Blog Tour! A Boy Worth Knowing by Jennifer Cosgrove #EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT #GIVEAWAY

Posted on March 23, 2017October 19, 2019 by Addison Albright Leave a comment

Title: A Boy Worth Knowing
Author: Jennifer Cosgrove
Publisher: NineStar Press – SunFire Imprint
Release Date: March 20
Heat Level: 1 – No Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 62200
Genre: Romance, Young Adult, NineStar Press, LGBT, gay, bisexual, romance, young adult, contemporary, paranormal, coming of age, ghosts, family drama, high school, bullying

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♡ Synopsis

Ghosts can’t seem to keep their opinions to themselves.

Seventeen-year-old Nate Shaw should know; he’s been talking to them since he was twelve. But they aren’t the only ones making his high school years a living hell. All Nate wants is to keep his secret and keep his head down until he can graduate. That is, until the new boy, James Powell, takes a seat next to him in homeroom. James not only notices him, he manages to work his way into Nate’s life. But James has issues of his own.

Between dead grandmothers and living aunts, Nate has to navigate the fact that he’s falling in love with his only friend, all while getting advice from the most unusual places.

Ghosts, bullies, first love: it’s a lot to deal with when you’re just trying to survive senior year.

♡ Exclusive Excerpt

A Boy Worth Knowing
Jennifer Cosgrove © 2017
All Rights Reserved

Excerpt from A Boy Worth Knowing – Jennifer Cosgrove

The coffee didn’t do its job soon enough. That was probably a good thing because it
meant I didn’t have an audience for the performance art I was currently engaged in
called A Study in the Casual Teenage Male. That consisted mostly of me wearing a path
in the living room carpet. Then into the kitchen. Should I sit at the table and wait? I sat
down and then immediately got up to check the living room cushions. Still perfectly
aligned. I walked back to the kitchen, over to the window, and moved the curtain back in
place just in time to duck away as James pulled in the driveway. The last thing I needed
was to get caught pacing, with Arthur trailing behind me.

I made myself count to ten before answering the knock on the door, and when I did
it was immediately obvious he was upset. I gaped at him like an idiot, just standing there
holding the door open. “Oh, sorry. Come on in.”

“Thanks for this. I just couldn’t deal with being at home right now.” He brushed past
me, and I took a deep breath before closing the door.

“Um, you want to talk about it?” He shook his head. Okay, guess not. “Um, let me
give you the grand tour.” He gave me a relieved smile, and I relaxed. That was the right
thing to do. Arthur bumped against my shin, so I decided to start with him. “This is
Arthur.”

James knelt and offered his fingers for Arthur to sniff. He smiled as Arthur butted
his head against his palm in a request for ear scratches. “Hello, Arthur.”

“I think he likes you.” Of course he did. It was amazing because Arthur typically
didn’t like anyone but Aunt Susan and me. And most of the time, I was under the
impression we were only tolerated as providers of food. But he liked James. And I was
putting way too much stock in what a cat thought.

“I like him, too.” James looked up at me, and I could feel my ears try to burn
themselves to a crisp. Living room. Movies. Snacks. Anything.

Christ.

“Um, what did you bring?” I gestured to the bag holding the telltale shapes of DVDs.
Several DVDs. Like he planned on staying for a while. I had to get a handle on myself, or
I’d have a heart attack. Having a heart attack seemed more viable.

James grinned as he stood. “The theme of the day is slasher movies. Take a look.”

He fumbled the bag for a second before pulling out A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday
the 13th, Halloween, and My Bloody Valentine. I raised an eyebrow at him, and he
shrugged. “What? They’re classics.”

I laughed and pointed him to the living room. “Go cue one up, and I’ll get us some
soda.” I breathed a sigh of relief; it was getting easier being around him. And of course,
that would be the moment Aunt Susan decided to come out of her cave.

“I smell coffee.” She shuffled into the kitchen in her pajamas, pulling her ratty robe
tighter around her body. “Is there someone else here?”

I hissed at her to keep her voice down, and she narrowed her eyes at me. Yeah, I was
asking a lot before caffeine. “James came over early.” I didn’t want to make a huge deal
out of it, though I was making a huge deal out of it. “He didn’t want to stay at home, so I
told him to come on over.”

She shot a glance at the living room door, and I saw a fleeting look of pity cross her
face. She moved toward the coffee pot, nodding to herself. “It’s fine, Nate.” She patted
my arm and collected her coffee. “I’ll just—”

“You need any help?” James stopped in his tracks when he saw Aunt Susan. “Oh,
sorry.” He gave me a pointed look, and I sucked in a breath. Oh. Right.

