Giveaway on Friday? Sure, why not! I have five ARCs of Jennifer Crusie’s upcoming hardcover, “Maybe This Time,” and you can win one.
This book is Crusie’s first single-author single-title in a few years (as in, she didn’t collaborate on this one) and when the ARC arrived on my doorstep a few weeks ago, I idly started reading the first page, only to find that I’d stood at my kitchen counter reading the first chapter completely blind and deaf to everything around me. My house is loud, so this was alarming. I was sucked in immediately, and couldn’t stop reading.
I’d love to hear what you think of it before the book comes out at the end of the month. Want a copy? A sexy flexible paperback ARC?
Alls you have to do is:
1. Tell me in the comments if you believe in ghosts and why/why not. Ghost stories are totally ok to share.
2. Let me know if you review the book after you’ve read it, and where your review is (or, you can send it over to me if you don’t have your own website).
Easy, right?
You’ve got 48 hours and I’ll announce the winners on Sunday and, with luck and quick responses, start mailing the big ol’ packages Monday morning.
Standard disclaimer: I’m not being compensated for this giveaway. I will ship to international prizewinners. I will not eat them in a box. We’ve got to hold on to what we’ve got. No shirt, no shoes, no service.
A new Jennifer Crusie?? I didn’t even know this was on the horizon! I am super excited!
I don’t believe in ghosts – it just doesn’t seem logical to do so.
Yeesh, that would be “doze,” not “dose.” Where’s the edit button?
I definitely believe in ghosts (and am ready for the new Jenny Crusie to prove me right (or wrong)!). I think if you believe in there being something spiritual in the world—God, love, anything—you have to believe that spirits have power and that that could take a ghostly form.
I don’t believe in ghosts. I require empirical proof and have never encountered any that made me want to change my mind.
Having said that, the rest of my family went on holiday together a few years ago, and had some very strange experiences in the house they stayed in: an incomprehensible smell of cigar smoke, a cold odd feeling at the top of a flight of stairs, a strange banging that stopped when told to, frequent nightmares, and something that sounded like breathing in the night. I think there are probably reasonable explanations for these phenomena – old houses can be eerie, especially when they’re unfamiliar – but it makes a great story, and I do love a good ghost story!
OMG, I’m so excited for this book. But that’s all I wanted to say. I don’t want to be in a give-away, because of this long story about home renovations taking longer than necessary and having books scattered everywhere and not needing to add to the pile. But I just had to express my enthusiasm for a new Jennifer Cruisie book without a collaborator.
I’m a ghost skeptic, but I’m not quite an unbeliever. I’ve never had a ghost experience but I’m willing to believe that they may exist. Just because I’ve never seen them doesn’t mean they don’t. However, since I’ve never encountered one, its hard for me to believe in them completely.
No review blog, sorry 🙁 But I know people who have them and I would be willing to send the ARC on to them after I was done (as long as I got it back!)
Oh – i feel like I’ve been waiting for this book forever as I’ve been listening to Jenny talk about writing it on her blog at arghink for months now. If I don’t get the ARC, be sure I’ll be picking it up on the 24th and spending the night in one straight read through.
I don’t actually believe in ghosts. But I do believe that there is more in Heaven and Earth, Horatio…and I’m not about to limit the possibilities of what may happen that’s beyond my understanding. I think it’s possible that places have memories and may retain some echo of the things that have happened there. And perhaps some essence of a dead person could likewise leave an echo, but I’m a Christian and my personal beliefs are that souls don’t linger once the body has ended. I think ghost hunting is more hype than fact but since I’ve never done it, I really can’t judge.
BUT – it does make for a good story! And I’m unbelievably excited about this one!
I believe in ghosts, somewhat. My mother is convinced that our first family dog, who saw the birth of every one of my siblings and myself, after she had recently passed away, saved my toddler sister from getting hurt in the house by a light fixture that unexpectedly fell where she had been. My grandfather also passed away while fishing, so lakes hold special spooky significance to my mother, and she probably put some of that on me.
Yay! A new Cruisie! I don’t believe in ghosts, at least not in the traditional sense of them being the spirits of dead people, but I do believe that things happen that can only be explained by the spiritual/paranormal.
I’ve never written a book review before, but if I won I would definitely be willing to try. By the way, this site introduced me to Jennifer Cruisie, so I feel like I owe you a debt.
