Trying Something New, Taking Chances #newromance #newYA

Have you ever tried something new? It takes a lot of guts. Sometimes it's overcoming fear and other times it's getting past your own insecurities. You have to step outside your comfort zone and set aside any outside influences. 

Vanessa Garden's latest YA romance, CARRIER is a tale of taking chances and searching for the truth. This compelling story is a timely tale as we face society's issues and fears. At it's heart, CARRIER is a love story. It's the love of family and of self but also the first love between a young couple. 

Now available in ebook and print, you'll want to read CARRIER tonight!

Blurb:
From the day she was born, Lena has viewed the world through the jagged window of a razor-wired fence. The hundred-acre property she shares with her mother in the Australian outback may keep her safe from the Y-Carrier disease, but it is no longer enough to hold Lena’s interest, and her mother’s increasingly tight grip on her free will is stifling.

Just as her curiosity blooms and her courage rises, she meets a boy through the fence — the first boy she has ever laid eyes on. His name is Patrick and he comes with a dangerous yet irresistible invitation of adventure beyond the fence, an invitation to which Lena cannot say no.

But Lena’s newfound freedom is short-lived and she soon discovers that the Y-Carrier disease is not the only enemy she faces on the outside. Her new enemies want something Lena has, and they are willing to do anything to get it...

Carrier is a YA novel about freedom, choice and family – and the terrifying disease that makes them mutually exclusive.
 
EXCERPT:
A gentle breeze passed through the trees, tickling my closely cropped hair and bringing with it the wild, earthy scent of bush flowers and of distant desert sands. I breathed in deep, the effect instantly calming...and glanced at the fence.
​
It was now or never.

I adjusted the straps of my backpack and rubbed at my arms where my skin continued to prickle, and with a slow, forced gait, moved away from the house until I was face to face with the fence.

This was really it—most likely my one and only opportunity at freedom, with Mum holed up in her room like she was.

The fence wire was cool against my sweaty fingers. My hands were trembling like Mum’s had last night, after she had shot—according to her—a snake. But I’d seen the third mound beneath our salmon bark eucalypt, as big as my father’s, and the last time I’d checked, Mum didn’t bury the snakes we killed. She wouldn’t waste our precious bullets on snakes, anyway— and she didn’t put bunches of wildflowers on top of their graves, either. And she definitely didn’t lock herself in the bedroom and cry for hours on end over a legless reptile.

Mum had killed someone. Maybe I’d never know who.

I wiped my sweaty palms against my pants and wondered what the hell I was doing. Was this what I truly wanted? Was a couple of hours, or nights, of freedom, worth the risk of the horrible melting death that came with the Y-Carrier?

One glance back at the dim house, with its boarded-up windows gave me my answer. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t handle Mum suffocating me with her fears. I needed to be me. Just once. And if I got killed trying, then I guessed at least I would die a free person instead of someone who had only ever experienced the world through razor-wired fences.

If I got too scared or bored or hated it, I could always come back anytime I wanted. Maybe I’d just explore the area close to the fence for a bit and return home in time for bed. It would be my first step—a baby step. And if Mum saw that I’d returned in one piece, then she might relent and start taking me out hunting with her, or even for a walk to the waterhole. Little things I’d begged her all my life to do, things she got to do every single day.

Sucking in a huge lungful of air, I looked up and caught sight of Alice’s star blinking back at me. But not just that one little star, all the others too. I threw my head back and drowned in the breathtaking sight. Even if just seeing the stars was all I got out of my little rendezvous, then I’d be satisfied, at least for a while.

I turned back to the fence with a renewed sense of determination, and was about to hurl myself at it, when every part of me stiffened—except for my heart, which was beating so hard I thought it might knock a heart-shaped hole through my chest.

I could not believe my eyes.

On the other side of the fence, staring down at me, was something I’d never encountered during my entire life in the West Australian outback—my mortal enemy according to Dad’s medical journals.

A boy.

Available in Ebook and Print
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Don't miss out on Vanessa's other YA supernatural series.

About the author:
 
A bookseller and Young Adult author, Vanessa loves nothing more than immersing herself in the exciting world of books. When she is not sharing her favorite reads with customers, or mentally casting actors to play the characters in her next novel, she enjoys hanging out with those she loves most.
 
Instagram: @vanessagardenwriter
Twitter: @vanessagarden_