Hey Fam! I didn’t end up getting the book on time to read and review it, but I wanted to make sure that I posted an excerpt on my day. Stay tuned for the review hopefully within the next couple of days or so since I got the book in the mail last night!

Welcome to Bohring-home to 453 people, 2,053 alligators, and one monster curse.

Correction: home to 454 people, now that Kick Winter is living in the swamp Hollows with her Grandma Missouri, the town (fake) psychic. Bohring is anything but boring for Kick who has already blown a hole through the kitchen floor, befriended a chicken-eating gator, and discovered that the town’s hundred-year curse is upon them.

It’s the Bohring curse and all the kids are about to become monsters-or so the legend goes. People are worried-except for Kick. She knows there’s a scientific explanation for everything, especially curses and monsters. But Kick is the new kid in school and she’s determined to make a name for herself . . . by pretending to be psychic.

According to her calculations: one teeny-tiny life + (fake) psychic skills = popularity. But when kids start disappearing and glowing creatures start showing up, Kick’s theory quickly evaporates in a puff of foul-smelling swamp gas. Can Kick use her (real) science smarts to prove the curse is a hoax? Or is it just-maybe-sort of-somehow possible the curse is here?

Author Romily Bernard weaves a fast-paced middle-grade mystery filled with humor and scientific intrigue, set in a perfectly eerie Southern town.

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omily Bernard graduated from Georgia State University with a literature degree. Since then, she’s worked as a riding instructor, cell-phone salesperson, personal assistant, horse groomer and exercise rider, accounting assistant, and, during a very dark time, customer service representative. . . . She’s also, of course, now a YA novelist.

So don’t let anyone tell you a BA degree will keep you unemployed.

Romily currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and Find Me is her debut novel. It placed first in the 2011 YA Unpublished Maggie Awards (given by Georgia Romance Writers) and won the Golden Heart Award for YA Romance from the Romance Writers of America in 2012.

“Wait!” Kick pressed the back of one hand to her forehead just as she’d seen Grandma Missouri do dozens of times before. “I’m having a vision! A vision of . . .” She dropped her hand and squinted at her teacher. “A vision of you and something sparkly? Yes, sparkly! Like gold in the sunshine. Like jewels under clear water.”

Someone made a gagging sound, and again, Kick was pretty sure that someone was Jenna Jane. She concentrated harder on Mrs. Flagg. “Are you an artist?”

“Well,” their teacher said, face and neck going pink. “I dabble a little. Crafts mostly.”

Kick stared, a funny feeling uncurling in her chest. Was it excitement? Nervousness? She wasn’t sure. It should be triumph. She’d guessed right. She was good at this, and that felt almost as fantastic as the few amazed gasps that went up among the students.

She sneaked a glance at them and realized a few of the girls’ expressions had changed. Before, their eyes had bounced over Kick like she was furniture. Now they looked at her like she was someone. (49–50)

Crickets chirped in the long grass as Kick ran toward school. I’m going to be late, she thought, pushing herself faster. I’m going to have to walk into class, and everyone’s going to stare at me.

It was not a time to linger, but even so, she still snatched

glances at the swamp around her. It was just a swamp. No horrible smells. No growling. Nothing. That had to be a good sign, right?

Wrong.

And Kick knew it when she careened around the last corner, heading for the schoolyard. Everyone was outside—teachers, students, parents, the mayor—and everyone was talking all at once.

Or rather, shouting at once.

Miss Cleo—who owned the Curl Up and Dye and was known for her temper—kept shaking her fist at Mayor Burr, upper arms jiggling like broken-open cans of biscuit dough. Mr. Myer, on the other hand, kept his fists low, gripping his rust-stained apron. Only . . . was it rust? Because Kick suddenly wasn’t so sure.

Well now I’m even more intrigued to dive right in to this book. Possibility piles be darned, am I right? Hehe, but seriously now that I received the book, I can’t wait to read it, and I’m so sorry that this post isn’t a review like it should be. I appreciate you all so much for your patience in letting me read the book now. As much as I would love to, I can’t read a book in a couple of hours. My brain is just fried all the time

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway that we have! 3 winners will receive a hardcover of THE MONSTER HYPOTHESIS, US only.

Until next time, fam!