1. I am totally thrilled for a single title from Crusie. I’ve been less than enamored of her collabs and haven’t even read the last 2 so I hope this one is worth it.
2. I believe in ghosts in that I can’t disprove that they exist and acknowledge that some hinky shit goes on. Like that time I was in college and both my roommates were away and I was laying in bed and just about to fall asleep when I swear to god someone said my name twice. I would’ve just assumed I was more asleep than I thought but we lived in a building that’d had weird things happen before (my roommate took a bath one night, turned the faucet off, and it turn itself back on).
Then again I went to Waverly Hills, considered one of the most haunted buildings in the U.S., and other than being severely creeped out by the history I had none of the experiences others have had.
3. I would totally review it if I got a copy.
Ghosts? Not so much-but I don’t strongly disbelieve either. More like I consider them highly unlikely, and haven’t ever seen or experienced anything that would make me believe in them. But what I do believe is that I would love to read this book early! I don’t have a review blog-but I’d be happy to give writing a review a shot; I think it will be more “I loved this book” than “here’s why” though.
I belive in ghosts because I have definitely felt the presence of people I could not see and seen people who could not be there, like my grandmother shortly after her death. (Wow, this makes me sound a little crazy.
I am so excited for this new Crusie book and I would be delighted to review it!
I believe in ghosts because i have one in my house and oh holy ghost, do I want this book!!!!!!!
Totally excited about this book… I’m only #488 on my library’s waiting list for it (and I signed up a while ago, who knows how long that list is now) so winning it would certainly help me read it before next year sometime.
As for ghosts… I’m inclined to be a believer… to me ghosts are like aliens… they’re not entirely impossible.
I love writing book reviews… though I can be a bit scathing at times, at least I’m honest 🙂
I don’t believe in ghosts personally but I love a romance that has a ghost story! If I get the ARC I will be reviewing it on my blog, The Adventures of a Newly Employed Librarian. I love Jennifer Cruise!!
Ghosts. I don’t like to call what I’ve experienced ghosts. Presences? Probably splitting semantic hairs, but I haven’t felt an individual ghostly personality, but I have known when I’m in the presence of supernatural nuances.
‘hot63’—Why thank you, I will be 63 next month and I love thinking I’m hot—and not just from the hot flashes.
I do believe in ghosts. Though I have never seen one, I’ve definitely felt the presence of something “otherworldly” to borrow someone else’s phrase. It wasn’t a friendly something either. There was a room in a relative’s home that somehow felt extraordinarily unwelcome to females. Every single woman who walking into that room felt it and couldn’t stay for long. And it didn’t matter how old you were. The relative eventually sold the house. Have no idea if he discussed the “ghost” in the room.
Would be happy to review the book on my blog.
I do not believe in ghosts. I do believe in a good story that involves ghost. Can I just say The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?
I absolutly adore Crusie. After the last collaboration novel that involved demons, I would be stoked to see what she can do with ghosts.
I do believe in ghosts, but I’ve only ever seen ghost-cats. I am not sure there are all that many human souls locked on the earth. I think God’s a better housekeeper than I am.
No, I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m a science person, so I’d have to have hard proof.
I would be glad to review the book after reading it, but I don’t have a blog on which to post it. I’d send to you, though.
A new book? Awesome! I’ve been thinking lately I really need to start reading more.
As for ghosts, I believe in them 100%. I’m a huge skeptic so I don’t believe just any story i’m told, but I know ghosts exist. I saw one when I was a kid. It came in and sat on my bed for a while, so I stayed very quiet, and then it left. I think it was just tired. Everybody jokes about how I must have been reading something scary before bed, but even my child self could tell the difference between dreams and reality. I was awake, and that person was transparent and glowing softly.
Book reviews I can do. I love reviewing books. Books are just about my favourite thing in the whole world, along with writing.
I don’t know that I believe in ghosts, but I absolutely believe in…left over energy, I guess I could call it. I love ghost stories, and should anything like a ghostly encounter happen to me, I’d be completely open to it, but thus far I haven’t experienced anything neatly categorized under “ghosts”. That said, there are absolutely places and objects that seem to emanate a certain feeling or vibe, and despite my husband’s merciless teasing of me, I’m a huge believer in vibes. So, A Jennifer Crusie that might have ghosts? Definitely impatient to get my hands on this book, by hook or by crook.
spamword: children68
Holy crap, no. Two are PLENTY for me.
