We’re wrapping up this month’s YA Debut Authors Bash with a fun interview featuring Our Chemical Hearts author Krystal Sutherland. We love her already and can’t wait for all of you to get to know her! First, here’s the 411 on her debut, Our Chemical Hearts:
***About the Book***
Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons BFYR on September 6, 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 256
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Henry Page has never been in love. He fancies himself a hopeless romantic, but the slo-mo, heart palpitating, can't-eat-can't-sleep kind of love that he's been hoping for just hasn't been in the cards for him - at least not yet. Instead, he's been happy to focus on his grades, on getting into a semi-decent college and finally becoming editor of his school newspaper. Then Grace Town walks into his first period class on the third Tuesday of senior year and he knows everything's about to change.
Grace isn't who Henry pictured as his dream girl; she walks with a cane, wears oversized boys' clothes, and rarely seems to shower. But when Grace and Henry are both chosen to edit the school paper, he quickly finds himself falling for her. It's obvious there's something broken about Grace, but it seems to make her even more beautiful to Henry, and he wants nothing more than to help her put the pieces back together again. And yet, this isn't your average story of boy meets girl.
***INTERVIEW***
(So cruel.) A true love story, because it’s not about “true love”.
For writers, it’s often hard trying to remember how a story started in your head. By the time you reach the end of it, everything – even the characters you began with – has changed. That wasn’t the case for me this time around. It started with a boy and a girl. He had black hair and dimples. She wore guy’s clothing and walked with a cane. He believed in grand love stories. She’d already been in one. He was Henry. She was Grace. Our Chemical Hearts would be their (not so happy) love story.
For this book? Probably the Urban Dictionary definition of the word “weenus” (the skin on your elbow). For other manuscripts? Things that would swiftly make me the prime suspect of any and every murder investigation in a hundred mile radius. I know far more about things like flaying skin than I would like to. (FYI no skin flaying occurs in OCH.)
Grace Town is a mystery that Henry spends the whole book trying to unravel, so I won’t give too much away, except to say that she has a secret past she’s trying to move on from and doesn’t want to let go of at the same time.
Oh Henry. Poor Henry. I have such a soft spot for him. He’s so naive, in the best possible way. He believes in love at first sight and grand romantic gestures and the goodness at the centre of people. Definitely swoonworthy.
Basically just listen to ‘Skinny Love’ by Bon Iver on repeat in a dark room for ten hours straight.
I couldn’t decide, so I asked my family for some adjectives. My mother said: forceful, aggressive, ambitious. (Gee, thanks.) My sister said: independent, impatient, assertive. My other sister said: independent, charismatic, ambitious. So apparently I have all the best qualities of a malevolent dictator.
I once met Eddie Redmayne in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, while neither of us were wearing shoes.
My sister and I read The Girl on the Train at the same time last year. Like, literally at the same time, on the same Kindle, page by page. So I’m pretty pumped to see it on the big screen.
Probably Park from Eleanor and Park. Realistic and flawed but oh so adorable.
I’m currently working on my second book, which is slated to be released next year. I can’t tell you much about it at this stage, except that it’s about fear and demons and anxiety and Death incarnate. It’s not as scary as it sounds.
***About Author***
Krystal Sutherland is the writer of books. Or, more specifically, she is the writer of one lonely book, OUR CHEMICAL HEARTS, which is being published in October 2016 by Penguin in the US and ANZ, and Hot Key in the UK.
Krystal was born and raised in Townsville, in the far north of Australia. Since moving to Sydney in 2011, she’s also lived in Amsterdam, which was awesome but cold, and Hong Kong, (though she speaks neither Dutch nor Cantonese).
Growing up, she never dreamed of being a writer. She wanted to be a) a florist, then b) a volcanologist, then c) an actress. It wasn’t until shortly after her 18th birthday that she sat down to write her first (terrible) novel.
OUR CHEMICAL HEARTS, thankfully, is slightly better than that hot mess. Nonetheless, she is notoriously bad at explaining what it’s about, except to say that it involves the terribly tragic and awful experience of falling in love for the first time.
Krystal has no pets and no children, but in Amsterdam she owned a bicycle called Kim Kardashian. It was somewhat difficult to get along with. She was fond of it regardless.
***GIVEAWAY***
Good luck and don’t forget to check out the other 2016 Debut Authors Bash stops!
Thanks for joining the #16DABash!
-N
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I want to read this book because the girl isn’t a model cutout. she is a real person with flaw who I want to get to know.
I want to read Our Chemical Hearts because the characters sound really interesting to me.