Dearest readers of STACKED,

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We started this blog 4.5 years ago (to the day). We wanted a place to share our thoughts on books, and since then, we have found an amazing community of readers, of advocates, of people as passionate as we are about books and sharing them. We’ve made some incredible friends, and we’ve been lucky enough to write and write and write and have people not just share their thoughts with us, but they’ve shared our thoughts with other people.

It is an incredible feeling to know people want to hear what we have to say.

Today marks our 1 millionth hit since we began our blog. ONE MILLION UNIQUE HITS since we began this blog 4.5 years ago. That’s an incredible number, and it’s made even more mind-boggling to know that half of that has been from the last year alone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We want to thank you not just in a post, but we want to thank our readers — long-time loyal ones and brand new readers alike — with a pair of giveaways that we are very excited about. We’ve never done something like this before, but we are excited to give it a whirl.

The first giveaway is what you may consider fairly straightforward. We’ve got a pile of YA books (and some advanced reader copies) we want you to have. There will be between 8 and 10 titles total up for grabs, a mix of genres, including the following:

• Yesterday by CK Kelly Martin & the brand-new sequel Tomorrow
• What Goes Around by Courtney Summers 
• The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas
• Half Lives by Sara Grant
• Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage on audio
• The Probability of Miracles by Wendy Wunder on audio
• An advanced reader’s copy of Tin Star by Cecil Castellucci
• An advanced reader’s copy of Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira
• Any 2013 hardcover or paperback YA novel of the winner’s choice

As well as a handful more. Kimberly and I want to build a really nice mix of stuff to give away, so we’re scouring our brains to give away some favorites, as well as some new things we think our readers would like.

The only restriction for this giveaway is that you are a US or Canadian resident, since we’ll be covering shipping.

Our second giveaway is a little bit different, and we aren’t entirely sure how this will go over, but it’s one we’re VERY excited to try out. We’re going to give away a 30 page manuscript critique. Kimberly and I will both read the first thirty pages of your middle grade or young adult manuscript and offer a boatload of feedback for you — what we think is working, what we think could be improved, and more. We’ll include not just a letter, but marginal commentary throughout.

Because we can do this one electronically, we’re happy to offer this giveaway for anyone who has a manuscript in English.

You can enter either giveaway or you can enter both. We’ll choose our random winners Monday, November 11.

Thanks for being such supportive and amazing readers — we really appreciate all of your feedback, your sharing, and your thoughts on our blog.

— Kelly & Kimberly