Fever Pitch by Heidi Cullinan: Review, Excerpt, and Giveaway!!!

~Penny’s Rating: A ~

So. Many. Feels.

Yes, this is a love story – and the romance side of Heidi Cullinan’s latest “new adult” novel Fever Pitch is awesome, and adorable. It’s even angsty and intense. We get to see Walter and Kelly again, and think about the songs in Frozen, and there are a Capella singing groups up the wazoo! More than all of that, this book is about doing what you love. Do what you love. It’s never that simple or easy is it? But there is hope, and this book reminded me of what I love.

What I love is music. Singing. I am a vocalist, a performer, an artist, a writer, masquerading as an office manager. No matter how good I am at my job, it feels like a half-life.

This book is like my young adulthood. I went to a conservatory at a university, and I feel like I got to re-live a bit of that with this book. The love of music, the passion, and utter joy that Cullinan’s character’s experience through their artistry, I feel like Cullinan captured it perfectly.

I miss singing every damn day. I really do. So much that it’s a physical ache. I’m doing something about that by the way, but these kids, Aaron and Giles, they remind me of myself at that age. The late nights in the practice rooms, the 2 am tech rehearsals for student directed plays, the excessively long holidays concerts, the rush that shoots through you – the pounding of your heart and the way your spirit soars when you’re working with another person or group of people and realize that somewhere in the last moment, you stopped practicing and started making art. You connect on this whole other level.

The parents in this book: Giles’ parents are amazing, and Aaron’s well, you’ll have to wait and see, but you will probably want to beat them with sticks. I’m so grateful that my parents let me take my own path, and encouraged me to pursue my art in whatever way I could. I know not everyone is so lucky. Not everybody gets it. They’re still my biggest fans, and I will never be able to thank them enough for that. This book clearly illustrates how utterly and completely un-supportive parents can be. And how sometimes, you make your own family out of the people who support you and lift you up.

I know that not everyone who reads this will have such a visceral gut reaction to the content, but I know there are a lot of young people out there trying to figure out what they want to do, and who they could be, and I know I am not the only jaded thirty-something who isn’t doing what they love every day. What can I say, life takes you places you didn’t expect to go, and that’s not a bad thing either.

I loved this book. Great inspiring story with characters that I want to invite for dinner or keep in my pocket. The best so far in this amazing series. Oh, and do what you love.

Fever Pitch Book Blurb and Links

Released September 30 from Samhain Publishing

Book Two of the Love Lessons Series

Sometimes you have to play love by ear.

Aaron Seavers is a pathetic mess, and he knows it. He lives in terror of incurring his father’s wrath and disappointing his mother, and he can’t stop dithering about where to go to college—with fall term only weeks away. Ditched by a friend at a miserable summer farewell party, all he can do is get drunk in the laundry room and regret he was ever born. Until a geeky-cute classmate lifts his spirits, leaving him confident of two things: his sexual orientation, and where he’s headed to school.

Giles Mulder can’t wait to get the hell out of Oak Grove, Minnesota, and off to college, where he plans to play his violin and figure out what he wants to be when he grows up. But when Aaron appears on campus, memories of hometown hazing threaten what he’d hoped would be his haven. As the semester wears on, their attraction crescendos from double-cautious to a rich, swelling chord. But if more than one set of controlling parents have their way, the music of their love could come to a shattering end.

Warning: Contains showmances, bad parenting, Walter Lucas, and a cappella.

Buy links: Samhain, Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, iTunes

Goodreads

Excerpt (Different excerpt from the one below!)

Book Page on Website

Book Page for Love Lessons (book one in the series)

Excerpt:

“You’re like Gilbert and Sullivan, or Menken and Ashman,” Karen told them one day at the end of rehearsal.

The other girls chimed in with agreement and effusive praise for their talents as Aaron looked abashed and Giles’s ears heated at the tips.

Then, in the back of the room, someone whispered a little too loudly, “They should totally be a couple.”

As Giles’s blush covered him like an ugly rash and Aaron ducked his head and shrank into his sweatshirt, the girls broke into giggles. Rehearsal was over, so they started filing out, all but Aaron and Giles, who sat frozen at their table.

As Mina passed by, she jerked her head at Aaron and mouthed to Giles, Ask him out, now.

Giles wasn’t sure what the hell he should do. Leaving felt…wrong, but sitting here was all kinds of awkward. He wished he knew what it meant that Aaron still sat there, rigid, with his head bowed. Giles tried to tell himself Aaron was freaked about being outed, except it didn’t wash because after Baz, everybody knew.

Obviously Giles had gotten that memo long before anyone else.

When the silence got too heavy, Giles cleared his throat. Say something benign. Just be a fucking human long enough to smooth this over. “So.”

Are you doing anything for dinner?

Would you like to go out for coffee?

Could I blow you?

