Rockstar Blog Tour for Persuasion! (With HUGE Giveaway!)

Barrie Watson, after growing up very sheltered and alone with her shut in mother and her fabulous ex-drag queen godfather in Los Angeles, arrives to live with her aunt in South Carolina, knowing nothing about her family or the plantation that has been in the family for 300 years. But the plantation is haunted by the spirit of an ancient Cherokee witch, and other small spirits are taking the house apart, wanting Barrie to do something. Since the family magic, received from the witch when the family first settled the island, is the gift of finding lost things, and because Barrie is now the heir to that magic, she begins to uncover a series of secrets buried on the island. This includes discovering a murder, which is indirectly the reason her mother ran away before Barrie was born, and the reason her grandfather tried to suppress the magic that both Barrie’s mother and aunt had inherited from him, as well as a very real danger that is putting Barrie at risk as she investigates.

She is helped in her investigations by the young man who lives across the river—Eight Beaufort, Charles Beaufort, VIII, whose family has a gift for knowing what people want most most. As Barrie’s gift pulls her toward Eight, she fights the pull because she doesn’t want to be tied to someone so quickly, and she isn’t sure whether it’s her gift pulling her toward Eight, or whether the fact that he knows what she wants makes it easy for him to get her to like him, or whether her feelings are genuine.

To complicate things even more, Eight is determined to get as far away from Watson Island as he can, and he has a scholarship to go play baseball at the University of Southern California in the fall. But Barrie ends up magically bound to Watson’s Landing, which makes it physically impossible for her to leave the plantation for any length of time.

Another complicating factor is Barrie’s cousin Cassie, whose family didn’t receive a magical gift from the Fire Carrier, but received a curse instead. For 300 years, the Colesworths have wanted what the Beauforts and the Watsons want most, but they never get it. For years before Barrie came, what Cassie wanted most was to get away. To do that, she needed to find the treasure that was rumored to be buried on her family’s property and lost since the Civil War. When Barrie first arrives with her gift for finding things, this seems like the perfect opportunity to find the treasure. Except that the treasure isn’t what Barrie finds on the properly, and as she investigates and tries to befriend Cassie, Cassie discovers that what What Eight and Barrie want most is each other, and that leads to interference from the curse.

Persuasion continues very shortly after Compulsion left off. Barrie’s godfather has died, and she’s having trouble letting go. She and Eight have deepened their relationship while they’ve been gone, but Eight’s departure for college is looming over them both—so much so that Eight decides to give up his scholarship and find a way to go to school in South Carolina so that he can stay close to home. But as much as Barrie wants to be glad about that, she can’t help wondering if that’s his own decision. Does he want her for herself, or is the magic making the decision for him?

To complicate matters, as Seven learns that Eight intends to stay to be close to Barrie—as opposed to staying for the sake of family responsibility—he reveals a secret to Barrie that he has kept hidden from Eight all his life. That secret not only effects the relationship between Barrie and Eight, but Eight’s entire future and also Cassie’s future.

The decisions Barrie makes as a result of that secret are further complicated by the arrival of Obadiah, a man who can turn himself into a raven or disappear altogether. Having heard about what happened recently on Watson Island, he has returned to search for Cassie’s lost treasure and to break the Colesworth curse, which he claims has brought disaster on his family as well as Cassie’s family since it was originally cast. And, as he explains, the story that Cassie told Barrie about the curse and how it came about isn’t at all how Cassie portrayed it.

What about book 3? Do we have a title yet?

We have a title—it’s Illusion. And also we have a cover color—teal. It’s gorgeous. The brilliant Regina Flath is still finalizing it, but I’ve seen the initial direction and it’s the best one so far!

And here’s the tour schedule: