Roomies by Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando- My Roomie Story & Giveaway!!

Roomies
by Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando
Publication Date: December 24, 2013
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Genre: YA Contemporary

Goodreads Description:
It's time to meet your new roomie.

When East Coast native Elizabeth receives her freshman-year roommate assignment, she shoots off an e-mail to coordinate the basics: television, microwave, mini-fridge. That first note to San Franciscan Lauren sparks a series of e-mails that alters the landscape of each girl's summer -- and raises questions about how two girls who are so different will ever share a dorm room.

As the countdown to college begins, life at home becomes increasingly complex. With family relationships and childhood friendships strained by change, it suddenly seems that the only people Elizabeth and Lauren can rely on are the complicated new boys in their lives . . . and each other. Even though they've never met.

National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr and acclaimed author Tara Altebrando join forces for a novel about growing up, leaving home, and getting that one fateful e-mail that assigns your college roommate.

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Sara and Tara's Confirmed Tour Dates:

• January 12, 2014 – New York, NY: McNally Jackson [venue link]
• January 15, 2014 – Salt Lake City, UT: The King's English [venue link]
• January 16, 2014 – Provo, UT: Provo Library [venue link]
• February 4, 2014 – San Francisco, CA: Books Inc, Opera Plaza [venue link] 
• February 5, 2015 – Petaluma, CA: Copperfield's Books [venue link]

My Roommate Story:

• You guys I've had A LOT of roommates... 13 in all.  Which I find pretty impressive considering I got married when I was 25 and I'm also not counting that year that I lived with a boyfriend.  I'm actually starting to think maybe I was a "problem" roommate since I went through so many!!  Nah...
• So considering I've had so many roommates, I have stories like you wouldn't believe.  Also I was pretty wild in college (and so were my friends), so some of the stories are like a "If it happened at IUP, it stays at IUP" type thing :)  Trying to think of a PG story that I could tell about roommates was quite a challenge, but I definitely came up with a few ;)
• My FIRST ever roommate, like in the book, was a girl I'd never met before.  And I wanted it that way.  There were a lot of people in my high school who when they found out they were going to the same school decided to room together just so they wouldn't get a stranger.  God I was so sick of the people in my high school, I was dying for a stranger.  And the funny thing is, most of the people that knew each other before rooming together ended up hating each other.  But my first roommate was a girl named Brooke, who I love to death.  She's like one of the only people on this planet who "gets" me.  And she's just my kind of crazy.
• Besides her, I've lived with quite some odd characters.  One being a complete pathological liar.  You could literally see the girl at the grocery store and if you called her and said "hey, where are you at?" she would tell you she was at the gas station.  No reason to lie, she just got-off on it.  Her boyfriend of 3 years actually thought she was living with her parents the entire year she lived with me.  Crazy stuff.  I also had several people that were couch-crashers.  They had to move out of their apartments for whatever reason and ended up sleeping on my couch for 6 months.  That was fun... not.  I've gotten into crazy roommate fights (one where the girl got so mad she ripped down the blinds) and I've also had a lot of roommates that were SO there for me when I needed them.  Here's one of the more hilarious/traumatic stories:
• When I was in my 4th year, I lived in this awesome house with 2 other girls, Liz & Sam.  What was awesome about the house was that the basement was HUGE and there was a ping pong table down there.  Perfect party house.  The rest of the house was kind of gross.  But we loved it.  Anyway, we always used to stay at school over breaks when the campus became a ghost-town.  It was actually so boring that it became fun, if that makes any sense.  But anyway this was like the one Saturday ever that we decided to stay in and watch movies.  I found out that neither of my roommates had ever seen the movie Beaches w/ Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey.  I mean come on!!  All best friends should see that movie.  So I put it in and we all settled in for a good cry.  About halfway through the movie our cat came tearing into the living room like a psycho.  I stood up to see what he was doing and all at the same time we saw that he was chasing a mouse!!!  We all totally freaked and ran down the hall screaming.  We ran into Sam's room and stood on the bed hugging each other and still screaming.  The mouse, followed by the cat, then came into the room and quickly circled back out.  But it was enough to get us screaming again even louder (yes I know we were insane babies).  After a while the cat came back in looking lost, so we decided to venture out to the living room and see if he killed the thing yet.  We rushed in and all jumped on the couch and chairs, but didn't see anything.  Then all of a sudden these 3 guys burst in our front door.  They had a baseball bats and frying pans and were swinnging them and screaming at us.  We started screaming all over again.  Finally after everyone calmed down a bit, they explained that they lived about 5 houses down and heard us screaming and thought we were being attacked.  So they came with their baseball bats and frying pans to kill our murderers.  Yeah not the smartest plan ever, but we're talking about 18-20 year-old dudes.  I explained to them the real reason for our screaming and, you know, since they were there I tried talking them into helping us with our mouse situation.  They weren't all that eager, but they eventually one of the guys got the mouse trapped under a colander (I know so freaking gross right??).  He got the mouse literally 3 inches from the door when it got out and started on another running spree with the cat.  Bottom Line: no one ever caught the mouse.  I went to sleep that night terrified that it was going to crawl on me in my sleep.  I called my mom and she assured me that a cat and a mouse could not co-exist.  The cat would get the mouse.  Fast-forward 3 months later.  It's one of the first nice days out and I've just come home from class.  I walk in the living room to find a murdered mouse right in the middle of the rug and my cat looking all proud of himself.  Cat and mouse won't live together my ass.  He did kill it, but it took him 3 months.  

*me and the girls in my story*

• (1) Copy of Roomies by Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando
• US only
• If we get chosen for the Grand Prize me and you will both win a Roomie Survival Kit & a signed copy of the book!!  The publisher chooses that winner, not me.

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