Giles got so nervous his jaw ached, sending weird, throbbing bands of nervousness down the front of his neck into his chest until he thought he might be having a heart attack. Speech was out of the question. Now all he wanted to do was not pass out.

Aaron cleared his throat too, but when he spoke, his voice was thick and rough, not its usual melodious self. “I…I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

Holy shit. Giles could barely breathe, let alone speak. “Yes?”

Aaron’s hands opened and closed over the music in front of him, crinkling it and smearing the pencil. “I…I wondered if you…if we…”

Ohmyfuckinggod. Giles felt dizzy. Was it going to happen? Was Aaron asking…? A “Hallelujah” chorus cued up in Giles’s head.

Aaron flexed his hands nervously. “I wondered if…you could…give me a violin lesson.”

The “Hallelujah” chorus skipped, scratched and crashed in a fiery inferno to the earth. “You want…violin lessons?”

Giles took a good look at Aaron—flushed cheeks, dilated pupils, the now completely balled-up manuscript paper under his hands. “Yeah.” He sounded as disappointed as Giles. “Never mind. That was a stupid thing to ask.”

It was a weird thing to ask, is what—except Giles would have put hard money on Aaron being about to ask him out and chickening out at the edge of the diving board. Which all but assured him Aaron would be receptive to being asked out.

Except Giles still couldn’t do it. Instead he said, “It’s not stupid. I’d give you a violin lesson anytime you wanted. Right now, if you want.”

Aaron lifted his head. Unlike Giles, his blush only made him that much hotter. “You don’t have to.”

“But I’d love to.”

For the first time since the they should be a couple comment, Aaron met Giles’s gaze. He looked terrified, embarrassed, ready to run. Giles’s heart turned over, and he had to actively fight an urge to fold Aaron into his arms and make the world go away.

That was when Giles realized what the friend part of boyfriend was—he wanted to protect Aaron, make everything okay. Not just like he did for Min, but…more. To know his partner so well he knew not only when he was upset but how to make the hurt go away.

Violin lesson. Fuck yeah.

“I don’t think anyone’s in this room until seven. I could borrow Karen’s instrument to teach you, or we could share mine.”

It was kind of funny, actually, how thrown Aaron looked. “Um…sure. If you really don’t mind.”

“Not at all.” He nodded at the music stands and chairs on the other side of the room. “Set up two chairs and stands next to each other, and I’ll be right back.”

As he headed out the door, Giles glanced over his shoulder. Aaron stood at the table, terrified and nervous.

And hopeful.

Giles shut his eyes and savored it a moment. Then he hurried out of the rehearsal hall and into the student lounge to fetch his violin.

Giveaways!!

Why yes Jim, there’s more than one way to win!

Giveaway#1: That’s right! Want to win a copy of Fever Pitch? Leave a comment on this post along with your email address! So something like: “OOhh Penny, me want giveaway! my email is: youraddress@gmail.com”. You have until Wednesday, October 8th to comment and leave your e-mail, at which time I will draw names out of a hat or some other fair and practiced methodology, and announce the winner and notify that person via e-mail. Thanks to Heidi Cullinan and Samhain Publishing for providing the giveaway copy!

Giveaway#2: Heidi is doing a rafflecoptor for Fever Pitch on her site, with 3 prizes! AND OMG- there is St. Timothy SWAG!!!!!

Prize one:
- Win an electronic copy of Fever Pitch for you, or for a friend
- Receive by mail a signed paperback of book one in the series, Love Lessons
- Choose between a $10 iTunes gift card or one month of premium Spotify membership to enjoy the a cappella music you read about in Fever Pitch
- Select an item of your choice from the Heidi Cullinan Saint Timothy Swag Store (Items still building, especially quote mugs)
Prize two:
- Win an electronic copy of Love Lessons and Fever Pitch for you or for a friend
- Pick or design a Love Lessons series quote mug from the Saint Timothy store (if the quote you love isn’t there, tell Heidi and she’ll design a mug just for you!)
- Pick another established item from the Saint Timothy store, anything goes! (More products added all the time.)
Prize three:
- Win an electron copy of Fever Pitch (for you or for a friend
- Tell Heidi who your favorite character from the Love Lessons series is, and they’ll write a public blog post personalized to you!
There are eight different ways to enter, and some you can do more than once.

fever-pitch-grand-prize-image — Click here to enter the Grand Prize Giveaway! http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/bc7416c21/

a Rafflecopter giveaway

About the Author

Heidi Cullinan has always loved a good love story, provided it has a happy ending. She enjoys writing across many genres but loves above all to write happy, romantic endings for LGBT characters because there just aren’t enough of those stories out there. When Heidi isn’t writing, she enjoys cooking, reading, knitting, listening to music, and watching television with her husband and ten-year-old daughter. Heidi also volunteers frequently for her state’s LGBT rights group, One Iowa, and is proud to be from the first mid-western state to legalize same-sex marriage.