Flashback Friday - The Sweet Gum Tree 8/29/2014

Flashback Friday is a meme hosted by our friends at Fiction Fare and Swoony Boys Podcast.  The Objective - Pick a book... any book that meets the following criteria:  

1.  Must have been published at least 2 years ago or 

2.  Preferably is still in print or available to read

I've seen this one mentioned a lot recently.  I remember adding it to my to-read list a few years ago and thinking that I really need to read it.  I think part of what has held me back is the cover.  I'm really not a fan of it.  BUT, you can get THE SWEET GUM TREE for only $0.99 so that moves it up on my list.

Title: The Sweet Gum Tree
Author: Katherine Allred
Publisher: Ellora's Cave Publishing Inc
Date: May 12, 2005

Synopsis:
Sweet tea, corn bread, and soup beans—everyday fare for eight-year-old Alix French, the precocious darling of a respected southern family. But nothing was ordinary about the day she met ten-year-old Nick Anderson, a boy from the wrong side of town. Armed with only a tin of bee balm and steely determination, Alix treats the raw evidence of a recent beating that mars his back, an act that changes both of their lives forever.

Through childhood disasters and teenage woes they cling together as friendship turns to love. The future looks rosy until the fateful night when Frank Anderson, Nick's abusive father, is shot to death in his filthy trailer.

Suddenly, Nick is gone—leaving Alix alone, confused and pregnant. For the next fifteen years she wrestles with the pain of Nick's abandonment, a bad marriage, her family and friends. But finally, she's starting to get her life back together. Her divorce is almost final, her business is booming, and she's content if not happy—until the day she looks up and sees Nick standing across the counter. He's back…and he's not alone.

Once again Alix is plunged into turmoil and pain as Nick tries to win her love, something she resists with all her strength. Only one thing might break the protective wall she's built around her emotions—the truth about Frank Anderson's death. But when that truth comes out and those walls crumble, neither Alix nor Nick is prepared for the emotional explosion that could destroy as well as heal.

Katherine Allred was born in Arkansas and spent her formative years there learning to love books at her grandfather's knee. When she was five, her mother remarried and moved them to Michigan, where they stayed for the next ten years. At age fifteen, the entire family moved back home to Arkansas, and she's been there ever since, except for brief stints in other countries and states while her hubby was in the army.

After receiving a BS in journalism from Arkansas State University, Katherine began her writing in earnest. To date, she's had seven books published, with number eight being released in April, 2009, and number nine just completed.

A member of Romance Writers of America, Katherine has achieved many awards for her novels, including the 2006 EPPIE award, winning the PASIC Book of Your Heart contest in 2002, and having a novel named Best Book of the Year by Romance Reviews Today in 2005. She currently writes for Eos, the science fiction imprint of Harper Collins Publishing.

I Know - A Review of GUARDIAN by Courtney Cole

 

We are absolutely over the moon excited about the Release Day Launch for Courtney Cole's GUARDIAN!!! GUARDIAN is a YA Paranormal Romance, and a book close to Courtney’s heart. Not only is this fabulous book back in a big way, it's Courtney's birthday! To celebrate all of the awesome she is making a few select titles only .99 TODAY ONLY! Grab them all and thank us later.

Title: Guardian
Author: Courtney Cole
Date: 8/28/2014
Source: InkslingerPR, author

Synopsis: Sometimes, things that go bump in the night are real.

My name is Whitney Lane. I’m sixteen years old and at first, I thought I was crazy.

I kept seeing shadows move along walls, and hearing whispers around corners, but whenever I looked, there was never anything there.

Until one day, there was.

Our world isn’t what we think. There are things around us, good things, bad things, scary things.

Things that we tell ourselves aren’t real, but they are.

They’re very real, and they’re terrifying.

I’ve been swept up now, in a battle of good and evil, confused about love and what is supposed to be love, but isn’t. I don’t know what to think anymore. I can’t trust my emotions and I don’t know what is true.

There’s only one thing I know for sure.

Nothing is what it seems.

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Excerpt:

Sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real.

Happy birthday to me.  

I close my eyes and burrow into my pillow as I try to sleep, as I try to escape this life.  

It’s a life I never thought I’d have, a life I most certainly don’t want.  

I’m still feeling sorry for myself as the blackness of sleep finally overtakes me.  

I don’t know what time it is when I shoot straight upward like a rocket.  Something had yanked me from the oblivion of sleep, something loud and shrill scraping my window.

My room is completely dark and I glance at my clock in confusion.  

3:00 a.m.

As my heart pounds hard against my ribcage, I quickly scan every corner of the room.

In the last few hours, dark shadows had migrated onto my pink walls, but they’re familiar, nothing out of the ordinary, although in the night, they seem twisted and scary.   

I remain motionless as I allow the sleep-induced fog to clear from my brain.

As I sit, I feel common sense and logic slowly returning.

Of course nothing had touched my window because my bedroom is on the second floor. Nothing can reach it.  And there are no trees near enough to brush against it.  It was just a dream.

It was only a dream.

I chant it silently to myself like a mantra as I consciously slow my breathing down, hoping that my racing pulse will soon follow. It was only a dream.

But just as I’m calming down, I hear it again.

A high-pitched shrill shriek, reminiscent of fingernails on a chalkboard, scraping down my window. I gasp and pull my feet up to my chest, which is when I notice the temperature.  

I notice because I can see my breath.

Timidly, I blow a puff out again, watching the way my breath turns white in the air.  

Holy crap.  Oh my God.  

What the hell?

The sound stops and stillness surrounds me once again, the silence so loud that it echoes in my ear.

Nothing moves around me, the shadows are perfectly still as they twist across my wall.  They look like mangled fingers and arms and legs, but they don’t move.  

My legs are weak and shaking, but I know I have to move.   I have to move off my bed because it feels like something is under it.  Something terrifying.  

With a leap, I bound across the room, my feet hitting the floor several feet away from the edge of my bed.  

The floor is ice cold, as though it had been covered in a blanket of snow.  

I’m trembling as I race to the far wall and check the thermostat.  Because that’s the only explanation.  I must’ve bumped it earlier, I must’ve turned the AC way down.  

But the luminous numbers stare at me in contradiction.  

74 degrees.  

It must be broken.  It has to be broken.

My breath is coming in pants now, terrified, anxious pants.  

My fear isn’t logical.  I know there’s nothing here.  I’m the only one in this room.  

Or am I?

The air seems to push at me from all around, something dark, something heavy, something real.  Something unseen.  

My fingers shake, my legs tremble, and then all of a sudden, they can no longer support my weight.  I go down like a pile of bricks, collapsing onto the floor.  I lie still because I can’t move, because something seems to sit on my chest, holding me down.  

The shadows start to move, to slither across the walls, to reach and pull and dance.  

I struggle to focus, to see what it is.  

But all I can see are the numbers on the thermostat suddenly moving, rapidly counting down from 74 to 20.  

Twenty degrees?

The air is frigid as I suck it in, as I try to pull the ice crystals into my mouth so I can breathe.  

All of a sudden, there’s a blackness in front of me.  It hovers over me, a shapeless mass, sucking in the cells of the air, the atoms and the molecules.  It’s darker than the blackness of my room, blacker than the blackest black.  

Something is here.  

With me.  

“Dad?” I whisper in a white puff.  Because what else could it be?

I reach out a finger to touch it, and then I can’t see anything else, because the darkness of it surrounds me, bleeding into everything else, even my vision.   The shriek is back, screaming into my ears, bleeding into my brain.  

Then there’s nothing.

To celebrate the release of GUARDIAN and Courtney's birthday the following books are on sale for .99, today only!

GUARDIAN
Confessions of an Alli Cat
Dante's Girl
Mia's Heart The Minaldi Legacy Soul Kissed Soul Bound

ABOUT COURTNEY COLE: Courtney Cole is a novelist who would eat mythology for breakfast if she could. She has a degree in Business, but has since discovered that corporate America is not nearly as fun to live in as fictional worlds. She loves chocolate and roller coasters and hates waiting and rude people. Courtney lives in quiet suburbia, close to Lake Michigan, with her real-life Prince Charming, her ornery kids (there is a small chance that they get their orneriness from their mother) and a small domestic zoo.    

