It’s the fourth Thursday of the month, so you know what that means: Contest time! But first, two very important announcements. As we noted earlier, two Sweethearts are up for RITA Awards this year — Stephanie Scott for Best First Novel and Darcy Woods for Young Adult Romance and Best First Novel. Well, the RITAs are tonight and they will be live streamed! Tune in from 7 – 9 p.m. ET at www.rwa.org and keep your fingers crossed for Stephanie and Darcy!

Speaking of Romance Writers of America Awards! Yesterday the RWA Young Adult Chapter announced that Sweetheart Erin Fletcher’s ALL LACED UP won First Place in the Contemporary Category for its Athena Awards. Huge congratulations to Erin!

Now, onto our July contest, where we just happen to be celebrating the July 10 release of TIED UP IN YOU, the sequel to the aforementioned Athena Award-winning ALL LACED UP! This dual-POV story is about a hot hockey player and a brilliant STEM student who happen to be best friends and who happen to kind of, sort of, maybe, accidentally kiss and then things get, ya know. Complicated.

To win, take these simple steps:

1. Make sure you are following us on Twitter.
2. Leave a comment below letting us know your favorite sport (to watch or to play). Be sure to leave your Twitter handle in your comment so we know how to get in touch with you if you win.
3. Optional: Subscribe to our posts! Simply input your email address in the “subscribe” box on our site. As always, you don’t HAVE to do this to enter, but you really, really should do it to make sure you never miss a Sweetheart contest or post! 🙂

One randomly selected winner will receive a signed copy of TIED UP IN YOU (or a free e-copy if you are outside of the U.S. and Canada)! Contest closes August 2 at noon, and the winner will be announced August 3.

Good luck! xoxoxo

Some of our best (and worst) teen-age memories happen not at school, not on vacation, and not even on dates with our biggest crushes. They happen at our summer jobs! The Sweethearts have held lots of different types of jobs, from babysitting, to hostessing at a dinner theater, to camp counselor, to telemarketer (see, some telemarketers ARE really sweet, so be nice out there, y’all!).

For our June contest, we want to hear about your summer jobs. Tell us about your favorite ones, or your least favorite, and feel free to share your stories. This month’s winner will be selected at random to receive some super fun Sweetheart Swag (including a bookmark, button, and magnet) as well as your choice of one e-book from the Sweetheart collection.

To enter, you need to (1) make sure you are following each of us on Twitter:

• Sweethearts of YA
• Linda
• Robin
• Karole
• Erin
• Stephanie
• Darcy

Then (2) leave a comment below about one (or more) of your summer jobs. Be sure to include your Twitter handle in your comment so we can reach you. Contest closes June 27 at noon ET.

We can’t wait to connect with you AND hear all about your summer jobs. Good luck! xoxoxo

For our May contest, we’re celebrating Sweetheart Karole Cozzo’s May 16 release, The Truth About Happily Ever After.  In this sweet YA/NA romance, Alyssa works summers at a theme park playing the role of Cinderella and looking for her own fairy tale love story. Alyssa is a princess at heart, and nothing makes her happier than seeing the wide-eyed stares and smiles of the little girls who come through the park to meet her.

With summer just around the corner, we thought we’d ask: If you could portray any theme park character (in any type of theme park, real or imagined) for one whole summer, what would it be and why? The rules are simple:

• Make sure you’re following us on Twitter.
• Leave a comment below and let us know which character you’d choose and why.
• Be sure to leave your Twitter handle at the end of your comment so we can reach you.

The contest closes May 31 at noon. We’ll choose a comment at random, and the winner will receive a pampered princess prize pack, including a copy of Karole’s book and some swoony swag!

Good luck! xoxoxo

Have you ever wanted to be the MC of your own YA romance novel? Experience all those ups and downs — the heartache of a breakup and the the thrill of the makeup?

You’ve read about butterflies in bellies, hearts pounding in chests, and blood rushing to, well, lots of places, and you want to feel all those feels for reals. We know you do. So … welcome to the Sweethearts of YA first-ever contest and giveaway, where you get to star in your very own YA romance novel!

We know you’re a fabulous main character — strong, smart, and sassy. You don’t actually NEED a hero … but it wouldn’t be much of a romance without one, now would it? So who will yours be? We’ve put together a video of some of the most time-honored YA hero tropes to help you find out.

Click “play” and find your YA Hero Match!

Once you’ve found your hero, you can enter our contest following these simple steps:

1. Follow us on Twitter.
2. Tweet out which YA Hero you landed on. Be sure to use the #SweetheartsofYA hashtag and include a link to this post. Here’s a shortened link you can use:
   http://wp.me/p8wdjx-5W
3. (Optional) Subscribe to our site. All you need to do is fill in your email and click the button. You don’t have to do this to win, but we highly recommend it, because we’re going to have contests every month, plus fun weekly posts, and we don’t want you to miss any of them!

That’s it! We’ll collect the eligible tweets and select one of you at random as our winner.

Which brings us to … THE PRIZE! Since this is our first contest, we’ve decided to make the prize a BIG one! The winner will win not one, not two, not … OK, never mind … SIX books and a boatload of swag. Yes, you’ll receive a book from each Sweetheart as well as … well, look at all the pretty:

So, have fun finding your YA hero and be sure to enter to win. We’ll announce the winner here on May 4. Good luck!

UPDATE: We have a winner! Congratulations to Kate! Thanks to everyone who participated. We hope you had fun … we loved reading all your Tweets.