Happy Friday!!! Yup. I’m here with another fabulous book tour from the awesomest of the awesome, Rockstar Book Tours. If you haven’t spent time in their website, what have you been doing with you life?! No really, tell me!

“People are always going to want to split you into pieces so they can feel more comfortable with who you are, and I’m sorry no one ever sat you down to prepare you for that.”

Oh my sweet baby Nevaeh. How much do I want to pull you from these pages and just give you a hug??? Gah! I love love loved this story so much!!!

This is so much more than a coming of age story. This is the kind of book where Big Things are discussed. The kind with capital letters. Nevaeh is biracial, half black, half Jewish. Even though she’s never felt like she’s fully belonged anywhere, she had her parents. And that was enough. Until she came home from school with her belongings in boxes and finds herself living with her estranged mother’s side of the family. With little explanation.

What follows is the story of Nevaeh picking up the pieces, trying to find a story that makes sense in the jumbled world she finds herself in. It’s about finding herself, but this is also about finding her place in the world.

I love that her parents are very real people too. While Nevaeh is trying to find who she is, she also discovers that her parents aren’t exactly what she thought either. I feel like this is such an important aspect of growing up that doesn’t always get looked at. Or brought up. Our parents are people, and people generally have complex, complicated lives with secrets and past choices and mistakes they regret. It doesn’t make them bad, it makes them human. And I loved how this was woven into Nevaeh’s story.

“It’s odd how sometimes these comments bother me, and how at other times I can’t help but chuckle at the absurdity. I guess I’m just used to never being enough of anything.”

The writing is poetic and since Nevaeh is an actual writer, her own poetry is woven in, making this novel sing with lyrical prose. It’s gorgeous! Nevaeh’s mother also gets a voice, as her journal entries are included, and I adore how this not only gives an added dimension to her character, but also makes the reader feel like we truly are on this journey of discovery with Nevaeh. It’s beautifully done and these intricate layers are what makes this book stand out.

Rich with meaning, delicious writing, and characters that simply burst off the pages, Color Me In is a spectacular debut that leaves me wanting more. This is definitely a book contemporary YA fans will not want to miss!

Thank you Rockstar Book Tours and Delacourte Press for including me on this tour and sending me a copy to review.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the tour, and enter for a chance to win a finished copy!!!

Debut YA author Natasha Diaz pulls from her personal experience to inform this powerful coming-of-age novel about the meaning of friendship, the joyful beginnings of romance, and the racism and religious intolerance that can both strain a family to the breaking point and strengthen its bonds.

Who is Nevaeh Levitz?

Growing up in an affluent suburb of New York City, sixteen-year-old Nevaeh Levitz never thought much about her biracial roots. When her Black mom and Jewish dad split up, she relocates to her mom’s family home in Harlem and is forced to confront her identity for the first time.

Nevaeh wants to get to know her extended family, but one of her cousins can’t stand that Nevaeh, who inadvertently passes as white, is too privileged, pampered, and selfish to relate to the injustices they face on a daily basis as African Americans. In the midst of attempting to blend their families, Nevaeh’s dad decides that she should have a belated bat mitzvah instead of a sweet sixteen, which guarantees social humiliation at her posh private school. Even with the push and pull of her two cultures, Nevaeh does what she’s always done when life gets complicated: she stays silent.

It’s only when Nevaeh stumbles upon a secret from her mom’s past, finds herself falling in love, and sees firsthand the prejudice her family faces that she begins to realize she has a voice. And she has choices. Will she continue to let circumstances dictate her path? Or will she find power in herself and decide once and for all who and where she is meant to be?

Title: COLOR ME IN

Author: Natasha Diaz

Pub. Date: August 20, 2019

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Formats: Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook

Pages: 384

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD

Natasha Díaz is a born and raised New Yorker, currently residing in Brooklyn, NY with her tall husband. She spends most of her days writing with no pants on and alternating between E.R. and Grey’s Anatomy binges. Formerly a reality TV producer, Natasha is both an author and screenwriter. Her scripts have placed as a quarterfinalist in the Austin Film Festival and a finalist for both the NALIP Diverse Women in Media Fellowship and the Sundance Episodic Story Lab. Her essays can be found in The Establishment and Huffington Post. Raised by a first generation half-Liberian/half-Brazilian mother and a Jewish-American father, Natasha writes stories about people who don’t fit into the boxes society imposes, and instead, create their own as they search for their places in the world. Her first novel, Color Me In, will be published by Delacorte Press/Random House August, 20 2019.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads 

3 winners will receive a finished copy of COLOR ME IN, US Only.

Be sure to check out the rest of this amazing tour! With excerpts and interviews and more chances to win. Plus, these blogs are awesome and deserve all the love.

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

8/1/2019- Kait Plus Books– Excerpt

8/2/2019- Utopia State of Mind- Review

Week Two:

8/5/2019- Lifestyle of Me– Review

8/6/2019- Country Road Reviews– Review

8/7/2019- Mythical Books– Excerpt

8/8/2019- BookHounds YA– Review

8/9/2019- Books and Ladders– Review

Week 3:

8/12/2019- Wonder Struck– Review

8/13/2019- dwantstoread– Review

8/14/2019- My Creatively Random Life– Excerpt

8/15/2019- Confessions of a YA Reader– Excerpt

8/16/2019- Jena Brown Writes– Review

Week 4:

8/19/2019- We Live and Breathe Books– Review

8/20/2019- Eli to the nth- Excerpt

8/21/2019- A Gingerly Review– Review

8/22/2019- Novel Novice– Excerpt

8/23/2019- Owl Always Be Reading– Excerpt

Week 5:

8/26/2019- Lisa Loves Literature– Review

8/27/2019- Book-Keeping– Review

8/28/2019- PopTheButterfly Reads– Review

8/29/2019- Two Chicks on Books– Excerpt

8/30/2019- Two points of interest– Review