Blog Tour: Night Speed by Chris Howard + Giveaway

Night Speed reminded me a lot of a fast-paced thriller movie. It’s fast, it’s fun and it’s got a neat core premise of plucky teens taking on the establishment.

In the book’s world, there’s a new drug on the streets called Tetra (or tempo depending on which side of the law the user is on) and it basically turns you into the Flash for 9 minutes but the catch is once you hit 18, your body can’t handle the rush. As such the government has put together a special team of teenagers, called runners, to take on the criminals using the drug.

I was super into the Chris Howard’s description of 4D (what the users call the super sped up, or slowed down depending on how you look at it, world they rush in), if you’ve ever watched The Flash and wondered what it would be like to be Barry Allen, Howard is here to give you his take. I also super loved that there’s a heavy narrative focus on Tetra being a drug and any drug that affects you so dramatically will have an unavoidable physical toll on your body. It would’ve been really easy for Night Speed to slip over the edge into glorifying the awesomeness of Tetra, but Howard does a really excellent job balancing the pros and cons. The book does not let Alana’s addiction off the hook or downplay the physical side effects prolonged use has on her system. When you consider this book is definitely written for teenagers, this is a really important thing to include to avoid glorifying drug use.

Night Speed is a great book for people who like the plot to have central focus. While the characters are cute and I’m really into the found family dynamic at play in the breakneck community, the action is definitely the central focus.It’s funny, I picked up this book to take a break from The 100 for a minute (whaaaaaaat? Idk) and I flip Night Speed over only to find a blurb from Kass Morgan (the show literally will not let me go). I bring that up because I think that fans of The 100 book series are a good audience for Night Speed. Both books are fun, quick, adrenaline-rush reads (with some romance around the edges, if you go for that kind of thing).

Speaking of the plot, it initially seemed pretty straight-forward and predictable, but there were some twists down the way, one in particular, that I did not see coming at all. It wasn’t the twistiest of twists, but I’d been lulled into complacency and was caught entirely off guard. Pacing-wise, I didn’t get caught up until about halfway through when Alana started her undercover mission. The beginning was mostly focused on world-building and backstory, which was cool, don’t get me wrong, but I was way more into the breakneck end of things (that whole found family thing I mentioned above? Found families are my jam).
At the end of the day, I had a lot of fun with Night Speed. I think it’ll work well for teenage action readers who are here to have a good time. Fans of Michael Grant, The Flash and Limitless will probably really like it.

ABOUT NIGHT SPEED:

Only those young enough can survive the pulse-pounding rush of tetra, a dangerous and addictive new drug that fuels a nine-minute burst of superhuman strength and speed. Alana West has been trained to use the drug so she can pursue the young criminals who abuse its power—criminals like the breakneck who nearly killed her kid brother.

On tetra, Alana is unstoppable. The rush makes her an explosive blur as she surges through New York City, battling to bring down breaknecks before they leave more people dead or injured in their wake. But with the clock ticking down to her eighteenth birthday, Alana will soon be too old for the rush…when just one more dose will prove deadly.

Supported only by her strong and steady handler, Tucker, Alana goes undercover, infiltrating an elite gang of breaknecks to stop the supply of their drug. But when Alana gets trapped on the wrong side of the law, she learns the breaknecks are not quite what they seem—especially Ethan, the artistic boy whose bottomless brown eyes seem to see the truth inside her. With her own dependency on tetra increasing, Alana must decide where her loyalties lie before the rush ends. Forever.

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | iBooks | The Book Depository

[about-author]

TOUR STOPS:

Week 1
4/25: Pageturners Blog
4/26: Ex Libris
4/27: The Reader Bee
4/28: Icey Books
4/29: Brittany’s Book Rambles

Week 2
5/2: Cuddlebuggery (you are here)
5/3: Sci Fi Chick
5/4: Forever Young Adult
5/5: The Irish Banana
5/6: Novel Novice

Giveaway

Harper is the coolest and they’re giving away a finished copy of Night Speed!

• To enter, please fill out the Raffelcopter form below.
• You must be 13+ years to enter
• The giveaway is US only (apologies to our international readers)
• Please enter your email address in the Rafflecopter form and not the comments.

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