Who would Joy cast as Amber? The Sweet Dead Life Blog Tour

Today, we have a quickie from Joy Preble, on who to cast as Amber Velasco. I'm currently a third of the way through The Sweet Dead Life, and I think Amber's really cool. It's nice seeing author's picks of a cast, how they envisage their characters often disagrees with my first thought-case in point, here. But still.

Amber

Amber Velasco is Casey’s angel boss. She also makes a living at her ‘cover jobs’ of EMT/bartender. She is a sexy tough Texas woman who was in her early twenties when she bit the dust and came back as an angel. She’s loved and lost and has some dark secrets and a wild side that mostly don’t get revealed until book 2, THE A WORD. Casey Samuels is her first newbie angel to shepherd. And he is quite the handful for her.

I am torn about who I think could play this role. My first choice was actually Jennifer Lawrence and I still think she’d kick butt as Amber. But if she was still busy with the Hunger Games franchise, I would pick Allison Williams from GIRLS. She is the right physical type and I think she could definitely play that mixture of surface tight ass mixed with tough girl who wants what she wants and who would be totally unexpected once she broke loose of following the rules.

The Sweet Dead Life “I found out two things today. One, I think I’m dying. And two, my brother is a perv.”

So begins the diary of 14-year-old Jenna Samuels, who is having a very bad eighth-grade year. Her single mother spends all day in bed. Dad vanished when she was eight. Her 16-year-old brother, Casey, tries to hold together what’s left of the family by working two after-school jobs— difficult, as he’s stoned all the time. To make matters worse, Jenna is sick. When she collapses one day, Casey tries to race her to the hospital in their beat-up Prius and crashes instead.

Jenna wakes up in the ER to find Casey beside her. Beatified. Literally. The flab and zits? Gone. Before long, Jenna figures out that Casey didn’t survive the accident at all. He’s an “A-word.” (She can’t bring herself to utter the truth.) Soon they discover that Jenna isn’t just dying: she’s being poisoned. And Casey has been sent back to help solve the mystery that not only holds the key to her survival, but also to their mother’s mysterious depression and father’s disappearance.

The Sweet Dead Life releases on 14 May from Soho Teen. You can buy it from Amazon and the Book Depository, find it on Goodreads and find Joy Preble here.