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I came into this expecting a YA fantasy story.  What I got along with that was a deeply moving story of loss and encouragement to continue after facing intense pain.

This story was well-written and the characters were quite intriguing.  Cole created a fantastic role model with Whitney.  She is incredibly strong.  The way she takes care of her family while handling her own grief is something many adults cannot face.  She is really quite amazing.

I really stink at summarizing, but I really enjoyed this book.  I really liked Cole's writing style and am looking forward to getting into even more of her books.

4 out of 5 stars

One Favorite Moment - TEN TINY BREATHS Series by K.A. Tucker

First things first, let me give you little bit of information about the Ten Tiny Breaths series by K.A. Tucker.  From the very first word that I read, I knew that these books were going to be special.  Tucker's writing draws you in completely and opens you up to a new level of self-awareness.  As each of the characters faces their fears and their flaws, Tucker shows that none of us are perfect, and that it's those imperfections that make us perfectly incredible.  Each book can be read as a stand alone, but they are best read in the following order as a few of the characters make appearance in each book and might give away some spoiler-y info.

TEN TINY BREATHS:

Just breathe, Kacey. Ten tiny breaths. Seize them. Feel them. Love them.

Four years ago Kacey Cleary’s life imploded when her car was hit by a drunk driver, killing her parents, boyfriend and best friend. Still haunted by memories of being trapped inside, holding her boyfriend’s lifeless hand and listening to her mother take her last breath, Kacey wants to leave her past behind. Armed with two bus tickets, twenty year old Kacey and her fifteen year old sister Livie escape Grand Rapids, Michigan to start over in Miami. Struggling to make ends meet, Kacey needs to figure out how to get by. But Kacey’s not worried. She can handle anything—anything but her mysterious neighbor in apartment 1D.

Trent Emerson has smoldering blue eyes, deep dimples, and perfectly skates that irresistible line between nice guy and bad boy. Hardened by her tragic past, Kacey is determined to keep everyone at a distance, but their mutual attraction is undeniable and Trent is determined to find a way into Kacey’s guarded heart—even if it means that an explosive secret could shatter both their worlds.

***Caution: Mature content! Not suitable for younger readers. Contains reference to drugs, swearing, and sexual content ***

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ONE TINY LIE:

Livie has always been the stable one of the two Cleary sisters, handling her parents' tragic death and Kacey's self-destructive phase with strength and maturity. But underneath that exterior is a little girl hanging onto the last words her father ever spoke to her. “Make me proud,” he had said. She promised she would...and she’s done her best over the past seven years with every choice, with every word, with every action.

Livie walks into Princeton with a solid plan, and she’s dead set on delivering on it: Rock her classes, set herself up for medical school, and meet a good, respectable guy that she’s going to someday marry. What isn’t part of her plan are Jell-O shots, a lovable, party animal roommate she can’t say ‘no’ to, and Ashton, the gorgeous captain of the men’s rowing team. Definitely him. He’s an arrogant ass who makes Livie’s usually non-existent temper flare and everything she doesn’t want in a guy. Worse, he’s best friends and roommates with Connor, who happens to fit Livie’s criteria perfectly. So why does she keep thinking about Ashton?

As Livie finds herself facing mediocre grades, career aspirations she no longer thinks she can handle, and feelings for Ashton that she shouldn’t have, she’s forced to let go of her last promise to her father and, with it, the only identity that she knows.  

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FOUR SECONDS TO LOSE:

I believe you don’t have years, or months, or weeks to impact a person’s life. You have seconds. Seconds to win them over, and seconds to lose them.
Owning a strip club isn’t the fantasy most guys expect it to be. With long hours, a staff with enough issues to keep a psych ward in business, and the police regularly on his case, twenty-nine-year-old Cain is starting to second-guess his unspoken mission to save the women he employs. And then blond, brown-eyed Charlie Rourke walks through his door, and things get really complicated. Cain abides by a strict “no sleeping with his staff” rule. But being around Charlie challenges Cain’s self-control . . . and it’s been a long time since any woman has done that.

Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Rourke needs a lot of money, really fast, in order to vanish before it’s too late. Taking her clothes off for men makes her stomach curl, but Charlie tells herself that at least she’s putting her acting and dancing skills to good use. And though her fellow dancers seem eager to nab their sexy, sophisticated, and genuinely caring boss, she’s not interested. After all, Charlie Rourke doesn’t really exist—and the girl pretending to be her can’t get distracted by romance.

Unfortunately, Charlie soon discovers that developing feelings for Cain is inevitable, and that those feelings may not be unrequited—but losing him when he finds out what she’s involved with will be more painful than any other sentence awaiting her.

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FIVE WAYS TO FALL:

Sometimes you can’t change—and sometimes you just don’t want to. Discover Ben’s side of the story in this fourth novel by the beloved, top-selling indie author of Ten Tiny Breaths, One Tiny Lie, and Four Seconds to Lose.

Purple-haired, sharp-tongued Reese MacKay knows all about making the wrong choice; she’s made plenty of them in her twenty-odd-years. So when her impulsive, short-lived marriage ends in heartbreak, she decides it’s time for a change. She moves to Miami with the intention of hitting reset on her irresponsible life, and she does quite well…aside from an epically humiliating one-night stand in Cancun with a hot blond bouncer named Ben. Thank God she can get on a plane and leave that mistake behind her.

Football scholarship and frat parties with hot chicks? Part of charmer Ben Morris’s plan. Blown knee that kills any hope of a professional football career? So not part of the plan. Luckily Ben has brains to go with his knockout looks and magnetism. After three long years of balancing law school with his job as a bouncer at Penny’s Palace, he’s ready to lead a more mature life—until his first day of work, when he finds himself in the office of that crazy, hot chick he met in Cancun. The one he hasn’t stopped thinking about.

If Ben truly were a smart guy, he’d stay clear of Reese. She’s the boss’s stepdaughter and it’s been made very clear that office romances are grounds for dismissal. Plus, rumor has it she’s trouble. The only problem is, he likes trouble, especially when it’s so good-looking…

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IN HER WAKE: A Ten Tiny Breaths Novella:

Author’s Note: Although it is a prequel, In Her Wake is best read after completing Ten Tiny Breaths.Before you knew him as Trent in Ten Tiny Breaths, he was Cole Reynolds—and he had it all. Until one night when he makes a fatal, wrong decision…and loses everything.

When a drunken night out at a Michigan State college party results in the death of six people, Cole must come to terms with his part in the tragedy. Normally, he’d be able to lean on his best friends—the ones who have been in his life since he could barely walk. Only, they’re gone. Worse, there’s the shattered body of a sixteen-year-old girl lying somewhere in a hospital bed, her entire life ripped from her because of a case of beer and a set of keys.

Everyone assures him that they know it wasn’t intentional, and yet he can’t ignore the weight of their gazes, the whispers behind his back. Nor can he shake the all-consuming guilt he feels every time he thinks of that girl who won’t so much as allow him near her hospital room to apologize. As the months go by and the shame and loneliness festers, Cole begins to lose his grip on what once was important—college, his girlfriend, his future. His life. It’s not until Cole hits rock-bottom that he can begin to see another way out of his personal hell: forgiveness.

And there’s only one person who can give that to him…

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About K.A. Tucker:

Born in small-town Ontario, Kathleen published her first book at the age of six with the help of her elementary school librarian and a box of crayons. She is a voracious reader and the farthest thing from a genre-snob, loving everything from High Fantasy to Chick Lit. Kathleen currently resides in a quaint small town outside of Toronto with her husband, two beautiful girls, and an exhausting brood of four-legged creatures.

Links:

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For this post, we were asked to pick our favorite moment from the series.  I thought, "Sure, sign me up for that.  I loved every book so this will be easy."  Well, I was wrong.  This was soooooooo not easy.  Because I love each and every book, it was super hard to narrow down my favorite moment, but I think I have decided on a favorite.

