Today we are excited to share the cover reveal, along with an exclusive excerpt, for the contemporary YA novel Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life by Dallas Woodburn, coming February 8th from Immortal Works Publishing.
Woodburn’s debut novel The Best Week That Never Happened won the Grand Prize in the Dante Rossetti Book Award for Young Adult Fiction, and now she’s back with a sweet, soulful story about two characters who feel pressured by the outside world try to change into “better versions” of themselves… but learn that the people who truly matter are the ones who see and love you for who you are deep down inside.
Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life is a heartfelt YA friends-to-lovers romance described as “Brittany Runs a Marathon” meets Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me.” Gabi Justice, author of Dog Girl, calls it “a charming slow-burn romance that builds with each page.”
Judging from this fun cover and exclusive sneak peek, we already can’t wait for Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life to hit bookshelves in 2022!
The person who ruined their lives just might bring them together…
Brad is ready for a perfect senior year: he has a seat at the popular lunch table, a gig co-hosting the school’s morning announcements, and a gorgeous girlfriend. But when Carissa breaks up with Brad, his carefully constructed life comes crashing down. Convinced everything would be perfect if only Carissa would take him back, Brad creates a “self-improvement plan” and vows to re-win her heart.
Rose wishes she were having a normal senior year like everyone else, but leave it to her twin sister Carissa to butt in and ruin her life. Carissa secretly nominated Rose for the reality TV show Help Me Lose Weight and Live Again—and now Rose is on her way to Texas for three months of calorie-counting, marathon-exercising hell. Rose already felt overshadowed by her “perfect” sister, and collapsing on a treadmill on national TV is not making things any better. Plus, Rose can’t squash feelings for her sister’s boyfriend Brad (even though she knows he would never see her as anything but a friend.)
For fans of friends-to-lovers romance comes a heartwarming novel about self-improvement, identity and acceptance in our image-obsessed culture.
EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT
BRAD
Exactly one week before school started, Carissa Hayward broke up with me over chocolate-dipped soft-serve cones at the Dairy Queen three blocks from my house. We were supposed to spend our senior year together. I tried explaining this to her, but she wouldn’t listen.
It’s been five days since she yanked my heart out of my chest and ground it through a pepper mill. I’ve been calling her and calling her, but nothing I say is enough to change her mind.
I call her and try again.
“Brad, please. We’ve been over this a million times.” She sighs. “Stop calling me, okay?” And then she hangs up.
Five days, and already she has sliced me out of her life, as cleanly as if she used a brand-new X-Acto knife. She seems surprised that I am having a harder time wrapping my head around things. I mean, we dated for eleven months. We went to Homecoming and Prom together. She was my first kiss, if you don’t count Bethany Morris in third grade (which I don’t, as it was during recess and Bethany was running away from me across the playground. I only caught her because the sandbox tripped her, and after I kissed her she ran away shrieking, “Eww, cooties!”).
What I’m trying to say is, Carissa and I have history. You’d think all that history would take some time to unravel. You’d think I would have gotten a little warning.
But no. One minute we were sitting at our favorite table at the Dairy Queen, the one by the window next to the drinking fountain (ice cream always makes me thirsty), talking about the summer reading assignment for our dinosaur English teacher Mrs. Ostertank. The next minute, ice cream was dripping all over my hand as I tried to comprehend the words “break up” coming from my girlfriend’s perfect lips.
Carissa had finished reading A Farewell to Arms by mid-June, and her report was already written, edited, rewritten, printed out, stapled, and waiting in her binder.
“How about you?” she asked. “How’s your report coming?”
“It’s coming.”
“Yeah? So, what’d you think of the ending?”
“Oh, I haven’t gotten there yet.” I bit into the chocolate shell. “Don’t ruin it for me.”
“You haven’t finished the book yet?”
“Not quite.”
“What page are you on?”
“Eh, like… a hundred, I think.”