Well some of us chicks in the UK do believe in things that go bump in the night. Well I do, although this didn’t happen to me parse but more my mum!
Somewhat confused she asked me one morning, “Why do you keep coming in my room at night and staring at me?”
Totally confused I told her I hadn’t done that at all. She would laugh and say I was obviously sleep walking. Till the next evening it happened again and she obviously woke more to prove to me I was doing this. Alas though, it wasn’t me standing above her when she confronted said person and then then dissapeared into thin air! No it was her nan who had died when she was 4 years old! Needless to say I have believed since then and so has my mum!
I do book reviews of books I read and these are put onto my site and another book review site 🙂 I love books, love reading and quite frankly if I don’t find a way to fund my book habit soon I will have to turn to crime!!! M x
I believe in the possibility of ghosts. I haven’t seen one but I cannot say they don’t exist. I did visit Randall’s Ordinary in Connecticut (I think it’s the oldest still-running tavern/restaurant in the U.S.) and was disappointed that the resident ghost did not choose to make an appearance. Also, I want to believe since my sister has said she’ll do something to me that I don’t like after I’m dead so I have promised I will become a ghost and haunt her if she does, so it better be possible!
I am a huge Jennifer Crusie fan, both alone and in collaboration. Fred’s book is my favorite (I know he’s the dog but he’s very memorable)!
Regarding the ghost question… I vacillate between skepticism and agnosticism on that. I’ve never had anything I could characterize as a paranormal experience, although several people I know claim that they have. I’m doubtful about the existence of an afterlife, confident about the power of suggestion, and aware that the plural of anecdote is not data; but I also agree with Hamlet that “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Regarding a review… I don’t have a website, but I’m willing and able to write a review. In fact, I’d love the opportunity.
So I’m really a pretty hardcore skeptic. I blame it on the rebound that happened after I moved away from Albuquerque—that place would make the staunchest atheist a new age believer. I think there’s something in the water. But I have had one experience that made me really question my thoughts about ghosts.
So 1994 was a pretty bad year. My maternal grandmother died, six weeks later my paternal grandmother dies, and two months after that my paternal grandfather, my beloved Granddaddy, died, too. We were regulars at the funeral home which, let me tell you, is never a good feeling.
After Granddaddy’s funeral, my parents were left with the task of cleaning out his house. My grandfather loved golf—he hit four holes-in-one after he started playing regularly—and he loved watching it, too. He had a small television, probably from the early 70s, that he kept in his den so he could watch golf in peace. The TV was bequeathed to my younger sister. This television was so old that there was no remote control, only the dial that had to be advanced through all the channels if you wanted to get to one at the top. Every time you turned it on, you had to go through 2, 3, 4, whatever, to get to maybe 13.
One night, a couple of weeks after my sister took over the TV, she woke up screaming. The rest of us ran into the bedroom. She was huddled on the bed and just pointed at the television. It was on, she said, and she had never been out of bed.
That’s when I realized that the TV was on channel 7. There was no way that the TV would have accidentally flipped to that channel. Somehow, at 3a, it was playing a golf recap from earlier in the day.
I still wonder if it was my Granddaddy back to say he was okay.
I am skeptical. Neither Ghosthunters or any of the other shows about ghosts have convinced me that do or don’t exist. Why is it that Ghosthunters rarely finds anything, but Ghosthunters Int’l almost always does? And really, its all TV anyway.
Holy moley, I’m so excited about this book! I love reading these comments, too; lots of spooky tales.
I believe in ghosts and have felt their presence, but haven’t seen one. My grandfather used to talk to them all the time, but he says they stopped coming to him a few years ago (right around the time he began to show signs of Alzheimer’s).
One of my friends used to live in an old house in Charleston. One night she woke up and went to the bathroom, and after a minute or two she realized that the room had changed: suddenly there was wallpaper on the walls, a big clawfoot bathtub, old-fashioned perfume bottles, etc. next to the sink. As you can imagine, this startled her. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again everything was back to normal.
Later, she was chatting with her landlord and found out that a woman who had lived in the house in the twenties had committed suicide in that bathroom.
I don’t believe in ghosts, partly because such things don’t happen to me. In the first Felix Castor book, The Devil You Know, there’s a woman who can’t see ghosts at all. She’s beyond insensitive to them. I might be that, I might never have gone to the right places, ghosts and such might not exist—can’t prove a negative.
That said, when good luck saves people in my mom’s family, it’s her mother, Ruth Ann. Ruth Ann watches out for her girls.
