Just Another...Book Crush (#4): Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith

Just Another...Book Crush! is a monthly feature where I invite an author whose book I've recently reviewed and loved to write a guest post and share their three latest book crushes. It's a feature I'm starting mostly because I'm often very shy to approach authors, especially ones I admire, and also because I love reading guest posts since, more often than not, they convince me to pick up a book even when the reviewer cannot. 

Wild Awake is one of this years most highly anticipated debuts - and rightly so. I've grown to expect more from the Young Adult genre lately; more self-discovery, more poignancy, more truth. And in all those fronts, Wild Awake delivered fantastically. It's a novel unlike you've ever read before and I absolutely loved it. Which is why I am so excited to have Hilary T. Smith on the blog today to talk about her debut! :)

Things you earnestly believe will happen while your parents are away:          1. You will remember to water the azaleas.                                          2. You will take detailed, accurate messages.                         3. You will call your older brother, Denny, if even the slightest thing goes wrong.           4. You and your best friend/bandmate Lukas will win Battle of the Bands.                               5. Amid the thrill of victory, Lukas will finally realize you are the girl of his dreams.                      Things that actually happen:                                               1. A stranger calls who says he knew your sister.                                                                                               2. He says he has her stuff.                                                                           3. What stuff? Her stuff.                                                                                 4. You tell him your parents won’t be able to—                                       5. Sukey died five years ago; can’t he—                                                   6. You pick up a pen.                                                                                     7. You scribble down the address.                                                           8. You get on your bike and go.                                                                       9. Things . . . get a little crazy after that.*                                                   *also, you fall in love, but not with Lukas.                                               Both exhilarating and wrenching, Hilary T. Smith’s debut novel captures the messy glory of being alive, as seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd discovers love, loss, chaos, and murder woven into a summer of music, madness, piercing heartbreak, and intoxicating joy.

With every push of my pedals, I can feel the map getting bigger, new squares and lines and landmarks appearing like new levels in a video game. ~Wild Awake

YA fiction often involves some kind of widening of the map. Harry Potter discovers Hogwarts. Katniss leaves her home in District 12 for the Capitol. Cam and Gonzo leave Texas to search for Dr. X. In WILD AWAKE, Kiri re-discovers her city, her family, and herself over the course of a modern-day underworld journey.

One of the hallmarks of leaving home for the first time—whether literally or metaphorically—is the vertiginous sensation of your world getting bigger. It's a dizzying feeling, a peculiar mix of intoxication and heartbreak: "You mean this was there the whole time?" Hidden within the rush of freedom is a peculiar ache of loss for the person you will never be again, the home that will never look the same now that you're seeing it in this bigger context.

For Kiri, this process takes place on her bicycle. For me, it happened on foot. I was fourteen when I started taking monster walks through the forest near by house, testing just how far my legs could take me. When I was eighteen, I hitchhiked around New Zealand alone. I went on long solo hikes in the wilderness and spent a week bartending in a coal mining town. I wasn't a very sophisticated teen in other ways—I rarely drank, didn't have a driver's license, and had never smoked pot—but I believed utterly in the power of my feet and my thumbs to push back the edges of my world.

For me, writing is a little like hitchhiking—the same mix of uncertainty and confidence, hunger and exhilaration. When you write a novel, you stumble on places inside yourself you didn't know existed. You slog through rain and mud and snow. But at the end of it all, your map of the world is that much richer, and you can never look at it in quite the same way again.

Just Another...Book Crush!

1. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

This book just floored me. I read it in one sitting, staying up until almost five in the morning. Every detail felt so real and so right—it's rare to find a book that is so believable.

2. All Our Pretty Songs by Sarah McCarry

This book doesn't come out until July, but it is going to be huge. Sarah McCarry is a dazzling writer. I don't even know what to tell you about All Our Pretty Songs, except that it involves music and underworld journeys and witchy floorboards and masked balls. Luscious!

3. The Way Of Zen by Alan Watts

I have a huge Alan Watts crush right now. He writes about Zen in a way that makes you put the book down and say Oh. Whoa. And he is full of mind-bending insights like this one: “You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.” Alan Watts would probably be my desert-island selection right now.

I really couldn't have said it better myself. For me, Wild Awake is such a powerful novel because of this widening of the map, both literally and psychologically for Kiri. Not only does she explore more places, but she discovers more about herself than she ever imagined, which makes this such a heart-felt story. Hilary, thank you so much for stopping by; I am so thrilled that Wild Awake is now out for other readers to discover and fall in love with.

In case you missed it, you can read my review of Wild Awake HERE. I generally dislike most of my reviews, even though I post them and know they're really not that bad, but this is one of the few I'm genuinely proud of.