Friday, July 18, 2014

Blog Tour - Amber's Review of DUSTY: INNOCENTS by Mary Elizabeth and Sarah Elizabeth

Synopsis
Bliss knows all about bad choices but has yet to make them herself. With an innocent heart, she searches for freedom and finds it in the delinquent down the hall.

Dusty is a foul-mouthed troublemaker, tear-maker and heartbreaker. The boy with summer sky-blue eyes knows to stay away, but he can't resist the girl who made his house a home.

She's his reason, but he might not catch her when she falls.

She loves him. He loves her crazy. 

This is what happens when a love made of secrets is kept with rules instead of promises.

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Excerpt
Front windows cracked, we’re relaxed in the back of his parents’ old Audi and it feels good again.

“Caffeine isn’t good for you, you know,” Thomas says, glancing over. 

The sun has set and the purple sky and the Yaquina lighthouse paint my temperamental troublemaker in soft hues. The scent and sounds of the sea drift in with the breeze, mixing with smoke from the blunt he’s relit and the low melodies of Citizen Cope singing about a girl that won’t give in and he’ll never let go of.

Taking another drink of the coffee he bought me, I shrug. I don’t know what he said to get the baristas to make a pumpkin spice latte in February, but cinnamon and caffeine fill me with warm relief. 

Under his breath and around a hit, Thomas chuckles.

“It’s bad for your bones and skin,” he says, smirking as I tuck my toes under his leg. “And your heart. Uncontrolled beats are a prelude to heart attack, princess.”

I roll my eyes and laugh some, because I do feel them. I felt them earlier in his bed, and before that, when I was thinking of him. My unsteady heartbeats have nothing to do with coffee.

“Bring on the palpitations,” I say before taking another drink, letting Dusty lecture me about bad habits, as if I’m too young to understand irony.

“I’m serious,” he continues, smoking up and blowing out. “Your body will build a tolerance. When you feel it’s becoming bad for you, you’ll want more. You’ll need more. Caffeine’s a drug, Leigh.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. Maybe I’m still high.

“Oh yeah?” I ask. “Like pot?”

This boy blows a cloud of smoke up, and I watch it swirl-spread out across the car’s ceiling.

“Pot’s from the earth,” he says, puffing smoke rings while I wrap both hands around my cup, absorbing its warmth through my palms. I inhale the cream-sweet scent of cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger, and it may be full of stimulants, but I feel calm.

Thomas’ presence is the best Valentine’s Day gift. Candy is nice, and candy flavored blunt wraps were thoughtful, but this is what I wanted most. Just us.

“Pumpkins are from the earth,” I say. “And coffee beans.”

“You think there’s real pumpkin in that?” he asks. When I can’t do more than smile and stare at his lips, he sits up straighter.

“Caffeine’s an analeptic. It fucks with your impulse control and your insulin resistance.”

I laugh because, “What?”

He pulls a hit. “That shit will give you stress hormones, Bliss.”

“How do you know all this?” 

“Baseball.”

We’re quiet for a second, looking at each other. His carefreeness is back, but his smile is understated.

“You sure you’re not worried it’ll stunt my growth?”

Between licking his bottom lip and bringing the blunt back up, Dusty glances at my chest without a stitch of modesty.

“You’re growing up fine, girl.”

My cheeks heat, and I hide my smile with another drink. 

After I’ve finished my coffee, Thomas offers me the blunt. When I decline, my actual addiction leans into me, nudges his hood from my head, and exhales his smoke all over my neck. 

The playful punk that was lecturing me is gone. This honest to a fault, recklessly unflinching, too-beautiful, fated youth is a person only I know. This is my person. 

He tosses the blunt out the window while I drop my empty cup to the floorboard, and we shift together. We kiss open and deep, claiming and binding. We kiss the way I wanted to earlier, with eyes closed and hearts open, and I know the real drug is here. It’s between us and inside us.

It’s the way he opens my lips with his lips to kiss me deeper, and the way my pulse feels like his name is in my veins.

It’s the way I can’t stay hurt or mad or jealous, and the way he can’t stand for me to.

It’s the craving that never goes away, the need for more that grows as we feed it. It’s the tolerance he was talking about and knowing he’s right. 

It’s this, our secret.

We’re the drug.