I was a theatre major in college, and theatre people are pretty much required to believe in ghosts. No self-respecting stage would be without its own personal ghost. In college, our black box theatre was located in the stands of the old football stadium, so ours was the ghost of a football player who died on the field in the 20s. I never had a profound interaction with Nick the Ghost, but I always heard people talk about strange thumping sounds, flickering lights, weird auras that appeared in stage pictures. One friend even saw a man’s silhouette in a doorway, but no one was there when he got up to investigate. Of course, all this can be explained by the facts that the theatre was old, dark, rundown, and there were cats living in it, but I choose to believe in the ghost.
I love ghosts in my romance novels, and if I won this, I would totally review it and send that review along.
Well, I have yet to meet a ghost, but if I do I will let you know. I do believe in sock gnomes who are always stealing one sock from the dryer if that counts.
I would review the book on goodreads, my blog, and bn.com.
I would love me a sexy flexible paperback 😉
Have a nice friday ladies.
I am a skeptic but I do believe. Mostly because my great-grandmother experienced a few nighttime visitations. Usually when someone in the family was near death she would tell us “I saw that man again last night.” She said a man in black used to stand at the foot of her bed, sometimes with a child. I think the man was her brother that died when she was young and the child was a daughter that she lost as a baby. She also saw people in a particular rocking chair and now I can’t stand to see an empty chair rocking…
i believe that most paranormal events can’t be proved false. and though i haven’t experienced one first hand i know people who have, so i’m stealing their ghost stories:
A math teacher of mine saw a little boy and a woman in a house her family owned. Her sister got locked in a bathroom, while living there alone, and could only get out when she said, “Please stop, you’re scaring me.” A closet light wouldn’t stay off (even when the lightbulb was removed), and in one corner, any picture taken would have a string of lights in an arch in the background. I’ve heard many more stories, too. I just have to believe they are possible.
I would love to review this book and send it to you!
Ghosts? Nope. I do think we haunt ourselves with regrets, fears, and shame.
Review? You betcha! Have to send it in though as I’m an internet wanderer with no home of her own!
Spamword: top21. What I would name my blog should I ever create one.
I don’t believe in ghosts. I do believe that it’s a lot of fun to be scared or spooked or encounter “unexplained” things that set your imagination spinning. It’s also nice to imagine what dead people would say if they could see us now, or vice versa. That’s what’s so great about ghost stories: you can immerse yourself in spooky mystery and spine-tingling romance and it’s all contained within the covers of the book (or the movie or whatever). For a few hours everything is real and anything can happen.
I think my favorite ghost stories are the Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Timeskip by Charles de Lint (short story in the Dreams Underfoot collection, and totally copied—and made scarier—by a Doctor Who episode last season, called “Blink”), and the Haunted Bookshop mysteries by Alice Kimberly. The latter are awesome, as the ghost in question is a murdered stereotypical Sam Spade sort of detective, who is falling in love with the bookstore owner as he helps her solve murders.
I do not believe in ghosts at this time, although I am not prepared to dismiss the possibility completely. Mostly because I have experienced being on the actual site of the Alamo and getting a distinct creepy chill being there.
I do however believe in awesome ARCs, and reviewing same! 😉
I might believe in ghosts. Sort of. A little bit. Like, I believe in residual energy. If a lot of really bad things happen in a place I believe that place will retain bad vibes or what have you. And I believe that I have really and truly talked to my grandparents in dreams. But I think the governess is crazy in the Turn of the Screw.
I would, could, totally want to review that book. In fact, I NEED it. NEED.
Ooh, I would LOVE to get an ARC! Please enter me in the drawing.
I don’t believe in ghosts – it would take an actual incontrovertible personal experience to convince me, and that’s never happened – but I adore ghost stories. (I think I might not enjoy them nearly as much if I did believe in ghosts – I’d find the subject too freaky and no longer playful!)
I believe that some emotional connections are too strong to break, even through death, and that some personalities are so strong and complex and stubborn that they leaves echoes of themselves behind.
To be honest, though, I’ll believe in anything you like if it will score me a Cruisie ARC.
And if I do, I’ll be thrilled the review it on my blog—-I promise to edit out all the squees!
I totally believe in ghosts. I love ghost stories. I love the history of it all. I would love to be able to actually contact the spirits.
I would absolutely review the book. I would leave it on my blog.
Thanks so much for the chance to win!