Find me for one lucky reader.

This giveaway is open to US and Canadian addresses only.

Fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter

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Be sure to check out all the other great stops on this tour:

3/18 The Midnight Garden
3/19 Alluring Reads
3/20 Live to Read
3/21 YA Romantics
3/22 Winterhaven Books
3/23 Once Upon a Prologue
3/24 Hobbitses
3/25 ExLibris Kate
3/26 Xpresso Reads
3/27 Bookish
3/28 Great Imaginations
3/29 Good Books and Good Wine