Exclusive Cover Reveal + Interview + Giveaway: The Way Back To You by Michelle Andreani + Mindi Scott

The Way Back To You Revised

When I read the synopsis to The Way Back To You, it immediately drew me in. The premise, the feels, the road trip! And now, after reading through the interview below, I am more excited than ever to read this novel!!! I’m honored to share this beautiful cover and thrilled to talk with authors Michelle and Mindi. Make sure to pre-order below and enter the giveaway at the bottom of the post!

✦ Pre-order: Amazon Kindle | Amazon Hardcover | iBooks ✦

Synopsis

Six months ago, Ashlyn Montiel died in a bike accident.

Her best friend CLOUDY is keeping it together, at least on the outside. Cloudy’s insides are a different story: tangled, confused, heartbroken.

KYLE is falling apart, and everyone can tell. Ashlyn was his girlfriend, and when she died, a part of him went with her. Maybe the only part he cared about.

As the two people who loved Ashlyn best, Cloudy and Kyle should be able to lean on each other. But after a terrible mistake last year, they’re barely speaking. So when Cloudy discovers that Ashlyn’s organs were donated after her death and the Montiel family has been in touch with three of the recipients, she does something a little bit crazy and a lot of out character: she steals the letters and convinces Kyle to go on a road trip with her, from Oregon to California to Arizona to Nevada. Maybe if they meet the recipients—the people whose lives were saved by Ashlyn’s death—the world will open up again. Or maybe it will be a huge mistake.

With hundreds of miles in front of them, a stowaway kitten, and a list of people who are alive because of Ashlyn, Cloudy and Kyle just may find their way back to her . . . and to each other.

Interview

I’m so excited about this cover! Tell us your thoughts on it. What do you love about it? Were there particular things you wanted to achieve?

We’re so happy you’re excited! We are, too! What we’re hoping is that the cute, little road signs will tell potential readers that our characters are taking a journey–literally and metaphorically. And we love that the cover art portrays a pivotal location in the book. Since it’s a road trip story, there are lots of different places that could’ve been showcased. But Sedona’s rock formations and sunset are a special part of Cloudy’s and Kyle’s story, so they’re very fitting for the cover. Plus the colors are super pretty, right? And those stars!

Yes, the cover, the colors… it’s gorgous! And the story sounds amazing–evocative in every way and full of turmoil. How did this story come to be? What inspired it?

Thank you! We knew some elements of the story we wanted to write as far back as 2010: A girl/boy dual point of view where our narrators had had a falling out, a road-trip scenario that forces them to spend a lot of time together, and a trouble-causing dessert (you’ll see!). It didn’t all start to really come together, though, until early-2011 when we learned about a young boxer named Paco Rodriguez. After his death in the ring, his organs were donated, and his family met and formed friendships with the recipients of his organs.

Cloudy, Ashlyn and Kyle’s story deals with some heavy topics. Loss, love, second chances, organ donation. Was it difficult to weave a story around these emotional mines?

We want our characters to feel authentic and have their experiences resonate with readers. It was difficult wrangling that so it all hit the right, real notes–especially since we had two narrators who were handing the same loss in very different ways. At the same time, the highly emotional scenes were sometimes the ones that flowed the easiest while writing, and which required the least revision.

What can readers expect from the novel?

A cat named Arm, a little bit of Beatles music, and so many references to Mexican food! 😀 But also! We hope TWBTY is like all great road trips: fun, introspective, with adventure and occasional heartbreak. 😉

Lastly, I love how you all met… in a writing class! How did you both start working together and what has the process and experience been like?

After our class ended, we kept in contact and continued to read each other’s work. We first discussed co-writing as a thing we might like to do together back in 2009 or so? Brainstorming ideas and characters became a fun escape for us when our individual writing projects were stressing us out. Then in early 2012, we finally started writing together, which turned our fun escape into the singular project that would stress us out concurrently. Ha!

Some authors say that writing a book with another person is easier than writing solo because each contributor has to write only half. However, we kind of feel that writing this book together might have been twice as difficult as solo writing. Managing plot, character arcs, settings, etc. is never a simple process, but each of us having only half a book to pull it off for our characters seemed extra, extra challenging. That said, we are in love with the story we created together and know for certain that it never would have been the same it either of us had tried to do it alone. And we’re discussing writing together again!

Follow Michelle & Mindi

Photo: Brandy Stockwell

Follow Michelle: Website | Instagram | Twitter
Follow Mindi: Website | Instagram | Twitter

Giveaway

Enter to win a $5 Amazon gift card now and a paperback ARC of the novel once available. To enter, just share this post on social media (under “Share This” below) and then come back and leave a comment! I’ll pick a winner from the comments on Sunday!

amazon-GC the way back to you