hello all! i’m so honored and excited to be a part of A WEEK OF MONDAYS blog tour because this book sounds super interesting. it’s like a book version of that one disney channel episode… BUT BETTER. can you imagine reliving the same day over and over again? sounds like a dream & nightmare. welp, that’s exactly what happens A WEEK OF MONDAYS.

about the book

Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016

By: Macmillan

GOODREADS • AMAZON • BOOK DEPOSITORY

Ellie is having the worst Monday of her life. She messes up her school speech for the
class vice presidency position, she manages to take the world’s worst school picture,
she bombs softball tryouts, and the icing on top of this awful cake: her perfect
boyfriend who is in a high school rock band dumps her. At the end of the day, Ellie
wishes she could redo everything. When she wakes up the next morning, she discovers
that it’s Monday again! She has six more chances to redo the day in the hopes of having
everything go exactly the way she wants. But in the process, she just may find out that
what she really wants and what she actually needs are two very different things.

guest post from author jessica brody

ELLISON “ELLIE” SPARKS: An idealistic, ambitious sixteen-year- old junior with a lot on
her plate.

Those were the first words I ever wrote about Ellie Sparks. They were written in a
synopsis for my publisher when I was first trying to sell them on the idea for a book
called A WEEK OF MONDAYS.

Of course, you can’t write an entire book about a one-sentence character. Just like you
can’t live your entire life as a one-sentence person. But every character has to begin
somewhere. And this is where Ellie began for me.

As an idealistic, ambitious sixteen-year-old junior with a lot on her plate.

In my mind, this is who she had to be. I thought, if you’re going to write about a girl who
relives the same horrible Monday over and over again, trying to “get it right,” these are
the adjectives that must describe her. She has to be idealistic enough to think she can fix
everything in her life. Yet, she also has to be ambitious enough to try it. And how else
are you going to fill seven Mondays with interesting storylines if the main character
doesn’t have a lot on her plate.

So there was Ellie. And there was me, ready to write her, thinking I understood her.
Thinking I knew everything I needed to know about her.

This is the writing process for me. I start with an idea of who someone is. I draw a box
around them, like an identity fence. I stuff them inside and I lock the gate. I tell them,
“This is who you are. Don’t try to change that. Don’t try to be or do anything else. I don’t
have time for detours. I’m on a deadline.”

I never learn.

A WEEK OF MONDAYS is my tenth published novel and I’m still trying to lock characters
inside fences. Eventually, though, they always break free. They always get bigger than
their boxes. And even though I try to adjust, I keep drawing bigger and bigger boxes
around them, trying to contain them to the world I built, the world I envisioned, they
never quite want to stay inside. Just like people. You can try to identify them, label
them, build a fence around them that makes you feel safe, and yet they’ll always
surprise you. Because no character—no human being—fits inside a box.

One of my favorite reviews of A WEEK OF MONDAYS says, “Watching Ellie relive her
horrible day is something like peeling an onion. Each Monday, a piece of her people-
pleaser facade melts away, revealing more of her real self.”

I smiled when I read that because it wasn’t until then that I realized exactly what had
happened in the writing of this book. I had done it again. I had tried to put yet another
character in a box, and she had slowly, word by word, page by page, Monday by
Monday broken free.

This book is ultimately a story of self-discovery.

Seven days. Seven chances to completely reinvent yourself. Wear different clothes,
make different choices, explore different paths, say different things, be different people.
Because sometimes it takes a whole week of Mondays to figure out who you really are.
And when you finally do, you may find yourself thinking ‘Thank God It’s Monday’ after
all.

For the next five Mondays, blogger friends across the internet will be sharing their best
and worst Monday. Follow along with us online with #TGIM and #AWeekofMondays,
because whether a Monday is memorable for good reasons or memorable for bad
reasons, we stand to learn a lot about ourselves.

about the author

Jessica Brody is the author of several popular books for teens, including the
Unremembered trilogy, 52 Reasons to Hate My Father, and The Karma Club, as well as
two adult novels. She splits her time between California and Colorado.

Find out more at
jessicabrody.com. Twitter: @JessicaBrody