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Book Tour★Something Like Gravity
Today I Partnered With FFBC
To Bring You
Something Like Gravity
By Amber Smith
@mtmctours
@Amber Smith
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Release Date: June 18th 2019
Genre: Contemporary, LGBT, Young Adult, Romance
https://open.spotify.com/track/0Y8uABAzh2Kh8LhmAqsnfs?si=QzYcOFAVRvOmmn_23MESRA
⭐️Don’t forget to click on the above picture to enjoy this song picked by the Author
Synopsis
For fans of Love, Simon and Eleanor and Park, a romantic and sweet novel
about a transgender boy who falls in love for the first time—and how first love
changes us all—from New York Times bestselling author Amber Smith.
Chris and Maia aren’t off to a great start.
A near-fatal car accident first brings them together, and their next encounters don’t
fare much better. Chris’s good intentions backfire. Maia’s temper gets the best of
her.
But they’re neighbors, at least for the summer, and despite their best efforts, they
just can’t seem to stay away from each other.
The path forward isn’t easy. Chris has come out as transgender, but he’s still
processing a frightening assault he survived the year before. Maia is grieving the
loss of her older sister and trying to find her place in the world without her. Falling
in love was the last thing on either of their minds.
But would it be so bad if it happened anyway?
BOOK LINKS
Goodreads:
Amber Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of the young adult novels
The Way I Used to Be, The Last to Let Go, and Something Like Gravity. An
advocate for increased awareness of gendered violence, as well as LGBTQ
equality, she writes in the hope that her books can help to foster change and spark
dialogue surrounding these issues. She grew up in Buffalo, New York, and now
lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her partner and their ever-growing family
of rescued dogs and cats. You can find her online at AmberSmithAuthor.com.
Website:http://ambersmithauthor.com/
Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9857002.Amber_Smith
Twitter:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ambersmithauthor/
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/AmberSmithAuthor
Hello Bookish Friends,
Today I have teamed up the author, Cryssa Bazos And Historical Fiction Book Tours, to bring you
Severed Knot
@CryssaBazos
#TraitorsKnot @HFVBT
Severed Knot
By Cryssa Bazos
Publisher: W. M. Jackson Publishing
Publication Date: June 16, 2019
Barbados 1652. In the aftermath of the English Civil War, the vanquished are uprooted and scattered to the ends of the earth.
Barbados 1652. In the aftermath of the English Civil War, the vanquished are uprooted and scattered to the ends of the earth.
When marauding English soldiers descend on Mairead O’Coneill’s family farm, she is sold into slavery. After surviving a harrowing voyage, the young Irish woman is auctioned off to a Barbados sugar plantation where she is thrust into a hostile world of depravation and heartbreak. Though stripped of her freedom, Mairead refuses to surrender her dignity.
Scottish prisoner of war Iain Johnstone has descended into hell. Under a blazing sun thousands of miles from home, he endures forced indentured labour in the unforgiving cane fields. As Iain plots his escape to save his men, his loyalties are tested by his yearning for Mairead and his desire to protect her.
With their future stolen, Mairead and Iain discover passion and freedom in each other’s arms. Until one fateful night, a dramatic chain of events turns them into fugitives.
Together they fight to survive; together they are determined to escape.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #5Star
Severed Knot is Cryssa Bazos follow up to her award winning debut novel, In this emotional charged book set in 1652. We meet the two main protagonist, Iain and Mairean. Iain is a Scottish soldier captured while fighting for the Royalist cause in the Battle of Worcesterin 1651. As a consequence to his royalist loyalty he ends up being shipped out with his band of soldiers as indentured servant to the island of Barbados.
Mairean is a young woman who is kidnapped by marauding English soldiers who descend on Mairead O’Coneill’s family farm. She finds herself on board a slavers ship bound for Barbados, there she meets Iain. They are eventually sold at auction to the same sugarcane plantation.
I was fully immersed in this character driven drama, with well developed characters, who came to life right off the page.The Author sets this historical romance to the backdrop of the lush and hostile Barbados. In Ms Brazo’s tragic historical fiction, Mairead and Iain romance interweaves between survival and the dark cruelty of servitude within plantation life. The strength of the novel lies in the authors ability capture the human heart and soul. With both futures stolen, Iain and Mairean, find passion and freedom in each other’s arms. Both have vowed to gain there freedom and return to there homeland at all costs.
The Authors realistic storyline catapults you into a world authentic details about sugar manufacture. Her portrayal and descriptive content draws you into the harsh reality of the horrors and violent struggles of plantation life.
Severed Knot, is a stunning achievement of heartache, survival and death.
Cryssa Bazos’s sets the bar in realistic historical fiction. Her ability to precisely set the character conflict with romance, for a powerful and unforgettable, riveting novel.
The novels premise and the writing definitely intrigued me and kept me entertained. The pace was brisk and the dialogue is fluid and engaging. Her true to life candid theme of enforced labor is gut wrenching and gruesome at times.