Teaser




MeetTheAuthor

 

Mary Elizabeth is an up and coming author who finds words in chaos, writing stories about the skeletons hanging in your closets. Known as The Realist, she is one half of The Elizabeths—a duo brave enough to never hide the truth. Born and raised in Southern California, she’s a wife, mother of four beautiful children, and dog tamer to one enthusiastic Pit Bull and a prissy Chihuahua. She’s a hairstylist by day but contemporary fiction, new adult author by night. Mary can often be found finger twirling her hair and chewing on a stick of licorice while writing and rewriting a sentence over and over until it’s perfect. She discovered her talent for tale-telling accidentally, but literature is in her stranglehold. And she’s not letting go until every story is told. 

To follow Mary’s upcoming solo and collaborative projects, she can be found at her website http://www.maryelizabethlit.com/.

Brought together by their love of storytelling, Mary and Sarah Elizabeth are a pair of dedicated writers with complementary strengths who’ve cultivated a literary style that captures a Realist’s brutality with a Poet’s grace, uncovering the self-seeking side of tenderness and the undisguised truth of honesty. Inspired by the lyrics of a song, Dusty was born between emails and long G-chats before a single chapter was ever typed. A short story turned into a monster, and more than four years and several edits later, the first half of their collaboration, Innocents, will be released on July 14, 2014. And its conclusion, Delinquents, is set to release on October 23, 2014. 

If you’d like to contact The Elizabeths, they can be located on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheElizabethsDusty?ref=hl.

MeetTheAuthor
   

Listener, messenger, secret keeper, Elizabeth, and TrueLove, Sarah works two jobs by day so that she's able to really work by night. She's written since she was old enough to hold a marker, and her writing bridges the sacred and profane, from first love to forbidden, with a longing for truth and a passion for hearts. She is currently based in Kansas City where her army is comprised of one little buffalo. Her best friends are girls named Moses and Bunny. Her hero is a boy named Bishop, and the one she loves has ocean eyes. In addition to Dusty, Sarah also has a collaborative novella, Light and Wine, due to be released on June 8th, and her solo work will be featured in the anthology Branded, this August.

Brought together by their love of storytelling, Mary and Sarah Elizabeth are a pair of dedicated writers with complementary strengths who’ve cultivated a literary style that captures a Realist’s brutality with a Poet’s grace, uncovering the self-seeking side of tenderness and the undisguised truth of honesty. Inspired by the lyrics of a song, Dusty was born between emails and long G-chats before a single chapter was ever typed. A short story turned into a monster, and more than four years and several edits later, the first half of their collaboration, Innocents, will be released on July 14, 2014. And its conclusion, Delinquents, is set to release on October 23, 2014. 

If you’d like to contact The Elizabeths, they can be located on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheElizabethsDusty?ref=hl.





I'm going to start out by saying that even before I received the arc to this book, I was intimidated as hell to write the review. I know this book is going to be something, and that Mary and Sarah are going to go somewhere. For so long, I've heard people talk about how amazing this read is. I've seen snippets and teasers of it for a long time. And I know I'm not going to do this book justice with my simple words. I like to pretend I'm so articulate. I'm not. Hahaha. I just hope what I'm saying makes sense most of the time, so I'll keep this review simple, or as simple as I can.

Innocents (Dusty #1) sucked me in. Dusty and Bliss have such an unhealthy relationship and obsession with each other, but it works for them. Bliss knows that Dusty is an Asshole, and that he's out smoking weed, and getting high with his friends, and getting into girls' pants. She accepts it because she KNOWS Dusty loves her. But, she over looks that. It makes me want to reach in and smack her, but on the other hand, I get it. I get that she loves him with everything that she is. I get that.

Bliss started out as a naive little girl. Sheltered. After falling, and falling hard for Dusty, she started seeing and realizing the world isn't black and white. Deep down she's a good girl. Pure. The complete opposite of her love.

" The taste of violence lingers on his top lip, refusing to let me forget that we’re from, and we live in, two totally different worlds."

Dusty....he's.....a monster. An asshole. He knows what he's doing is wrong, but it's all he knows. It's what he's good at. From the few chapters in his point of view, you just know and can feel how much he loves Bliss.

Don’t you get it, baby?”
“What’s there to get?” she asks.
“That I love you.”
“Well, you have a shitty way of showing it.”
I smirk. “That doesn’t make it any less true."

Just like it says in the book, she's his softer side, and he's her motherfucking monster. He knows he's a monster. They both just...know.

I have never felt such strong conflicting emotions while reading a book. Dusty is a douche, but he's also perfect. I'm sure there will be people that will completely flame this book because of the unhealthy relationship between them. But it's their love. Their story. It may not be perfect, but like Bliss said in chapter one,

"Love is fucked-up, but love is all there is."


5 OUT OF 5 STARS

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