Cover model: Felicia Musser
Photographer and cover designer: Author Sarah Alexander
Keda Spencer’s life changed twelve years ago. She met a boy and he stole her heart. The problem was, they were both broken. After learning about his life, she made a decision that would change both of them. Now, they are bound together. Even with miles separating them, she can still feel his heart beating in rhythm with hers.
She recently received news that could lead her back to him. Anticipation blossoms as it is only with him that she can be her true self. But her very next thought is filled with memories and dread takes over. She isn’t sure she can survive him again.
**Warning: This novel may cause triggers and is meant for readers 18 years of age and older.**
“I don’t know the first thing about your family or where you grew up. Hell, I don’t even know your middle name. I think I only know your last name by accident. My point is - I want to be someone you can trust. I am someone you can trust. I don’t want you to run away from me again. Can you give me even a glimpse of what happened to you yesterday? You seemed excited about going to the country club when we talked about it yesterday morning and then, for whatever reason, you freak on Dr. Johnson. Please, Keda. Please let me in.”
“If you want insight into what triggers memories, I can’t give that to you. I never know until it happens,” I reply, checking my watch. I have a little extra time before having to be at work. Feeling guilty about dragging him through my madness, I decide that maybe I can allow him a little glimpse. Maybe it will help him move forward. Maybe it will help me move forward. “Here, I want to show you something,” I say, turning to go back in the house.
As soon as the door is opened my heart begins pounding at the thought of him reading the letter. My palms begin sweating and I can’t seem to unlock the door. Stopping for a moment to gather myself, I’m finally able to unlock then push it open.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” I say, coming to a complete stop in front of him. I can feel his breath on my neck and before I know what’s happening, he wraps his arms around my waist. I want to pull away. I want to tell him to stop but I can’t. I wonder if he can hear my nerve endings singe as the electricity flows through me. His warmth is uncharacteristically soothing. My heart is relaxing but my mind speeds up.
“Is this all right?” he asks, in a hushed voice.
“No,” I reply, wishing he would move but glad when he doesn’t. He won’t remove his hands and I am reminded why I have stayed with him for as long as I have. As much as I want to fight him and his touch, he makes my body sing. I want to move out of his grasp but evidently my body needs him. His lips meet my neck and he pulls my body back so it is flush with his. “I need you to remember why we are together. I need you to remember, Keda. Will you do that for us? Will you remember? We are great together and you know it. I will not allow you to walk out of my life,” he says, between kisses.
I need to stop him before we go too far. It’s not fair to either of us if I let this continue. But I need his comfort. After last night, I need anything to take my mind somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t tainted with bad memories.
“Adam…” I say, breathlessly.
“Yeah, baby?” he replies, as his hands move from my sides to my stomach.
“Please help me forget,” I beg.
“No, baby, I’m going to help you remember,” he says, as he moves from behind me. My eyes move to his once he is facing me. I can’t stand for him to see me, for him to see my vulnerabilities and my transparencies. Comfort envelopes us as he kisses away my tears. His lips take away my deepest fears and my sadness then swallows them whole.
Guilt is dangerous.
It rules my life.I am riddled with it.
After fifteen years, you would think it would lessen.
It hasn’t.
Drugs numb it, women relieve it.
But it always returns, stronger and heavier.
Always.
The light, it is refreshing.
It gets closer and I reach for it.
But it is always just out of my grasp.
Always.
☆*••☆Damaged Perfection: Perfection #1☆*••☆
Two people. Two very different pasts. One very hopeful future.
Fenton watches his life crumble as his past comes back to haunt him. He’s searching for his friend’s murderer while trying to keep the people he cares about safe. He’s teetering on the edge and isn’t sure how to step away. Will he survive his addiction to drugs, women and revenge? Or will he be swallowed whole by them?
Piper has found herself being swept up in the storm that is Fenton. She knows he has the potential to cause her major heartache but she can’t stay away. He’s brought passion, excitement and happiness to her life. But she’s watching him walk a dangerous path. Will she survive him and his demons? Or will she drown in his current?
Fenton watches his life crumble as his past comes back to haunt him. He’s searching for his friend’s murderer while trying to keep the people he cares about safe. He’s teetering on the edge and isn’t sure how to step away. Will he survive his addiction to drugs, women and revenge? Or will he be swallowed whole by them?
Piper has found herself being swept up in the storm that is Fenton. She knows he has the potential to cause her major heartache but she can’t stay away. He’s brought passion, excitement and happiness to her life. But she’s watching him walk a dangerous path. Will she survive him and his demons? Or will she drown in his current?