The scene I almost chose happens in FIVE WAYS TO FALL.  To me, while the book touches on some very heavy themes and emotions, it is the most light-hearted book in the series.  Ben is a jokester and he makes me smile throughout the whole series and I was extremely happy to read his story.  He and Reese have a great relationship that is grounded in friendship.  I think part of the reason they are so great together is because of the way that they 'play' with each other.  They aren't heavy and intense, but their interactions are deep and life-changing.

But for me, the best moment happens in ONE TINY LIE.  Ashton and Livie are my favorite couple and in this moment, Kacey (from TEN TINY BREATHS) makes an appearance, letting everyone know why I love her.

"You wanna cover your junk, buddy?"

He grins, holding his hands out.  "I though you liked me like this?"

She responds with a smirk of her own, her eyes dropping meaningfully downward.  "I've got better things waiting at home for me."  She flicks her hand toward the door.  That's Kacey.  Cool and confident when faced with a random penis.

Waiting on Wednesday - THE FINE ART OF PRETENDING

Title: The Fine Art of Pretending 
Author: Rachel Harris
Publisher: Spencer Hill Contemporary
Date: 9/30/2014

Synopsis: According to the guys at Fairfield Academy, there are two types of girls: the kind you hook up with, and the kind you're friends with. Seventeen-year-old Alyssa Reed is the second type. And she hates it. With just one year left to change her rank, she devises a plan to become the first type by homecoming, and she sets her sights on the perfect date—Justin Carter, Fairfield Academy’s biggest hottie and most notorious player.

With 57 days until the dance, Aly launches Operation Sex Appeal and sheds her tomboy image. The only thing left is for Justin actually to notice her. Enter best friend Brandon Taylor, the school’s second biggest hottie, and now Aly’s pretend boyfriend. With his help, elevating from “funny friend” to “tempting vixen” is only a matter of time.

But when everything goes according to plan, the inevitable “break up” leaves their friendship in shambles, and Aly and Brandon with feelings they can’t explain. And the fake couple discovers pretending can sometimes cost you the one thing you never expected to want.

  

Award-winning and Bestselling author Rachel Harris writes humorous love stories about sassy girls next door and the hot guys that make them swoon. Emotion, vibrant settings, and strong relationships are a staple in each of her books...and kissing. Lots of kissing. 

An admitted Diet Mountain Dew addict and homeschool mom, she gets through each day by laughing at herself, hugging her kids, and watching way too much Food Network with her husband. She writes young adult, new adult, and adult romance, and LOVES talking with readers. 

Website: www.RachelHarrisWrites.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RachelHarrisBks
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RachelHarris...
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What book are you waiting for this week?

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine - make sure you head over and see what other people are waiting for!

Cover Reveal - COVERING KENDALL by Julie Brannagh

Title: Covering Kendall

Author: Julie Brannagh

Publisher: HarperCollins Avon Impulse

Date: 10/21/2014

Synopsis:

Kendall Tracy, General Manager of the San Francisco Miners,  is not one for rash decisions or one-night stands. But when she finds herself alone in a hotel room with a heart-stoppingly gorgeous man-who looks oddly familiar-Kendall throws her own rules out the window…and they blow right back into her face. Drew McCoy should look familiar  he’s a star player for her team’s archrival the Seattle Sharks. Which would basically make Drew and Kendall the Romeo and Juliet of professional football…well, without all the dying. Not that it’s an issue. They agree to pretend their encounter never happened. Nothing good can come from it anyway, right? Drew’s not so sure. Kendall may be all wrong, but he can’t stop thinking about her and he finds that some risks are worth taking. Because the stakes are always highest when you’re playing for keeps.

Julie Brannagh has been writing since she could hold a pencil. She lives in a small town near Seattle, where she once served as a city council member and owned a yarn shop. She shares her home with a wonderful husband, two uncivilized Maine Coons and a rambunctious chocolate Lab.

When she's not writing, she's reading--or armchair-quarterbacking her favorite NFL team from the comfort of the family room couch. Julie is a Golden Heart finalist and the author of contemporary sports romances.