I thoroughly enjoyed the tension of this storyline and it had me hooked right from the very first chapter. Ms Bazos’s meticulous research pulled me in from page one and kept me fully captivated and intrigued until the very end. Knowing the caliber of her writing, I knew I would be in for an intense and gripping read, which is exactly what this was. The authors execution is impeccable and each scene is richly atmospheric.
Severed Knot, is a stunning achievement of heartache, survival and death.
Once again the author delivers a captivating and nonstop historical fiction, with intriguing plot twist with believable characters that keeps you vested all the way through until a satisfying end.
I am definitely looking forward to reading more books by this author!
Thanks to the author and to the publisher for sending me this early Arc,
in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Click the icons to add to your Goodreads and you can purchase on Amazon
Sunlight sparkled on the water. A slight breeze rippled the otherwise still water. Another splash. At first, Mairead didn’t see anything, then someone surfaced. A man, skimming across the pond, arms and legs slicing through the water. Even before he turned, she knew who it was. Johnstone.
Mairead knew she should back away and leave before he caught her watching—he’d be insufferable otherwise. That, or bark her head off as any self-respecting ogre. And yet something pinned her to the spot.
He dove into the water, his body curving with a flash of his naked buttocks.
Mairead’s eyes widened, and she edged closer. When he split the surface of the lake, he caused a spray of water drops to splatter. He stood facing her direction, eyes closed. Raising his hands to his head, he slicked back his dark blond hair.
Mairead didn’t dare move. She watched how the muscles in his arms flexed. Her eyes travelled across his broad chest with its light mat of hair. A trail of darkish hair ran down from chest to stomach until it disappeared below the pond’s surface. Mairead craned her head to peer into the pond, but the water was murky and brownish-green.
Johnstone dove under again. Mairead sat back on her heels and nibbled her fingertip, considering her options. She really should leave. A smile played at the corner of her mouth as she made herself more comfortable.
Johnstone surfaced and began to paddle lazily in the water. His head was tipped backwards, his face presented to the sun. His skin had become tanned and gleamed against the lapping water.
Mairead watched, captivated. He seemed at one with the water. She didn’t know too many who could swim, and none so well. Her own brothers had enjoyed a quick barrelling leap into the river back home, splashing like mad puppies and thrashing in the water. They had taught her to float, but swimming across the water as this Scotsman was now doing, with strong, purposeful strokes, was an art, and one she admired greatly. So she told herself.
After a few moments, prudence whispered that she had stayed long enough. Mairead rose from her crouch, careful not to rustle a leaf, but just as she moved Johnstone finished his swim and headed back to the bank. Mairead dropped to the ground again so he wouldn’t notice her.
Johnstone slowly waded out of the water, all glorious and dripping. Mairead’s breath locked in her throat. She took in that expanse of chest, the tapered waist then . . . Blessed Mother of Jesus.
She made a slight choking sound, and Johnstone stopped to look around.
“Who’s there?” he called out in her direction.
Mairead’s face flooded. He would never let her live this down. She had to get away from here without him seeing her.
No time for discretion.
Mairead darted for the trail. She risked a glance over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of Johnstone yanking on his breeches. And that was her downfall. Literally. A root hooked her foot, and she crashed to the ground with a cry. Then she heard him thrashing through the brush behind her. Mairead scrambled to her feet and managed to take a few more strides before he caught up with her, grabbing a fistful of her petticoat in his hand.
Mairead twisted around and found herself face-to-face with Iain Locharbaidh Johnstone. It was one thing to gawk at the man from a distance but to be this close to his still-wet chest squeezed the breath from her lungs. She averted her eyes, not sure where she could safely look, and her gaze landed on his unlaced breeches. More wet skin. Heat flooded her cheeks.
“Oh!”
Johnstone released her and swore under his breath while he laced up his breeches. “What were you doing, woman?”
“Nothing! I . . . I came down for a wash.”
“Do you always hide in the shrubs when taking a wash?” His eyes narrowed, causing her to squirm. “Here’s a tip, lass, the water works far better. Not sure what they do in Ireland, but that’s how it’s done in Scotland.”
“I was not hiding in the shrubs.” Mairead hid her crossed fingers in the folds of her petticoat and searched lamely for an adequate rebuttal. “I had only reached the shrubs when you starting crashing around like a mad man. And don’t you dare disparage my homeland with your poor attempt of humour.”
“How long were you watching me?”
Mairead felt her face blaze. “I was not watching you, to be sure. Have you not heard a thing I’ve said?”
He folded his arms across his chest and quirked his brow. “Building a nest in the shrubs, then, like a wee mouse?”
“Stop calling me a mouse,” Mairead said, now with true outrage. Small and insignificant—was she always to be thought this way? No one ever compared Ciara to a mouse. Not even Bronagh—a shrew, perhaps, but never a mouse.
The corners of his mouth lifted slightly. “Aye, you were watching.”
