Blog Tour

Review, Excerpt, and Giveaway

THE IMPOSSIBLE DESTINY OF CUTIE GRACKLE by Shawn K. Stout

Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours

About The Book

Title: THE IMPOSSIBLE DESTINY OF CUTIE GRACKLE

Author: Shawn K. Stout

Pub. Date: May 31, 2022

Publisher: Peachtree

Formats: Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook

Pages: 336

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

Do you believe in impossible things? Cutie Grackle does. She has to. Otherwise, she’ll never be more than a lonely 10 year old in a cursed family.

Cutie Grackle is used to being different—she lives alone on a mountain with her feeble-minded uncle, and when she’s not sucking pebbles to trick her stomach into feeling full, she’s chatting with a weathered garden gnome for company.
But having a flock of ravens follow you is more than just different. Cutie worries the birds are connected to the curse Uncle Horace tends to mutter about. And she’s right.

The ravens present her with a fortune from a cookie, and when she touches it she’s pulled into a vision from her family’s past. It involves the curse and her long-lost mother. The birds offer up a series of objects, each imbued with memories that eventually reveal Cutie must do what her mother could not: break the curse.

Part outdoor survival adventure, part fantastical quest, Shawn K. Stout’s The Impossible Destiny of Cutie Grackle is a journey of hope, heart, and a willingness to believe in the impossible.

I don’t think I’ll ever outgrow my love for good middle-grade novels. But would Cutie Grackle’s fun book cover also contain an interesting story? It took only two paragraphs for me to decide that I would love this book:

THE BIRDS WERE FOLLOWING ME.

Which was a very irregular thing, even for me. My life was full of the kinds of things people might call irregular, but up until then, not one of them had to do with birds. I knew it could only mean one thing: Either I stunk of worms, or something bad was fixin’ to happen.

Ten-year-old, Cutie Grackle lives with her uncle Horace. A person who is tall, sickly thin, dark hair so greasy it looks wet, dirt clinging to his body and, if that isn’t a description you can’t easily forget, try adding patchy whickers. Uncle Horace isn’t just a sight to behold, he seems to be living in another world . . . mentally. So Cutie, who lives with this unusual character in a small shack on a hill in West Virginia, is pretty much the caregiver. She goes to a food pantry each month and picks 16 items to feed them until her next visit.

Cutie Grackle knows very little about her family. Only that they are cursed and that her parents disappeared when she was a baby. 

But will she begin to learn about her family when a one-eyed crow brings her a note?

Will family secrets come to light?

As you might guess, I can’t say enough about this book.

• Interesting from the get-go

• Pacing good

• Mystery

• Intriguing plot

• Just the right amount of description

• Interesting characters

My Concerns

None

Final Thoughts

Be ye child or adult this is a book you’re sure to enjoy and an author to keep an eye on. 

Huge thanks to Shawn K Stout,  Peachtree Publishing,  Holiday House, and Jaime Rockstar Booktours for having me on the tour and for the gifted copy.

Rating

First Chapter

About Shawn K. Stout

Shawn K. Stout is the author of several books for young readers, including A Tiny Piece of Sky (Philomel/PRH), which was a Bank Street Best Book. Shawn holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Maryland with her family. Visit her at www.shawnkstout.com

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GIVEAWAY

1 winner will receive a finished copy of THE IMPOSSIBLE DESTINY OF CUTIE GRACKLE, US Only.

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