Ohana Reads: Blog Tour: Thicker Than Water by Kelly Fiore

Hello and welcome to the Thicker Than Water Blog Tour! Kelly kindly answered a few of my questions for her upcoming novel and about being an author, so scroll down and check that out. As well as entering the tour wide giveaway!

Thicker Than Water by Kelly Fiore

Release Date: January 5th, 2016

Publisher: HarperTeen

Series: N/A

Format: Hardcover, 320 pages

Description from GoodReads:

Cecelia Price killed her brother. At least, that’s what the police and the district attorney are saying. And although Cecelia is now locked up and forced into treatment, she knows the real story is much more complicated.

Cyrus wasn’t always the drug-addled monster he’d become. He was a successful athlete, but when an injury forced him off the soccer field and onto pain medication, his life became a blur of anger, addiction, and violence. All CeCe could do was stand by and watch, until she realized one effective way to take away her brother’s drugs while earning the money she needed for college: selling the pills.

Soon, CeCe becomes part drug dealer, part honor student. But even when all she wants is to make things right, she learns that sometimes the best intentions lead to the worst possible outcome.

Thicker than Water is an unforgettable dark, harrowing look into the disturbing truth of drug addiction and the desperate love of a sister watching her brother deteriorate before her eyes.

From the detailed synopsis of Thicker Than Water, we're to expect a deep and very dark read, it being filled with violence and addiction, what made you choose this grim topic? Do you have a personal connection to the topic?

My family faced its own struggles with addiction. I felt that my story and the story of a sibling struggling with her brother’s addiction was the tale I was born to tell because I lived it. In the end, my best writing is always about things I know, emotions I’ve felt, and lives I’ve inhabited.

With Thicker Than Water releasing in a week how do you feel about the launch date coming up so fast? Are you freaking out yet? Or are you a natural now that Thicker Than Water is your third full length novel to be published?

I’m excited! I can’t wait for people to have the chance to read this book because I desperately
hope it will help others. I think there is a need for books that address the people who live on the periphery of addictions. They aren’t secondary characters, in this case, even though they often feel like they play second fiddle to the addicts in their lives.

The cover gods have blessed you with an incredibly beautiful cover, what are your thoughts on it?

Oh, I love it – I love the idea of hanging by a thread, of being at the proverbial end of one’s rope. That applies to so many characters in this book.

Once Thicker Than Water releases do you have something new planned for the future? If so, any thoughts on what it might be?

I’m working on my next book for Harper Teen, HOMEGROWN, which explores the life of a girl whose father operates a medical marijuana dispensary. She is a strong character, like CeCe, and is determined to help patients being rejected for medicinal cannabis.

For the heck of it, I was wondering out of the three books you have written so far, whose story would you be interested in becoming apart of? Which world do you think you'd belong the best in?

Well, because I struggled with a family member with addiction, I guess I sort of lived through aspects of THICKER THAN WATER. But I think TASTE TEST is probably my “dream world.” It was my first book and I put a lot of heart and soul into building a world that I might really want to inhabit.

Kelly Fiore-Stultz has a BA in English from Salisbury University and an MFA in Poetry from West

Virginia University. She received an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2005 and 2009. Kelly’s poetry has appeared in Small Spiral Notebook, Samzidada, Mid Atlantic Review, Connotation Press, and the Grolier Annual Review. Her first young adult novel, Taste Test, was released in August 2013 from Bloomsbury USA, and her second, Just Like the Movies, again from Bloomsbury, was releasted in 2014. Forthcoming novels include Thicker Than Water from HarperTeen in 2015.

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Thanks for stopping by and joining us for the Blog Tour! I hope that you guys decide on reading Thicker Than Water! I'd love to hear what you think of the book!