☆*••☆Resisting Perfection: Perfection #2☆*••☆
Nicki is the author of Lather, the first book in The Moore Series and soon to be released novel, Damaged Perfection. She is a born Buckeye turned Hoosier who loves to spend time with her family. Along with being an avid reader, she also loves animals and the Indianapolis Colts!
Twitter: @authornickirae
TSU: @nickirae
QUICKFIRE ROUND:
A) Do you believe yourself to be an outgoing or shy person?
I'm quiet but not shy. I like to watch and observe, but I have no problem putting myself out there.
B) What do you prefer, TV shows or movies?
Movies, because I never seem to be able to keep up with shows. I swear I'm like ten episodes behind on like ten different shows. There are just too many good ones.
C) What's your favorite OTP? (OTP: A couple you ship and love together)
Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy . . . oh wait, no. Buffy and Angel. I've never gotten over that breakup.
D) What's the most influential book you've ever read?
Too many. Every book I read influences me in some way. Some more than others and all in different ways, but I don't think I could pick out the most influential.
E) What's the last book you read?
Mine, haha. I'm currently finishing up final revisions on Risking Ever After, which means at this point I've read it about fifty times and won't have time for fun reading until after release day! Prior to that I was reading the Charley Davidson series.
QUESTIONS:
1) What inspired you to start writing?
I love books. Always have, and I've always been a story-teller. Tuning out during school or work to create stories in my head. It just wasn't until almost two years ago that I finally gave it a shot at taking those stories from my head and putting them into pages. It was actually a sort of escape/stress reliever from running my own business at that time.
2) What's your favorite genre to write and/or read?
Read:everything. Usually I require a bit of romance though. It can be anything from contemp, to young adult, to sci-fi/fantasy to parnormal to historical. As for writing, again it's got to have the romance. I want to write relationships, love stories, but I want to dabble in all of the different sub genres some day. For now I'm developing my writing style and growing in the new adult, contemp category.
3) Tease us! What are you currently working on?
Like I mentioned, book 5 of the Ever After series is just having the finishing touches put on it! I'm very excited about this one! I think it will be the best yet, although book # 1 will always have that special place in my heart as my favorite just because it was my first novel. I'm also just going to throw it out there that this one will be the steamiest of them. As I've developed my style and grown confident in my writing, I'm tackling more of those scenes. The focus is still always on the relationship, not the sex, and that's where I want to keep it, but, hey we all enjoy a little heat right? In the future, I mentioned that I want to dabble in some other sub genres. The first I'm going to tackle after I finish off the Ever After series with the sixth book, is a romantic suspense/thriller, mystery! Serial killers are very in these days haha, and so much fun!
4) We love stalking authors! Where can readers find you?
The best place to find me is on my facebook pages, personal or author. I don't mind if readers want to stalk me on both. I have twitter and instagram and I think Google + but I can barely keep up with facebook so I don't get on the others too much. My Goodreads and Amazon author pages are also great places to stay up to date on my releases and all that good stuff. AS for signings, I will be at a few in the coming year, including the RockNRead in Vegas come January, then the Sweet N Sassy Summer Spectacular in Kentucky, SASS in Norfolk Virginia, Authors At the Opry and a few others that will be announced later! Here are all my links for all the stalkers out there!
STEPHANIE'S FACEBOOK PAGESTEPHANIE'S AMAZON PAGESTEPHANIE'S GOODREADS PAGE Twitter handle is @StephanieHMc and on Instagram stephaniejeanmc
QUICKFIRE ROUND:
A) Do you believe yourself to be an outgoing or shy person?
Outgoing
B) What do you enjoy the most, salty snacks or sweet treats?
Sweet Treats
C) What do you prefer, TV shows or movies?
Movies
D) What's your favorite OTP?
If we're talking celebrities I'd say Adam Levine and his wife are beyond adorable. The way he talks about her makes my heart melt.
E) What's your favorite book ?
Impossible question for me! I have hundreds!
F) What's the last book you read?
It Aint Me Babe by Tillie Cole
QUESTIONS:
1) What's the most influential book you've ever read?
I think Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. It was the first adult book I'd read that really made me laugh out loud.
2) What made you want to write funny chick lit?
I think life is hard enough these days and we all want a light read that can make us forget everything and laugh over other people's lives. It makes us feel better about our own!
3) What's your favourite genre to write and/or read?
Chick-lit, although I basically read anything that takes my fancy.
4) Dopey Women is your latest release. The blurb sounds original and unique. What was your inspiration /where did you find the idea for this book?
