Blog Tour: This Song Will Save Your Life Guest Post & Giveaway

We're very excited to host the kick-off of Leila Sale's blog tour for her newest novel This Song Will Save Your Life. Leila's here today with a special guest post for our readers. Also, be sure to check out Jessica's review here.

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This Song Will Save
Your Life
by Leila Sales

Release Date: Sept. 17, 2013
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux BFYR

Making friends has never been Elise Dembowski’s strong suit. All throughout her life, she’s been the butt of every joke and the outsider in every conversation. When a final attempt at popularity fails, Elise nearly gives up. Then she stumbles upon a warehouse party where she meets Vicky, a girl in a band who accepts her; Char, a cute, yet mysterious disc jockey; Pippa, a carefree spirit from England; and most importantly, a love for DJing.

Told in a refreshingly genuine and laugh-out-loud funny voice, This Song Will Save Your Life is an exuberant novel about identity, friendship, and the power of music to bring people together.

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About the Author

Leila Sales is the author of This Song Will Save Your Life (September 17, 2013, Farrar Straus & Giroux Books for Young Readers), as well as Past Perfect and Mostly Good Girls. 

Find Leila online... 

Website / Fierce Reads Tour

Facebook / Twitter

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In my new novel, This Song Will Save Your Life, 16-year-old Elise stumbles across an underground dance club where she makes friends for the first time ever, discovers a passion for DJing, and finds a reason to go on living after a failed suicide attempt. The club she finds is an indie rock party called Start. What you probably don’t know, unless you lived in Boston in the early ‘00s, is that Start! was once a real indie rock dance party.

I have fallen in love with many dance parties in my life, and you can see a number of them listed in the acknowledgements at the back of This Song Will Save Your Life. But Start! will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the first party I ever felt that way about.

My friends and I started going to Start! in the spring of 2002, as soon as we could legally get in. I don’t remember how we heard about it, though I know for sure that I was not the one who discovered it. I didn’t exactly have my “ear to the ground” for cool indie/electro nightclubs. In fact, I had never even been to a nightclub. I had been to some school dances but, as a general rule, I hated them; school dances made me anxious.

This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales

Release Date: September 17, 2013
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: E-galley
Source: Publisher
Pages: 288
Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound
Description: Goodreads
Making friends has never been Elise Dembowski’s strong suit. All throughout her life, she’s been the butt of every joke and the outsider in every conversation. When a final attempt at popularity fails, Elise nearly gives up. Then she stumbles upon a warehouse party where she meets Vicky, a girl in a band who accepts her; Char, a cute, yet mysterious disc jockey; Pippa, a carefree spirit from England; and most importantly, a love for DJing.

Told in a refreshingly genuine and laugh-out-loud funny voice, This Song Will Save Your Life is an exuberant novel about identity, friendship, and the power of music to bring people together.

This is my third Leila Sales novel, and I thought I knew what to expect after reading 2010’s Mostly Good Girls and 2011’s Past Perfect—quirky characters, a distinctly awesome female voice, and lots of laughs.  Her latest, This Song Will Save Your Life, has the first two, but it brings something just as welcome as humor.  It brings hard truths, surprises, and all of my favorite Britpop jams.

Elise is a tough sell of a protagonist, but not because she is unlikeable.  It’s more like she’s rough around the edges.  Even at her bristliest (most bristly?), you still want her to succeed.  Elise is a very smart girl, but she’s also 16, and thus she makes 16-year-old decisions.  I occasionally read reviews where someone claims to not like a character because they make bad choices.  Personally, I don’t agree with that reasoning.  Elise makes some terrible choices here regarding herself, her safety, and her parents, but I don’t see these things as reasons to dislike her.  I see those as pieces of her character, and every “bad” choice gives the reader more insight into who Elise really is.  She wears her issues like a badge of honor (or, more accurately, like a scar on her wrist), and people like that can make other feel uncomfortable.  (I think it’s because those people make other confront their own issues, but that is neither here nor there.)  I love Elise’s voice, I love how she thinks, and I wish I could spend more time with her.

There’s only a bit of “romance” in This Song Will Save Your Life, which absolutely works for me.  I know, it’s shocking, right?  Despite my love of a strong romantic storyline, I don’t believe that all YA books need to have a plethora of kissing scenes.  Here, the romantic element appears, but it doesn’t overpower the story and it’s handled well (and in a somewhat fresh manner for the typical YA book).  Oh, DJ This Charming Man.  You got it half right, anyway.  However, what it “lacks” in romance, it totally makes up for in music references.  At the risk of sounding more ridiculous than usual, I have been a hipster since before that was a thing, so I love every single name drop.  The Cure, The Smiths, Blur, Pulp, LCD Soundsystem, Belle & Sebastian, The Rapture-- yes, yes, and yes please.  I wish Start was a place I could actually go, because this is absolutely my kind of club.

