Wild About You (Random House Children's Books) - Softcover

Hill, Kaitlyn

 
9780593650950: Wild About You (Random House Children's Books)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593650956 ISBN 13: 9780593650950
Verlag: Random House Children's Books, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Two total opposites. One race through the Great Outdoors. In this grumpy-sunshine teen romance from the author of Love from Scratch and Not Here to Stay Friends, the trail to true love doesn't always come with a map.

Natalie Hart has always been loud, unfiltered, and unapologetically herself. But then comes her freshman year of college, when she loses her merit scholarship and gains one pesky little anxiety diagnosis.

Hesitant to take out more student loans, Natalie decides to shoot her shot and applies to Wild Adventures, a popular outdoorsy reality show. Sure, Natalie prefers her twelve-step skincare routine to roughing it on the Appalachian Trail while competing in challenges against other college kids, but that scholarship prize money is calling her name. High risk, high reward, right?

Enter Finn Markum, her randomly assigned, capital-O Outdoorsy teammate whose growl could rival a black bear. These partners have more friction than a pair of new hiking boots. Or is it flirtation? Turns out falling in love might be the wildest adventure of all...

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kaitlyn Hill is a writer who lives to tell love stories and make people laugh. While books make up most of her personality, Kaitlyn also enjoys messy reality TV, has never met a tea she didn't like, and thrives on overly ambitious home improvement projects. She resides in Kentucky with her real life romance hero. Kaitlyn is the author of Love from Scratch, Not Here to Stay Friends, and Wild About You.

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Chapter One


My face is melting.

Okay, so not my actual face, but the layers of primer, concealer, foundation, bronzer, blush, and highlighter I spent the morning tediously applying, blending, and contouring, all so that I could look my best for my first day on camera. That backfired harder than my dad’s ancient Ford pickup.

It’s not even that hot out here, at least not for a sunny June day. Tennessee summers aren’t exactly temperate--I remember as much from visiting my grandma in Pigeon Forge most of my childhood--but up at this altitude, with thick tree cover overhead, I’m in a mild, green, wildflower-dotted oasis. An oasis that’s been the backdrop of a uniquely intense, high-pressure workout, as I’ve hauled my clueless ass around for the better part of an hour. That’s my best guess at how long it’s been since the Wild Adventures crew sent me off from the little mountain town where we’d first met with a GoPro camera, emergency satellite phone, hand-drawn map, and their best wishes. I quickly sought out the least threatening, most grandma-like local available and asked her to point me toward the Appalachian Trail.

Fifteen minutes later, Ethel finally let me leave the street corner with not only some overly complex directions to the trailhead, but also the life stories of all three of her grandchildren, and a plastic bag of strawberry hard candies from her purse. Between the exertion and the anxiety as I’ve tried to make up for time lost to that sweet, four-foot-eleven roadblock, I’m starting to move past “glistening” into “sweating like an overly made-up pig.”

Reese tried to warn me about this, I think with a grimace as I step around a fallen tree branch. My best friend and I spent our freshman year at different schools--me at Oliver College in Boston, her at UW in Seattle--but as soon as I knew I’d been cast for this season of the popular reality show Wild Adventures, and that filming would take place along a stretch of the Appalachian Trail just a couple hours from our hometown in Kentucky, I sent out the distress signal. She made sure she was home for summer break in time to help get me ready and see me off.

She’d had all kinds of questions since hearing that I’d applied for this show in the first place, starting with “Huh?” and “Why?” The questions have only gotten more pointed over time, ranging from “You haven’t even been camping before, have you?” to “You know filming a reality show is going to be pretty different from doing live theater, right?”

As if she’s never taken some extremely out-of-character leaps and landed somewhere amazing. But that’s a whole other story.

When she and I road-tripped down to Tennessee yesterday, we stopped at REI in Knoxville for a few last-minute outdoor apparel and accessory purchases. This only reinforced how woefully underprepared I was for this experience.

