ARE YOU LISTENING? CONVERSION: A REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

WELCOME TO BOOKIN' WITH BINGO'S" 
ARE YOU LISTENING? DAY"  
I AM EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE TODAY'S  
AUDIO BOOK CHOICE.....

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GIVEAWAY ENDED
CONVERSION
READ BY KHRISTINE HVAM

BY KATHERINE HOWE
  

ABOUT THE AUDIO BOOK:
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane comes a chilling mystery—Prep meets The Crucible. 

It’s senior year at St. Joan’s Academy, and school is a pressure cooker. College applications, the battle for valedictorian, deciphering boys’ texts: Through it all, Colleen Rowley and her friends are expected to keep it together. Until they can’t.

First it’s the school’s queen bee, Clara Rutherford, who suddenly falls into uncontrollable tics in the middle of class. Her mystery illness quickly spreads to her closest clique of friends, then more students and symptoms follow: seizures, hair loss, violent coughing fits. St. Joan’s buzzes with rumor; rumor blossoms into full-blown panic.

Soon the media descends on Danvers, Massachusetts, as everyone scrambles to find something, or someone, to blame. Pollution? Stress? Or are the girls faking? Only Colleen—who’s been reading The Crucible for extra credit—comes to realize what nobody else has: Danvers was once Salem Village, where another group of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago . . .

Inspired by true events—from seventeenth-century colonial life to the halls of a modern-day high school—Conversion casts a spell. With her signature wit and passion, New York Times bestselling author Katherine Howe delivers an exciting and suspenseful novel, a chilling mystery that raises the question, what’s really happening to the girls at St. Joan’s?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Katherine Howe is the New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, The House of Velvet and Glass, and Conversion. She has hosted “Salem: Unmasking the Devil” for the National Geographic Channel, and her fiction has been translated into over twenty-five languages. A native Texan, she lives in New England and upstate New York, where she teaches at Cornell and is at work on her next novel.

SOME OTHER BOOKS BY KATHERINE HOWE:

                     

MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW:
Katherine Howe's CONVERSION grabs readers from the start with protagonist Colleen Rowley who is attending a private all-girls school in Danvers, Massachusetts. This school setting just happens to be near the place where the Salem Witch Trials occurred and makes up the major storyline of CONVERSION. When students begin to exhibit  unusually strange symptoms, the action really takes off. Unable to find any connection between the girls as they fall ill, the school is perplexed at what could be causing all this. Pollution, vaccinations, and viruses seem the most likely cause but none of them can really be proven. These girls are all under a great deal of pressure to succeed in school as well as get accepted into prestigious colleges so even physical and mentally emotional pressure could be the cause.

Meanwhile, readers will find themselves caught up in two parallel worlds as Howe creates the second "world" built around a favorite interest of hers. As a descendant of a young woman who survived the Salem Witch trials in the late 1690s, Howe writes about that time period as told through the charismatic character of Ann Putnam. Developing Ann Putnam into a believable character, readers learn of the pressure she lived with and how she was made to do things she normally would not have. With witchcraft and sorcery whirling around Ann, she is easily compared to the current young women dealing with their own pressures.

Alternating between the two time periods, Howe weaves a tale that keeps readers turning pages as they learn about that infamous time in Salem and then witness the reactions to the Danbury school's perplexing ailments. With an outcry from locals, in fear that the mysterious illness may spread and that the school must be held responsible, the students are brought under even more pressure as they gain national attention. Does evil play a part in these bizarre maladies? Does anyone realize all of the attention these girls are getting, just as those back in the witch trials did? Is that what they wanted all the time and thus created all of this somehow themselves? Or is just one malignity responsible? Readers will be surprised to see how twists and turns that Katherine Howe incorporates not only makes for a fascinating read, but also an exhilarating experience!

GIVEAWAY

 THANKS TO RICHARD AND THE FINE FOLKS AT

RANDOM/PENGUIN AUDIO, I HAVE ONE COPY

OF THIS FASCINATING AUDIO BOOK TO 

GIVE AWAY TO ONE LUCKY WINNER!

  

--U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY
--NO P. O. BOXES, PLEASE
--INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS IN COMMENT
--ALL ENTRIES/COMMENTS MUST BE SEPARATE IN ORDER TO COUNT 
AS MORE THAN ONE ENTRY

HOW TO ENTER:

+1 ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU FOUND INTERESTING ABOUT CONVERSION THAT WOULD MAKE YOU WANT TO WIN THIS AUDIO BOOK

+1 MORE ENTRY: BLOG OR TWEET ABOUT THIS GIVEAWAY AND LEAVE A LINK I CAN FOLLOW IN THE ENTRY

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU FIND INTERESTING ON KATHERINE HOWE'S WEBSITE BY GOING HERE

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON ONE OTHER CURRENT GIVEAWAY YOU HAVE ENTERED ON MY BLOG. IF YOU ENTERED MORE THAN ONE, YOU CAN COMMENT ON EACH ON SEPARATELY AND GAIN MORE ENTRIES THAT WAY 

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON ONE WAY YOU FOLLOW MY BLOG. IF YOU FOLLOW MORE THAN ONE WAY, YOU CAN COMMENT SEPARATELY AND EACH WILL COUNT AS AN ENTRY

GIVEAWAY ENDS AT

 6 PM, EST, AUGUST 14

GOOD LUCK!