Blog Tour: The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis (Excerpt + Giveaway!)

Happy Wednesday and welcome to my stop on The Good Luck Girls blog tour!!  Read on for an excerpt, plus find out more about the book and author, plus follow along with the rest of the tour and enter a giveaway for a print copy of The Good Luck Girls!!

The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis
Series: The Good Luck Girls #1
Published on October 1, 2019 by Tor Teen
Genres: YA, Fantasy, Historical Fiction
Pages: 352
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THE GOOD LUCK GIRLS

Aster, the protector

Violet, the favorite

Tansy, the medic

Mallow, the fighter

Clementine, the catalyst

The country of Arketta calls them Good Luck Girls--they know their luck is anything but. Sold to a "welcome house" as children and branded with cursed markings. Trapped in a life they would never have chosen.

When Clementine accidentally murders a man, the girls risk a dangerous escape and harrowing journey to find freedom, justice, and revenge in a country that wants them to have none of those things. Pursued by Arketta's most vicious and powerful forces, both human and inhuman, their only hope lies in a bedtime story passed from one Good Luck Girl to another, a story that only the youngest or most desperate would ever believe.

It's going to take more than luck for them all to survive.

Clementine cleared her throat. “I love the look of it,” she managed to say.

“You’re not the one we’re trying to impress tonight,” Mother Fleur said with a dry laugh. “But I’m glad you like it all the same. Gives a girl confidence when she knows she looks good.”

Mother Fleur picked up a crystal bottle of perfume next. Clementine offered up the left side of her throat, where her own favor shone black against her dark brown skin: a clementine flower, her namesake, its starlike petals fluttering occasionally as if from a gentle breeze. It suited her, she liked to think. She’d gotten it when she was ten years old. The tattoo man had carefully prepared the ink, mixing it with the unsavory ingredients that gave it its power. A dead man’s blood. Powdered bone. Venom from a black-fanged skink. Then he’d burrowed the needle into the hollow above her collarbone, sharp as a catamount’s claw. The favor would mark Clementine as property of the welcome house for the rest of her days.

At first, the clementine flower had been just a seedling—two teardrop leaves, a curl of a stem. But it had grown slowly with each passing year, ink unfurling up the crescent of her neck, until this morning, finally, she had woken up to find it fully blossomed just above her jaw.

Her skin prickled at the cool kiss of the perfume. Mother Fleur returned the bottle to its place.

“There,” the housemistress said, resting her hands on Clementine’s shoulders. Her voice rang with finality. Clementine’s heart leapt in her chest. She met Mother Fleur’s eyes in the mirror, questions gathering at the top of her throat.

“Now, remember,” Mother Fleur said, “you’re not just representing yourself tonight. You’re representing the whole of the Green Creek welcome house.” A familiar hint of warning crept into her words. “But we all know how special you are, and so does the brag. That’s why he paid such a fine fortune. You prove to him that it was worth every copper, and then we’ll celebrate, hear?”

She didn’t need to say what would happen if Clementine failed. The raveners, the welcome house’s muscle, had ways of punishing a girl without leaving a mark on her body, of ripping into her mind and tricking it into a place of pain or fear. Clementine had been subjected to their bewitchment before. They all had, at least once. Every girl had to be conditioned when she first came to the welcome house, had to learn to fear the raveners’ wrath. Some of them never recovered from the experience—girls who were thrown, gibbering mad, into the streets to die.

The veiled threat was enough to finally loosen Clementine’s tongue.

“Mother Fleur—” She faltered. “It’s only— Is it normal, to be this nervous? My stomach feels a touch unsettled.”

“Those are just moon moths, Clementine. Every girl gets them. They’re from excitement as much as anything. And why shouldn’t you be excited?” She winked. “Flattered, too. It’s not every girl who catches the fancy of such a respected young man.”

“Who is he, though?” Clementine dared to ask. A politician maybe, or a slick businessman, or a world-class gambleman with winnings hot in his pocket—

“If I tell you you’re just going to get yourself even more worked up,” Mother Fleur replied. “He’ll be good to you. That’s all you need to know.”

Clementine relented, afraid to push any further. And in the end, it didn’t matter, did it? Her whole life at Green Creek had been leading up to this moment. There’d be no more maid work after tonight, no more scrubbing dishes until her hands were raw or sweating over the stove. She was excited to wear fine dresses and laze around the parlor rooms with the other sundown girls—including Aster, whom she’d hardly seen this past year. Spending time with her sister again . . . that would be the best part of all of this, Clementine knew.

She only had to get through tonight.

“You ready for me to send him up?” Mother Fleur asked.

“Yes,” Clementine said, and she meant it.

“Good.” She gave Clementine’s shoulder another squeeze, nails biting into skin. “Don’t disappoint, Clementine.”

Mother Fleur swept away, turning out the gas-lit chandelier overhead as she went. The room was left with the rosy glow of a slag-glass lamp, as if blushing. The door clicked shut behind her.

Charlotte Nicole Davis is the author of The Good Luck Girls, a young adult fantasy novel releasing in Fall 2019 with Tor Teen. A graduate of The New School’s Writing for Children MFA program, Charlotte loves comic book movies and books with maps in the front. She currently lives in Brooklyn with a cat with a crooked tail.