(Long Island, NY) JHPR is proud to share that MELT by Selene Castrovilla won the IndieReader Discovery Award (IRDA) in the Young Adult category. It was announced by bestselling indie author Melissa Foster at BookExpo America (BEA), a major trade show in New York City.
IndieReader (www.indiereader.com), the essential consumer guide to self-published books and the people who write them, launched the IRDAs in order to help worthy indie authors get the attention of top indie professionals, with the goal of reaching more readers. Noted Amy Edelman, founder of IR, “The books that won the IRDAs this year are not just great indie books; they are great books, period. We hope that our efforts via the IRDAs insure that they receive attention from the people who matter most. Potential readers.”
MELT by Selene Castrovilla. Photo Credit: Last Syllable Books.
Judges for the awards included notable publishers, agents, publicists and bloggers. MELT was awarded 4.5 stars out of five by IndieReader’s reviewers.
“Poignant, moving, and riveting, the narrative switches seamlessly between both of their perspectives, capturing the angst of adolescence and young adulthood, while handling a heavy thematic element with incredible verisimilitude.” – IR Review
In addition to this honor, MELT has won the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators’ Spark Award. MELT was awarded an Independent Publisher’s IPPY Bronze Medal for Young Adult literature, as well as being a Foreword Review’s INDIEFAB Book of the Year Finalist. MELT is also the Eric Hoffer Book Award first runner up in Young Adult fiction, and a finalist for the Da Vinci Eye Award for cover design.
Selene Castrovilla, award-winning author of MELT IndieReader Discovery Award. Photo Credit: Last Syllable Books.
MELT is based on true events. It is both a chilling tale of abuse, and a timeless romance. It will hit you like a punch in the face, and also seep through the cracks in your soul. Told in dual first person, Joey’s words are scattered on the page – reflecting his broken state. Dorothy is the voice of reason – until something so shattering happens that she, too, may lose her grip. Can their love endure, or will it melt away?
“Dorothy and Joey’s plight is both an inner and outer struggle, a reckoning with a cold world, and a psychological drama about the stakes of truth-telling that ends with a gratifying act of mercy… A fresh, emotionally complex bildungsroman of young American love that looks long and hard at violence, and at what can over-come it.” — Kirkus Review.
Last syllable Books is an upstart publisher committed to bringing you compelling literature you can’t put down. Their next release will be this summer. Visit Lastsyllablebooks.com.
About Selene: Selene Castrovilla is the award-winning author of multiple narrative nonfiction picture books and young adult novels. National Book Award Winner Jacqueline Woodson calls her “A writer worth watching.” Selene holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and a BA in English from New York University. She lives on Long Island with her two sons and a few too many cats. Visit SeleneCastrovilla.com, find her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter: @SCastrovilla.
