Blog Tour & Feature: Freshmen by Tom Ellen & Lucy Ivison

Crushed on by Christy Jane, on June 29, 2018, in Blog Tour, Feature / 2 Comments

Blog Tour & Feature: Freshmen by Tom Ellen & Lucy Ivison

Freshmen is the newest novel by the writing duo, Tom Ellen & Lucy Ivison! We are thrilled to be the caboose on this awesome blog tour and share with you a little bit of our freshman experiences! The schedule is at the end of this post, and I highly suggest you check out the previous posts!

Freshmen by Tom Ellen & Lucy Ivison

Category: Upper YA, New Adult, Contemporary
Publication: June 12th, 2018; Delacorte Press
Purchase: Amazon, Book Depository, Random House Childrens

A laugh-out-loud, realistic portrayal of a freshman year in college for fans of Girls and Broad City.

Getting in is just the beginning.

Phoebe can’t wait to get to college. On her own, discovering new things, no curfew . . . she’ll be free. And she’ll be totally different: cooler, prettier, smarter . . . the perfect potential girlfriend. Convenient: the only person from her high school also going to York is her longtime crush, Luke.

Luke didn’t set out to redefine himself, but as soon as he arrives on campus, he finds himself dumping his long-term long-distance girlfriend. And the changes don’t stop there. In fact, being on a soccer team is the only thing that stays the same.

Just when things start looking up (and Phoebe and Luke start hooking up), drama looms on the horizon. Rumors swirl about the Wall of Shame, a secret text chain run by Luke’s soccer team, filled with compromising photos of girls. As the women on campus determine to expose the team and shut down the account, Luke and Phoebe find themselves grappling with confusing feelings and wondering how they’ll ever make it through freshman year.

Kelly & Christy Go to College

Kelly’s Freshman Year – 1996

My side of the dorm room – My first computer!

Way back when, in the fall of 1996, I headed off to Poughkeepsie, NY to attend college on a Biology scholarship. I was 4 hours from home and utterly alone. I didn’t know a single person and that felt like the perfect scenario to me. Well dorm life was a shock, but my school had a partnership with IBM (it was down the road) and I got my own computer, super exciting back in those days! My roommate was awful, so mean, and a bigot. She stole my stuff and gave it to her friends around campus. It was bizarre, especially since she made fun of me constantly. So needless to say I had a to get a new roommate, but it was not soon enough. I was a terribly light sleeper and dorms aren’t built well, so like I could hear everything going on, let alone the nights they decided to do detergent slides down the hallway!

Earth Day 4/22/1997 -Kelly & Best Friend Mandy

Don’t get me wrong, I did have fun! I got good grades, and I got involved. Carrying on from my HS experience, I was elected editor of the literary arts magazine. Took on a role as the council head for the environmental club on campus. And I kept busy with my on campus job which was weirdly fun, I was tasked to read my textbooks to tape. Yeah tape…I am that old. I even went to lots of concerts all over, and even drove home for a few in Philly to see my favorite bands with my friends who were still home.

After the disaster of my freshman year housing situation, I made sure to move off campus for my sophomore year and it was so much more relaxing. I never got very close with anyone and I had one amazing friend at school. That was all I ever needed anyway, since I was quite a bookworm. I always knew I wasn’t completing my college career at this school, as I was accepted to a 2 year specialty program, at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse University. I just had to do my undergrad somewhere, and why not away from home, where I could gain those life experiences, for the same money (thank you scholarship) as going to the community college.

Christy’s Freshman Year – 2002

Susan (my college roommate) & I in 2002 + 2009

2002 was such a weird time to start college. Cell phones were barely making it out to the masses (I BEGGED for one around Thanksgiving and got one – a Nokia 3390 with limited texting and SNAKE) and internet chat rooms were still a big thing. People still connected in person and used Kazaa to download music. My freshman year at Oregon State University (go Beavs!) was an interesting one and basically set me on an unexpected pathway to my profession.

When I started college, I was dead set on becoming a genetics researcher and counselor, helping families with devastating genetic disease find cures and plan for inevitable outcomes. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the best academic advisor and the plan I was on was unrealistic, leading me to a major change my third quarter. While I’ll never regret the choices I made, I do wonder what things would have been like with the right plan.

Socially, I stuck to my dorm room and the computer lab, since I didn’t have my own computer. I switched roommates in my second quarter and got moved to the quiet floor – a bad choice, as anyone who has met me can attest.

But, I survived it and went on to graduate!

Author Bio: Tom Ellen & Lucy Ivison

TOM ELLEN and LUCY IVISON met at the end of high school and quickly became sweethearts. Though they broke up in college, they remain best friends. Lucy is a librarian at a girls’ school in central London, where she gets most of her inspiration. Tom is a journalist and has written for Time Out, Vice, ESPN, Glamour, and many other publications.

Their first book, A Totally Awkward Love Story, was partially inspired by their own high school relationship, with Tom writing Sam’s chapters and Lucy writing Hannah’s. Freshmen is their second novel together. Follow them on Twitter at @lucyivison.