That was a lie. I was on page forty-six.
“Brad, I can’t believe it,” Carissa said, looking wounded. “I thought you were going to take school seriously this year.”
“I am, I am,” I insisted, still calmly unaware of what was coming next.
“You say that, but really? Page one-hundred? There’s no way you’re going to finish the assignment in time!”
“Don’t worry, babe. I work best under pressure.” And for good measure, I flashed her my signature winning grin.
She didn’t smile back. Carissa was usually helpless to the charm of my signature winning grin, so when she didn’t smile back I should have known something bad was coming.
“Brad,” she said, looking down at the plastic tabletop. She wiped up a chocolate splotch left by a previous customer. “This isn’t working for me.”
Still, my internal alarm bells remained silent. I worked my tongue around the ice cream cone. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” She sighed. “I think we should break up.”
ROSE
In my normal life, I would be going shopping with Holly for school supplies right now. We both like to start a new school year with brand new supplies. There’s something so hopeful about freshly sharpened pencils and crisp blank sheets of lined paper.
Holly didn’t come with my family to the airport. She said it would be too hard to watch me walk off through security and then have to drive all the way home with my family. “There’s no way I could drive myself, I’d be bawling too much,” she said. “And that would be so embarrassing to be crying like a baby in front of your family.”
The real reason is that Holly didn’t want to cry in front of Carissa. Holly and Carissa have never gotten along. Carissa thinks Holly is boring and whiny, and Holly thinks Carissa is a judgmental control freak.
Holly was right that she would have bawled too much to drive. She crumpled into tears when she came to my house to say goodbye the night before I left. When I saw how genuinely distraught Holly was that I was leaving, it was hard to stay mad at her for going along with the “intervention.”
“I’m really gonna miss you, Rose,” she choked out. “I don’t know what I’ll do at school without you.”
I can’t imagine being at school without Holly. On the few days she’s been sick and I had to get through the day alone, I was even more self-conscious than usual. During snack break I’d fiddle with my locker, pretending I’d forgotten something, open it, stare forlornly at my books, then close it again. There was no one to pass notes to in the hall; no one to laugh with about random inside jokes; no one to commiserate with about our dinosaur English teacher, Mrs. Ostertank. I ate lunch all by myself in my car.
I told Holly that I ate lunch with Carissa, so she wouldn’t feel bad about me eating alone. But, as lonely as it is to eat alone in your car, eating lunch with Carissa and her group would have been even worse. To Carissa’s friends, I am the definition of “loser.” They smile fake smiles at me and then return to their conversations about parties and sports and gossip. The one time I did eat lunch with them, Carissa and her boyfriend Brad were having an intense argument, completely wrapped up in their own drama. The girls all gave me disgusted looks as I ate my PB & J. One guy, Leonard, offered me his Fritos, and when I said “No, thanks” they all laughed. If I had taken them, they would have laughed, too.
Carissa tries to hide it, but I can tell she’s embarrassed of me. As much as she might spout nominating me for this show out of the goodness and love in her heart, I know a big part of her motivation was wanting me to become less of a family embarrassment.
The only one of Carissa’s group I can actually stand is Brad. Carissa thinks he’s a slacker, but he isn’t, not really. He works hard at the things he is passionate about. Like comedy—he’s put up all these videos on YouTube of his stand-up comedy routines. And he’s really good! He has this one joke about different animals at the zoo that makes me laugh so hard I snort. I tried explaining it to Holly, but it’s only funny when Brad tells it.
Brad came with my family to the airport to see me off. He gave me a hug goodbye and told me not to forget about him, which was kind of a weird thing to say, but also kind of sweet. Or maybe he was just trying to be funny. With Brad it’s sometimes hard to tell.
Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life by Dallas Woodburn will be available on February 8, 2022. Don’t forget to add it to your Goodreads “want to read” shelf! You can connect with the author on Instagram, Facebook and at her website.
