Another fantastic book to curl up with! Read more about The Confession of Hemingway Jones below and be sure to grab a copy on September 26th!
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The Confession of Hemingway Jones
Publication Date: September 26, 2023
Genre: YA Sci-Fi
It’s time to raise the dead.
Moments after a devastating car accident kills his father, 17-year-old Hemingway Jones takes his father’s body to Lifebank, the cryogenic preservation research center where he interns. Hijacking the lab in a desperate attempt to reverse the natural order, Hemingway holds police and medics at bay as he works to revive his father. As dawn breaks, the heart monitor beeps, and his father slowly creeps back to life.
Days later, Hemingway arrives at the hospital to learn that his father’s skin has turned ashen gray, he can’t exist in temperatures above 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and hydrogen sulfide has become his only source of food. Facing arrest for his reckless actions, Hemingway is offered a proposal by the billionaire owner of the lab: recreate the experiment he swore he’d never do again, or go to prison, leaving his father to die a second time.
Excerpt
It’s been a few months, but sour memories of the day I killed my father still burp back up, and my gut clenches every time. Todd and I were absolutely blazed, sitting on the front steps of his family’s double-wide when Dad pulled up, the tires on his Ford F250 skidding to a stop about three inches from my sneakers, while the Jones Construction and Restoration lettering was practically shoved up my nose. Dad hiked himself out the driver’s-side door with a slam and I knew I had about fifteen seconds to sober up.
We hadn’t planned on doing this—skipping school and getting baked. Or at least I hadn’t. But Todd had found this brick of hash in his parents’ barn, and well, it was the first spring day where temps were due to hit 65 degrees. We cut out fourth period, rode our bikes back to his place, and got rocked. Seemed like a good idea at the time, and we’d had fun tormenting the chickens, but now I was going to pay for it.
I wasn’t the only one who was nervous either. Todd tucked his drink behind his back while my dad crunched gravel. Todd had obviously forgotten that all he had was a Yoo-hoo. He nodded and called out, “Hey there, Mr. Jones.”
Dad murmured, “Todd,” in his general direction, but kept his eyes focused on me.
He was just standing there, directly in front of the late-afternoon sun. I squinted, but all I could see was this ominous black silhouette of rippling muscle.
I realize I’m making him sound scary, but he’s not. Everybody likes my dad, even Todd. Even me. He’s this pretty cool, off-the-grid kind of guy. He can build or fix just about anything, and I’m not just talking about when you’ve had a kitchen fire or a burst pipe—that’s just what he does for work. He’s also the guy who pulls over when you’ve got a flat and the one who starts applying the Heimlich on some choker in Kentucky Fried. (It’s happened.) He’s smart too. He doesn’t have a college degree or anything, but he can talk about black holes and relativity. He can take any online Mensa or IQ test and come up genius, every time. He even beats my scores, and I’m not easy to beat.
The point is stand-up guy Bill Jones can be a little scary when he’s mad. And I was about to get reamed.
He turned his face profile before he spoke, so I could see just how much air he was furiously pumping through his shadowy nostrils. “Got a call from the school. And another one from Cass.”
My first impulse was to cringe, make excuses, and get up, knowing I was busted. But over the last year or so I’d learned that if I waited long enough in these fights, my pangs of guilt would pass and I’d turn into a cocky asshole, someone far more capable of fighting with Bill Jones. So I waited until I saw Dad as a thunderstorm, rudely blocking out my sun. And I shrugged. I mean, big deal. So I skipped school again. I knew the real problem was the call from Cass. I’d never skipped the Tuesday/Friday afternoon internship before, and that was what he was really pissed about. He’d filled out all the paperwork for that internship himself—he’d even written the essay when I refused—all so that I would have “the future” he never did.
“Hem, I’ll uh—” Todd looked around quickly, hoping some excuse for his desertion would magically appear. “I think maybe I gotta help with dinner. See ya, Mr. Jones.” He practically ran inside.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Dad exhorted. “You have this gift. My God, you want to end up like that?” He gestured at Todd’s disappearing form.
“Dad, that’s low. Leave him alone.”
He didn’t even pause. He just growled, “Hemingway Jones,” in that low, throaty way that he always does before lecturing. And he knows I hate my name. But he rarely calls me Hem—he says it sounds like a pronoun.
“You have absolutely no idea what you’re risking. NONE!” And with that crack of thunder came the rain. He blasted on, salting his sentences liberally with words like responsibility and commitment.
I rolled my eyes. The lecture was so generic I didn’t taste anything close to regret. I could recite a variation of this speech as easily as I could the periodic table. Anyway, due to some really good dope, the tweaks and nuances of this particular version are lost forever.
Available at these Retailers:
CamCat Books
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Books-A-Million
IndieBound
About the Author
Having worked as a Hollywood development executive for many years, Kathleen Hannon’s career got turned upside down by the Writer’s Strike of 2007. With nothing to edit, she turned her desk from west to north, and her editing skills to writing. Her Middle-Grade novel Bye for Now was published by Egmont in late 2011. After a couple screenplays for Hollywood, she has returned to books. The Confession of Hemingway Jones is her first YA novel. Hannon lives in Charlotte, N.C., and is the single mom of two daughters.
My thoughts: tackling grief, life after death, this sci fi tale fuses ideas from
Frankenstein to Walt Disney’s chryogenically frozen head and creates a creepy but fascinating story. Hemingway Jones might only be a teenage intern but the experiment he conducted to save his dying father, turning him into another lifeform almost, brings him to the attention of his wealthy and possibly evil boss.
But Hemingway doesn’t want to recreate the terrifying moments before his arrest, can he prevent the billionaire from doing this again and can he help his father?
Clever, sinister and enjoyable, this is a mystery unlike any other.
Book Tour Organized by R&R Book Tours
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
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ramblingmads 