Tenderfoot by Amy Tupper

TENDERFOOT is the first of four coming-of-age novels about a college girl struggling with the revelation of her family’s paranormal secret.

Jules is running. With the death of her mother behind her, she arrives at college in Chapel Hill ready to focus on friends, classes, and Andrew, the sweetest guy a girl could crush on. But Nick, the campus rock star, is always around, pressing every last one of her buttons. Things get strange when Nick plays his guitar, and even stranger when Jules discovers he wears a pendant identical to her dead mother’s. She wants answers. When her family's secret is revealed, Jules must choose between running away from the one person she has opened up to or running with him toward an unknown future.

Indie Author Amy Tupper has published her first ebook, TENDERFOOT, which mercifully, is better than the unedited novel she wrote during high school.

Born in Seattle in the ’70s, Amy moved with her parents to Paris, France in the mid ’80s, where she attended the American School of Paris for three years before returning to the United States to complete high school in Northern Virginia. Amy attended Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Communications. Amy now lives in Morrisville, NC with her husband and two tween daughters.

From the moment I started reading this book, I couldn’t put it down. It is a Young Adult book that manages to break the mold of paranormal romance, which with the number of them out there right now, is a feat all on its own.
The characters were well developed, an interesting blend of personalities that made for very amusing dialogue. The main character, Julianna, or Jules, is headstrong yet charming and manages to do more than pout and wait for men to rescue her, unlike some other YA heroines. Nick was definitely my favorite, though. Obnoxious, sarcastic and lovable, he is the kind of character that makes you turn the pages.

The story itself, has some really interesting twists that make for a fun read. I loved the mixture of Scandinavian folklore in the story; it infused an aura of the mystic more original than the vampire/werewolf mix we keep seeing ad nauseam.

What I enjoyed the most, however, was the atmosphere the author created. I loved the college campus as the background, it works wonderfully to give the sense that Jules is a bit in seclusion from the rest of the world.

This was definitely a good book, and one that I can highly recommend for teenagers and adults who like a bit of the paranormal in their pages.