“Are you sure you need a new makeup bag? Let alone one that big?” Reese asked, eyeing my selection with skepticism. “It’ll take up, like, half your backpack. And you probably won’t want to deal with the upkeep while you’re out in the wild.”

“I’ve made bigger sacrifices in the name of beauty,” I assured her with unfounded confidence.

If she could see me now, she’d sigh out the most exasperated “Lordhavemercy” recorded in human history.

Reese could see me now, it occurs to me. Or see a recording of current me a few weeks from now, or whenever episodes start going up on UltiMedia, the streaming service that airs Wild Adventures. Panting, I come to a stop and rest my perspiring backside against a tree while I pull the GoPro out of its holster that the crew affixed to my small day pack--the only luggage I was allowed to bring to filming. It contains a few changes of clothes, toiletries, and a hefty cosmetics supply for which I’m already side-eyeing myself. As my one allotted “secret weapon,” aka nonessential item, I have my e-reader, loaded with plenty of my usual romance novel fare, but also a couple AT info books. Per the rules of the show, I didn’t bring any other gear or equipment for this outdoorsy expedition--not that I own any of that stuff, anyway.

When my breathing is marginally less wheezy, I swipe my arm across my forehead in a half-hearted attempt at shine control while I have the camera pointed at the ground. I’m still inwardly cursing the fact that I can’t see what I look like right now, but I give a big smile anyway as I lift the GoPro to capture my first close-up.

“Hey, Wild Adventures fam! Natalie here.” The show’s team sent out an orientation package to contestants a couple weeks ago, including all the paperwork we needed to fill out and waivers to sign, along with a series of videos on best practices for filming my own close-ups. They also recorded my intro, where I gave a more formal “I’m Natalie Hart, I’m nineteen years old and a theater major at Oliver College” spiel for audiences. Hopefully it’s okay to just operate on a first name basis now. “I think I’m making progress toward the first checkpoint, but I have to admit it’s a little hard to tell with this map. Like, is that blob supposed to be some kind of landmark? Or did the mapmaker spill their coffee? How am I supposed to know when I’ve walked ‘four hundred yards northwest’? Cardinal directions are not my strong suit--I only remember the sun rises in the east by singing the Beauty and the Beast song in my head, Mrs. Potts voice and all.” Okay, too much of Real Natalie coming out from the jump. Let’s dial back the rambling. “So, yeah, they totally didn’t exaggerate on the ‘adventure’ part of this whole thing. But I’m trusting Mother Nature and the UltiMedia producers not to let me meet my untimely end on day one. Stay tuned to see if that trust is misplaced!”

Who says my theater background didn’t prepare me for this? I’m crushing it in the role of Girl Who Isn’t Kind of Lost Or More Than Kind of Concerned. I wedge the camera back into its holster so it can continue recording my progress, satisfied I’ve made enough of a face-forward update for this leg of the journey. Hell, if I don’t get to the first checkpoint soon, there won’t be a journey for me to continue on.

Per usual on a season of Wild Adventures, they dropped each contestant off in a separate location with a camera to film themself and a map to guide them to a checkpoint where the whole group will meet up to kick off the competition. The last contestant to arrive gets eliminated before things even truly get started.

I can’t let that be me.

I’ve watched a few seasons of Wild Adventures over the years, and it’s always fun. Each season, they plop down a bunch of people with varying levels of outdoorsiness in a different scenic locale and have them race to different checkpoints with their partners, competing in challenges along the way. Some of the challenges require more survival skills, while others are random location-themed activities. A camera crew does some of the filming, catching up with teams at all points in the challenges and spotlighting one or two pairs per episode, but most of the footage is captured by team members themselves using GoPros. Normally, there are competitors at all stages of adulthood who apply for the show with a friend, family member, or significant other. It’s always seemed to me like a great opportunity to test a relationship--if you can get through Wild Adventures together, you...

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Verlag
Random House Children's Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593650956
ISBN 13 
9780593650950
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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