I was interested in creating desperation in women that would drive them to an illegal act. I originally thought of con women, but then wrote in that Mags was suffering from breast cancer. It just seemed like more of a natural progression for them to think selling weed to cancer patients wasn't the worst thing in the world to start doing.
5) Tease us! What are you currently working on?
I'm working on three books at the moment, which is frying my brain! I'll be releasing a Christmas short story in November linked to the Debt & the Doormat series, then its to decide which out of the three takes priority.
6) We love stalking authors! Where can readers find you?
I'm signing at Leeds, Liverpool, Essex and Dublin next year.
LAURA'S FACEBOOK PAGE
TWITTER: @BarnardLaura
LAURA'S OFFICIAL PAGE
A haunting tale of passion, loss, and redemption, The Paper Swan is a darkly intense yet heartwarming love story, textured with grit, intrigue, and suspense. Please note: This is NOT a love triangle.
5 EMOTIONAL STARS.
TRIGGER WARNING: Kidnapping, abuse, murder, violence.
I promise you, you haven't read anything like this before. I was speechless from page one. It's unique. It's real. It will blow your mind.
We start with typical spoiled rich girl. She has the perfect life, the perfect boyfriend, the perfect family. She wears the right clothes, says the right things and attends the right events. Until someone puts a gun against her head.
She prays and the man decides to let her live... with him as her captor.
We get some flashbacks, bittersweet snippets at what life was like for Skye, our heroine, and how she fell in love with her childhood best friend.
“You don’t always get the treasure by holding on. Sometimes the magic happens when you let go.”
It took me a long time to write this review. This book deserves to be a NY Times bestseller. It's THAT good. It's THAT fesh. It's THAT innovative. It was gripping and it made you scared and excited at the same time. It made you feel.
“In the grand scheme of things, we do the best we can, all of us, and we make up our stories as we go along; we write them and direct them and project them into the world. And sometimes we get other people’s stories, and sometimes we don’t, but always there is a story behind a story behind a story, linked in a chain that we can only see a small part of, because it’s there when we’re born and it continues after we’re gone. And who can comprehend all of it in one lifetime?”
The places, the characters, the dialogue, EVERYTHING was spot on. Each and every single word seemed realistic, like I could almost touch it. I was right there with Skye, when she was scared and when she was panicking. When she was laughing and when she was crying.
“How deluded we become when we start believing that everything in the world is about us. How hard we work to make things fit into our made-up theories. How blindly we follow our worked-up emotions, the good, the bad and the ugly.”
All the characters were morally gray, and all of them had to make choices not everyone would approve of. They did them and they suffered the consequences, they accepted their fate and the things they'd done. They weren't perfect, but that's what made them so easy to love.
“It’s all fucked up, Rafael. There are no good guys or bad guys. Everyone has a reason.”
The pace was great, and the prose was incredible. Leylah knows how to write, and her style is delicate and lovely. Even the sexy scenes were done with grace.
“We are sand and rock and water and sky, anchors on ships and sails in the wind. We are a journey to a destination that shifts every time we dream or fall or keep or weep. We are stars with flaws that still sparkle and shine. We always strive, always want, always have more questions than answers, but there are moments like these, full of magic and contentment, when souls get a glimpse of the divine and quite simply, lose their breath.”
This book is complex, with so many unexpected turns. I could only guess a few plot twists, because they were so many that my mind couldn't keep up with all of them.
“It’s not over, you know. It never has been,” he said. “Whether you say yes or no, you will always be my forever.”
You will end up loving Damian, our antihero, as much as you hate him, and you will fall for him as Skye does.
“Just sitting here thinking how far you’ve come, and I’m overwhelmed with how much I love you.”
Drawn to collide into an impossible bliss…"
Labeled a ‘Cursed’ woman of Eve from birth, Maddie has endured nothing but pain and repression at the hands of The Order’s most abusive elder, Moses. Now living with her sister in The Hangmen’s secluded compound, finally, Maddie, is free. Free from the suffocating faith she no longer believes in. Free from endless years of physical and mental torment.
Just… free…
At age twenty-one, the timid and shy Maddie is content to live within the confines of her new home—safe from the outside world, safe from harm and, strangely, protected by the Hangmen’s most volatile member; the heavily pierced and tattooed, Flame.
Flame.
The man who ceaselessly watches over her with his midnight dark and searing eyes. The man who protects her with a breath-taking intensity. And the man who stirs something deep within her numbed heart.
But when circumstances conspire for Flame to need HER help, Maddie bravely risks it all for the broken man who has captivated her fragile soul.