What I found myself thinking throughout the entire story is I don’t understand why Leila Sales isn’t a household name.  Girl can write, and she can write more than one kind of story.  She tackles the heavy topic of teenage suicide a totally non-After-School-Special way.  Yes, it’s serious and it’s handled with care, but it’s never preachy.  I’d already declared myself a fangirl of Leila’s after reading Past Perfect in one sitting, but this only solidifies it.  This gets a special bonus of taking place in Rhode Island.  I could accept any and all of the seemingly impossible bits like a teenage girl wandering the streets alone at night or an underground mobile dance party because of this, and you would too if you’ve ever lived in The Ocean State.

I’d highly recommend This Song Will Save Your Life to anyone, especially music lovers.  Basically, if the cover says Leila Sales, you can’t go wrong.

Past Perfect by Leila Sales

Release Date: October 4, 2011
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: E-galley
Source: Publisher
Pages: 320
Buy: Amazon
Description: Goodreads
All Chelsea wants to do this summer is hang out with her best friend, hone her talents as an ice cream connoisseur, and finally get over Ezra, the boy who broke her heart. But when Chelsea shows up for her summer job at Essex Historical Colonial Village (yes, really), it turns out Ezra’s working there too. Which makes moving on and forgetting Ezra a lot more complicated…even when Chelsea starts falling for someone new.


Maybe Chelsea should have known better than to think that a historical reenactment village could help her escape her past. But with Ezra all too present, and her new crush seeming all too off limits, all Chelsea knows is that she’s got a lot to figure out about love. Because those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it….

I love Past Perfect. It has everything I love- a unique take on a classic story, fun and quirky characters, a sweet and slightly steamy romance, and fantastic writing- in just the right doses.

The classic story is the Romeo and Juliet-esque forbidden romance of narrator Chelsea Glaser and the off-limits boy Dan Malkin. The unique twist? They are on opposite sides of a prank war between two historical reenactment attractions. Chelsea represents the Colonial Essex Village (a fictional version of Colonial Williamsburg), Dan is a member of the Civil War Reenactmentland, and these attractions are located across the street from one another. Seriously. I just love that. I know it’s the VA girl in me, the one that still loves people in period costumes, that completely adores this. It’s a fabulous way to take an age-old story and make it new again.

From there, it only gets better. The cast of characters caught up in these pranks simply enhances the random. They take their role in this long-fought war very seriously, participating in each prank as they escalate uncontrollably to almost the point of no return. Tawny, Essex Village’s war general, is a particular favorite, resorting to an actual fistfight in her plight to emerge the victor. She’s like a colonial Oliver Wood, successfully rallying her team to battle no matter what the task may be, even when it’s to shovel poo throughout the grounds of Reenactmentland. Quirky, ridiculous, and fun.

Chelsea is the perfect mixture of snarky and sweet. She is deep without sounding fake, hilariously sharp yet also sincere, and I loved spending time with her. Specifically, I think her struggle to deal with her break-up from first love (and “the one who sucks”) Ezra is so interesting and real. Even when she makes the not-so-smart decision, I am still on her side.

And Chelsea with Dan? So stinking cute. You’re cheering for them to find a loophole to this historic gang war from the moment the flirting begins. My only complaint would be the decision Chelsea makes at the end to get a leg-up on the Civil Warriors at Dan’s expense. It is a little hard to forgive something that heinous, but the manner of which Sales presents it makes it more believable that I thought possible. Regardless, I loved Chelsea and Dan’s sincere sweetness, especially in that trampoline scene.

Though, as much as I love Dan the Southern Gentleman, my favorite relationship here is Chelsea and her BFF and fellow ice cream judge Fiona. They are the best kind of best friends- they are always there for one another, they cheer each other on, and they hold each other accountable when they screw up. I’m kind of bummed I can’t hang out with these girls for real. I mean, they eat tons of ice cream, and they love having real conversations—that’s my kind of girls.

Simply put, Leila Sales is awesome. Her writing is delightful, expressive, and straightforward and it’s paced exactly the way it should. I literally couldn’t put this down, and I know this will be one of those books that I read over and over again. No matter what I say, it won’t do this book justice. Past Perfect has a very universal quality while still managing to stand out in an original way. Do yourself a favor and pick this up.