Blog Tour: Lies I Live By by Lauren Sabel – Review and Giveaway!

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Release Date: May 31st 2016

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance
Rate: 4/5 stars

Synopsis:

Romance, intrigue, and action collide in this psychic twist on the classic spy novel.

Callie Sinclair is literally out of her mind; as the government’s youngest psychic spy, she finds valuable information for top-secret missions. Her work keeps her headaches at bay, but it means she must lie to everyone she loves, including her longtime boyfriend, Charlie.

When a new psychic arrives at the office, Callie can’t help but flirt; Jasper already knows her in a way Charlie never will.

But as her love life gets more complicated, so do her visions. People halfway around the world seem to be in danger…and people in her own backyard, too. If Callie can’t find a way to alter future events, she could lose the people she loves—and her mind. Literally.

Lauren Sabel’s enthralling, romantic novel captures the thrill of exploring a unique power in a dangerous world.

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I was so excited to read this book after seeing the cover – those pretty colors really drew me in, and when I read the synopsis, I knew I was going to really like it.  I wasn’t let down, either – it really is a great book!

Our main character, Callie, is a psychic spy.  She has to lie to everyone she cares for about what she does, but she likes her work, so she does.  But she does hate lying to her mom and her boyfriend, which she is constantly doing.  At the beginning of the book, things are a little bit slow, but they do pick up from here.

Then a new psychic spy comes into the picture, and Callie finds herself drawn to him.  It does end up being a bit of a love triangle, because she already has a boyfriend, and then a new guy swoops in and makes her fall head over heels for him, leaving her feel all kinds of confused about what she wants.  On one hand, this new guy understands what Callie is doing and what her work entails, on the other hand, she has been with her boyfriend for a long time and wouldn’t want to jeopardize that relationship.  So when she gets called into a new assignment to try and prevent something bad from happening, she also has to decide what she wants, and who she wants, before she doesn’t get the chance to decide for herself.

I’ve recently come to love spy novels.  I’ve been reading quite a few of them, and I was really excited when I heard that this one was coming out.  I was hoping for a whole bunch of action and fun plot lines, and for the most part that was what I got.  There was a lot of romance in this novel, but I expected that going into it, because it says right in the synopsis that there’s going to be romance, so I was okay with that.  It was the overly sickening kind of romance either – you know, the in your face and taking center stage kind of romance that just makes the rest of the book seem like background noise.  No, Lies I Live By has a nice story going on in it, and it was really well written, as well.

While I’m definitely not one for love triangles, I didn’t mind this one so much – in fact, I thought it was pretty well done, and I was surprised by the outcome, to be honest.

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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Originally from the Rocky Mountains, Lauren Sabel has returned to the cool mountain air of Boulder, Colorado after living in several wonderful cities that she will always love and continue to visit year after year.

Lauren loves her husband, her family, her friends, and stories that end happily. (Unfortunately, hers never do.) She also loves digging into her mind and revealing tiny gems she didn’t know were there.

Lauren learned to mind dig while getting her MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa, a Buddhist college in Boulder, Colorado. Before Naropa, Lauren studied film in Rome, where she developed her love of crypts and other beautiful creepy things. She also worked in the film industry in New York and San Francisco, focusing mainly on film festivals, as she can never pass up a good party. In San Francisco she worked for Chronicle Books, where she was inducted into the fascinating world of book publishing.

For the past eight years, Lauren has been teaching college students the joys of creative writing, whether they like it or not.

In 2008, Lauren was published in Undiscovered Voices, an anthology of the best new writers for children in the U.K., where she was living at the time. Then life got very exciting very quickly. She signed with Jodi Reamer Esq. at The Writer’s House Agency in New York, and they made magic happen, and that magic is named Katherine Tegen. (aka: Katherine Tegen Publishing, Harper Collins).

Lauren’s first book, Vivian Divine is Dead was published June 3 2014. She’s currently working on her next book, which she can’t wait to tell you about (but has to wait just a little while anyway).

Lauren believes that being a teenager is an act of courage, and is proud of anyone who manages to stick through it, despite the pain. 🙂

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