The Hangmen’s most infamous member, Flame, is ruled by one thing—anger. Plagued by haunting demons from his past, an all-consuming rage, and isolated by an abhorrent hatred of being touched, Flame's days are filled with suffocating darkness, pierced only by a single ray of light—Maddie. The shy, beautiful woman he cannot purge from his thoughts. The woman he has an overwhelming need to possess…
... the only person who has ever been able to touch him.
Flame’s mission in life is to protect Maddie, to keep her safe. Until a trigger from his troubled past sends him spiraling into madness, trapping him in the deepest recesses of his disturbed mind.
His Hangmen brothers fear that Flame is beyond saving.
His only hope of salvation: Maddie and her healing light.
TRIGGER WARNING! ABUSE, RAPE, MURDER, SELF-HARM.
Oh my Flame. I'd been waiting for his story for a long time, and it was everything I expected it to be. It was a heart-wrenching, tear-jerking, mind-breaking book. It was a powerful raw story about survival, healing, love and acceptance. It was a story about two people finding the strength they needed, and through each other seeing their own worth. (BTW, the cover is beautiful and so meaningful. It's perfect.
Now, Maddie was a little warrior. Her character development was amazing, and I love her, but Flame stole the show from the beginning. I'm a sucker for him. You think you know who Flame is, and his motives. You do not. He was a character that grew a little bit more with each page, that touched your soul and never let you go.
“Flame’s different. But it don’t make him any less fucking important.”
He looks like a devil, but he's such a softie inside. He's actually really innocent in his mind, and he's afraid of how the world sees him since he's "different". He puts up all these walls to keep others out because he's been neglected, abused and mistreated his whole childhood, and he doesn't believe anyone would stay for him.
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“I know I’m different. I know I don’t see the world like everyone else does. But I want to see your world, Maddie. Even if it’s the only one I’ll ever understand."
I enjoyed the previous books, BUT I LOVE THIS ONE. (And it's a series, that IMO shouldn't be read out of order or as stand-alones, since each book is necessary in the development of the overall storyline.)
I don't believe in fairy tales and Prince Charming.
I believe in fear.
He taught me how to be afraid.
We first met on a playground on a wonderful summer day. It was the first time he hurt me and it wouldn’t be the last. For ten years, he's been my tormentor and I've been his forbidden. But then he went away, and yet I was still afraid.
Now he's back and wants more than just my tears. You see...he thinks I sent him away so now he wants revenge...and he knows just how to get it.
TRIGGER WARNING: DUBIOUS CONSENT / VIOLENCE / ABUSE / THREATS / OTHER SENSITIVE SUBJECTS.
REVIEWER NOTE: I'm one of those feminists that will differentiate real life from FICTION. For the sake of this review, UNDERSTAND that I'm aware this is A SICK LOVE STORY. IT'S GRUESOME AND TOXIC. I'm reviewing this as a tale, a fantasy, a work of fiction AND NOTHING ELSE. I'm not promoting any of the subjects or themes touched in this novel, nor will I ever want or wish this kind of things on me or anyone else. I'm all for only-yes-means-yes, don't-mess-with-me consent. I encourage you to speak up if you're in an abusive relationship.
This book is a mindfuck. Now, Antiheroes are my fav. I love seeing the character grow and change and I love understanding their motives. If the story begins with the main characters as enemies then I'm all for it.“I’m a hopeless fuck who is obsessed with a girl he still wants to hurt.”
I ADORE a good haters-to-lovers book, but this? This was really disturbing. Now, you might think I'm exaggerating, but no. I enjoyed the book, but it's dark. Like, pitch black dark.
Keiran will play with your mind.
You'll love him one second, hate him the next. You'll find yourself, wanting him to die, wanting to fuck him, wanting to punch him.
“I’m afraid for him because every day he has to fight the person he is, to be the person he wants to be.”
They lick their wounds, fight again, have make up sex, repeat. It's the appeal of their relationship! They are both headstrong characters.
They progressively start understanding one another, and just when you think they are getting their HEA something new happens that spins the whole story in another direction. When they start to open up to one another it's weird because they keep fighting it and it's part of what makes the novel so entertaining. The lust is almost touchable with these two!
“He came around to open my door and held out his hand to me. The gesture said more than what the eye could see. He could have easily lifted me out of the car without me being able to do anything to stop him but instead he was asking for my consent. To accept what was about the happen.”
So, does this book have some things that could be fix? Yeah, sure. It's not perfect, but it's special. It has something that has your stomach churning while your panties melt.The author did an amazing job, and I'll be continuing o
n with the series. Can't wait to see how Lake`s, Keiran's and their friends' journey end.
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