HOOKED by Liz Fichera --Teaser Tuesday

It's release day for HOOKED by Liz Fichera!

Get hooked on a girl named Fred…

HE said: Fred Oday is a girl? Puh-leeze. Why is a girl taking my best friend's spot on the boys' varsity golf team?

SHE said: Can I seriously do this? Can I join the boys' team? Everyone will hate me—especially Ryan Berenger.

HE said: Coach expects me to partner with Fred on the green? That is crazy bad. Fred's got to go—especially now that I can't get her out of my head. So not happening.

SHE said: Ryan can be nice, when he's not being a jerk. Like the time he carried my golf bag. But the girl from the rez and the spoiled rich boy from the suburbs? So not happening.
But there's no denying that things are happening as the girl with the killer swing takes on the boy with the killer smile…

"Not just a Romeo and Juliet story, the book examines the conflicts of white versus Indian and rich versus poor, giving it far more heft than the average romance. Bravo." (Kirkus STARRED Review)

I became a fan of Liz after reading "Captive Spirit".  (This is a HUGE compliment coming from me since I normally dislike historicals and Captive Spirit takes place at the dawn of the 16th century.)

I decided that the reason I liked the book so much was the way Liz created her heroine Aiyana. She made her a strong, relatable young woman.

That's why I can't wait to meet Fred, a Native American Girl who joins the all boys' golf team, in Liz's debut young adult novel HOOKED.

HOOKED Excerpt: From Chapter One:

I believed that my ancestors lived among the stars. Whenever I struck a golf ball, sometimes the ball soared so high that I thought they could touch it. Crazy weird, I know.

But who else could have had a hand in this?

Coach Larry Lannon towered over Dad and me, his shoulders shielding us from the afternoon sun. "So, what's it gonna be?" he said, his head tilted to one side with hair so blond that clear should be a color. "Are you in?" He paused and then lowered his chin. "Or out?"

I drew in a breath. Even though Coach Lannon had said that I could smack a ball straighter than any of his varsity players at Lone Butte High School, his confidence still rocked me off my feet sometimes. He wanted me on the team. Bad.

"Chances like this don't happen every day," he added, and I ached to tell him that they never happened, not to my family. Not in generations.

See, here's the thing about Coach Lannon. I met him by accident at the end of the summer as I waited for Dad at the Ahwatukee Golf Club driving range. At first I thought he was some kind of golf-course stalker or something. He kept gawking at me as I hit practice balls. It was kind of creepy. I figured he'd never seen an Indian with a golf club.

Anyway, I pretended not to notice and concentrated on my swing. I smacked two buckets of golf balls beside him with my mismatched clubs as if breathing depended on it. After my last ball, Coach Lannon walked straight up into my face and declared that I had the most natural swing he'd ever seen. The compliment shocked me. And when I told him that I was going to be a junior at Lone Butte, one of only a handful from the Gila River Indian Reservation, the man practically leaped into a full-blown Grass Dance. He'd been stalking me at the driving range ever since.

Now that school had started, he was making his final pitch to get me to join his team.

(Taken from the HOOKED excerpt on Amazon.com.  To read the rest of the chapter, go here.)

For more info about Liz and her books, be sure to visit her!