“Aunt Susan, this is James Powell, James this is Susan Bradley.” See, I had
manners. Nana would’ve been proud. James put out a hand for Aunt Susan to shake,
and I could tell she was impressed.

“Very nice to finally meet you, James. I’ve heard a lot about you.” When I gave her a
panicked look, she grinned and motioned toward her room with her mug. “I’ll just leave
you two to your brain rot. Let me know if you need anything.”

♡ Excerpt

A Boy Worth Knowing
Jennifer Cosgrove © 2017
All Rights Reserved

Excerpt from A Boy Worth Knowing – Jennifer Cosgrove

I loved autumn mornings.

The October air was just cold enough to set my lungs on fire, my breath visible in clouds of condensation, forcing all of the crap clogging up my head into the recycle bin. Bonus, I could pretend I was a dragon. Nothing could touch me; my morning run made everything go away, lost in miles at a time. Down an isolated country road.

Everything changed when I was twelve, and not for the better. That was when I started running. Five years of road I’d put behind me. My mom worried about me the first time I took off alone. Well, when she used to worry about me. I wished she was more worried about the reason I was running instead of the fact I was doing it down an empty road.

I turned the corner about a mile after leaving home, and that was when I saw him. Samuel was always lurking among the sunken headstones. Most people had no clue there used to be a cemetery out there. Looking closely, some of the stones that made up the foundation of the chapel could still be seen. No one else ever paid that much attention to it. Samuel glared at me as I got closer. He was a surly one.

My life was like the horror movies I loved. I talked to the dead. Well, technically dead. They were really spirits, or whatever. Whatever was left behind when people died. And they talked to me, for some reason. There was nothing like sitting in math class and having a ghost whisper in my ear while trying to take notes.

It happened all the damn time. I didn’t know how to handle it at first. And no one wanted to hang out with the crazy kid in the back of the room, muttering away to himself. I got used to it. Really. And the lack of a social life helped me get all of my homework done on time; all of the teachers loved me. That was good. Talking to ghosts wasn’t all bad.

I waved at Samuel as I ran by the cemetery. He shook a fist at me in return. Samuel wasn’t evil or anything, just grumpy. Couldn’t blame him, though. I looked him up one time and found out he’d died in the late eighteen hundreds. The cause of death on record was a heart attack. But Samuel told me his brother-in-law had poisoned him because he wouldn’t sell him his prize mule. I had no clue what was so special about that mule, but his brother-in-law evidently thought it was worth killing him over. I’d have been pretty surly myself.

Past the forgotten cemetery, a few miles to the McGregor farm, and then I’d swing around for home. Yes, I said McGregor farm. Small-town life— I couldn’t have made this stuff up if I’d tried.

There was another house just past the farm where I had to watch out for their beast of a dog. Dogs weren’t huge fans of mine. My Nana had a theory they could sense a bit of whatever it was that let us chat with those who’d “passed on.” I had no idea how that was even possible, but cats loved me, so yay.

Speaking of which, Aunt Susan’s overly fluffy cat waited by our mailbox. Arthur did that every time I went out for a run. He would sit there and then fall in behind to follow up the driveway until we got to the house. Then, it was a shady spot on the porch in the summer or, if it was cold like that day, into the house in front of the fireplace. I loved predictability.

The house used to be my grandmother’s. It was a standard farmhouse, old and creaky just like dozens more all around us, and it could have stood a little paint. But we called it home, and we liked it. It became Aunt Susan’s home. It had been left to her after Nana died, since my mom already owned one. It was a little out of the way and a long drive to the hospital where my aunt worked. But it was paid for, and that meant a lot.

I had to be quiet going in because Aunt Susan was not a morning person, and the floor squeaked just inside the back door. I was very much a morning person, and I followed the same routine each school or work day. Flipping on the coffee maker, I headed to my room to get ready for school. I got the shower running, since it took a while to heat up in an old farmhouse, and took a sniff to make sure a shower was actually necessary. Oh, yeah. I was gross.

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♡ Meet the Author

Jennifer has always been a voracious reader and a well-established geek from an early age. She loves comics, movies, and anything that tells a compelling story.

When not writing, she likes knitting, dissecting/arguing about movies with her husband, and enjoying the general chaos that comes with having kids.