Blogtour and Review: Gypsy – Trisha Leigh

Gypsy by Trisha Leigh
on 13 May 2014
Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 376
Format: eARC
Source: Xpresso Booktours

Inconsequential: not important or significant.
Synonyms: insignificant, unimportant, nonessential, irrelevant

In the world of genetic mutation, Gypsy’s talent of knowing a person’s age of death is considered a failure. Her peers, the other Cavies, have powers that range from curdling a blood still in the vein to being able to overhear a conversation taking place three miles away, but when they’re taken from the sanctuary where they grew up and forced into the real world, Gypsy, with her all-but-invisible gift, is the one with the advantage.

The only one who’s safe, if the world finds out what they can do.

When the Cavies are attacked and inoculated with an unidentified virus, that illusion is shattered. Whatever was attached to the virus causes their abilities to change. Grow. In some cases, to escape their control.

Gypsy dreamed of normal high school, normal friends, a normal life, for years. Instead, the Cavies are sucked under a sea of government intrigue, weaponized genetic mutation, and crushing secrets that will reframe everything they’ve ever been told about how their "talents" came to be in the first place.

When they find out one of their own has been appropriated by the government, mistreated and forced to run dangerous missions, their desire for information becomes a pressing need. With only a series of guesses about their origins, the path to the truth becomes quickly littered with friends, enemies, and in the end, the Cavies ability to trust anyone at all.

*I received a free ARC of Gypsy from Xpresso Booktours in exchange of an honest review*

Welcome to my stop on the Gypsy Blogtour! I have my review and favorite quotes to share with you, as well as a giveaway 🙂

My Gypsy review:

Gypsy is a creepy science-fiction novel, in which teens with strange genetic mutations are first seen in an abandoned plantation in Charleston, until police shows up, and some of them are returned to their families – or what is left of their families, anyway. Mysterious, troubling and very eerie, Gypsy managed to keep me on my toes all through the story, and I never knew what to expect.

After the cavies are released, their lives change tremendously, and they are really not sure whether it’s a good or a bad change, either. Gypsy, whose real name is Norah, is taken in by her father, and she attends a local private school just a few days after learning how the real world works. Gaining some new friends, but still keeping in touch with her fellow cavies through their mental space dubbed as the club-house, she is torn about what she wants in life right now. Stay put, go to school and get to know her dad, or try to figure out where she actually comes from, and why she and her friends from Darly are so different from other human beings?

Between living a more or less normal life at school, and trying to figure out the mystery of her past, Gypsy and her friends don’t know whom to trust, how to get to the bottom of things, and why they were even at Darly at all. Written in first person present tense, Gypsy managed to make me engrossed in the story, but the writing is also original in a very strange way. Some of the smilies used made me smile, and others made me roll my eyes the way Mole – or Shiloh as his real name is – would have done. The distance between the two worlds Norah now has to inhabit doesn’t get any easier for her to deal with, but I really felt invested both in her, and in the other characters.

Ending on a cliffhanger, Gypsy certainly left me with the want and need for more, and I really look forward to the next installment in The Cavy Files series. Different from other science fiction stories because there are so many lies and secrets, the characters – both the cavies and the kids from Norah’s school – made me want to help them figure everything out.

Gypsy Giveaway:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N 

 

AUTHOR BIO
Trisha Leigh is a product of the Midwest, which means it’s pop, not soda, garage sales, not tag sales, and you guys as opposed to y’all. Most of the time. She’s been writing seriously for five years now, and has published 4 young adult novels and 4 new adult novels (under her pen name Lyla Payne). Her favorite things, in no particular order, include: reading, Game of Thrones, Hershey’s kisses, reading, her dogs (Yoda and Jilly), summer, movies, reading, Jude Law, coffee, and rewatching WB series from the 90’s-00’s.

Her family is made up of farmers and/or almost rock stars from Iowa, people who numerous, loud, full of love, and the kind of people that make the world better. Trisha tries her best to honor them, and the lessons they’ve taught, through characters and stories—made up, of course, but true enough in their way.

Trisha is the author of The Last Year series and the Whitman University books. She’s represented by Kathleen Rushall at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

Author links:
Website  | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter

 Some of my favorite Gypsy quotes:

The words gather in the air, surround my feet, and settle next to me on the bed, a steaming stew of letters and sentences. I’m afraid if I slurp them all down they’ll never rearrange into the proper order, never make sense, so I sit among my own story, afraid to touch. Afraid to move.

It seems, based on movies, that lots of girls my age hate their parents, or at least hate the rules and restrictions and expectations that come along with living at home. 

I’m halfway through my shower,  luxuriating in the hot water and floral-scented suds, when it occurs to me that not one of our mothers is alive.

Dear Mr. Producer, I’ve been kept away from normal society my entire life, with nothing to show me how it really is except your movies. Now I’m outside, and I am a lost little sheep. PS: You failed.

We’re hoping to find the answers to every question we never knew we should ask, which is a little silly.

Thanks for stopping by today 🙂 Happy reading!

 

 

 

Subscribe to Blog via Email