She knew it—she knew he’d be insufferable! “I didn’t know who was in the pond and the moment . . . the moment I discovered who it was . . . For certain, it could have been anyone . . . even . . . even Masterton the Younger.”
Johnstone quirked a brow, amusement playing across his features. Mairead’s gaze latched on to his deepening smile, and she only now noticed the firmness of his jaw and how the droplets of water clung to his blond whiskers.
Mairead tore her eyes away and forced herself to meet his eyes. “What? What do you find so amusing?”
“Not sure where to start.” Was that laughter in his voice?
Mairead’s inner voice sat her down and delivered a stern lecture. Concede the field, Mairead. Retreat now. No shame in admitting defeat. And yet she dashed the voice of reason and found herself saying, “Make an effort. Explain it to me.”
“You thought you were ogling Masterton?”
Mairead’s jaw dropped. “I never said—”
Johnstone’s teeth flashed in a smile. “He’ll be flattered, lass, but
I’d steer clear of his wife, were I you. She’ll not think twice to chase you off the croft with a broom.”
“I never said I was ogling him!”
“Oh aye? But you were ogling someone?”
Mairead sucked in her breath. “You. Are. An. Impossible. Man!”
She finally did what her good sense had urged her to do earlier. She whirled around and fled the field.
Connect with Cryssa through her Website (cryssabazos.com), Facebook, Twitter (@CryssaBazos) and Instagram
Cryssa Bazos is an award-winning historical fiction author and 17th-century enthusiast with a particular interest in the English Civil War. Her debut novel, Traitor’s Knot, is the Medallist winner of the 2017 New Apple Award (historical fiction), a finalist for the 2018 EPIC eBook Awards (historical romance) and the RNA Joan Hessayon Award. Her second novel, Severed Knot, was longlisted for the Historical Novel Society 2018 New Novel Award.
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Book Tour and Review ~The Storytellers Secret~
Hello Bookish Friends,
Today is my stop on, The Storyteller‘s Book Tour
I want thank you, iRead Book Tours and Sejal Badani for gifting me a free copy of this book,
Make sure you Enter the Giveaway at the end of this post!
@iReadBookTours @sejal_badani
#TheStorytellersSecret
Book Details:
Book Title: The Storyteller’s Secret by Sejal Badani
Category: Adult Fiction, 399 pages
Genre: Literary
Publisher: Lake Union
Release date: September 2018
Tour dates: June 3 to July 12, 2019
Content Rating: PG-13 (There are some non-explicit sex scenes)
Book Description:
An Amazon Charts, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller!
From the bestselling author of Trail of Broken Wings comes an epic story of the unrelenting force of love, the power of healing, and the invincible desire to dream.
Nothing prepares Jaya, a New York journalist, for the heartbreak of her third miscarriage and the slow unraveling of her marriage in its wake. Desperate to assuage her deep anguish, she decides to go to India to uncover answers to her family’s past. Intoxicated by the sights, smells, and sounds she experiences, Jaya becomes an eager student of the culture. But it is Ravi—her grandmother’s former servant and trusted confidant—who reveals the resilience, struggles, secret love, and tragic fall of Jaya’s pioneering grandmother during the British occupation.
Through her courageous grandmother’s arrestingly romantic and heart-wrenching story, Jaya discovers the legacy bequeathed to her and a strength that, until now, she never knew was possible.
The Storyteller’s Secret
Author: Sejal Badani
Publisher: Lake Union
Pages: 390
“home is not a place or a lifestyle, but the state of your heart and all the people who take their place in it.
In the present time of 2000, Jaya a heartbroken and devastated New York journalist, must come to terms of the collapse of her marriage. Still dealing with a third miscarriage and the information that unlikely possibility that she may never be able to carry child.
Sejal Badani, delivers a well-paced and beautifully written story here with interesting, compelling, and believable characters that I found quite compassionate to read about. The story was told in alternating perspectives. In the story we really got a different understanding and look into the of the social injustice to women in India’s culture and the injustice towards the people of India during the British occupation.
A multi layered historical fiction story, that covers several generations of an Indian family, starting with a young woman tracing her heritage back to her family’s homeland. This captures and draws you in. The author has created a riveting real life to fiction novel.
I especially enjoyed how the story unfolds and the emotions explored in the book, such as grief and love. The multilayered storyline weaves together perfectly. The Authors achievement in bringing India’s culture to life was beautiful written.
I was fully immersed in this character driven drama. I devoured this one as fast as I could and was completely drawn into the lives of these characters. I turned those pages as fast as I could and then slowly took in all the depth and layers to the characters.
This book was received from Author and the Publisher, in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

A former attorney, Sejal Badani left the law to pursue writing full time.
She is a USA Today, Washington Post & Amazon Charts bestselling author, Goodreads Fiction Award Finalist and ABC/DISNEY Writing Fellowship Finalist.
Connect with the author: Website ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ Pinterest ~ Instagram
Prizes:
Win 1 of 3 paperback copies of The Storyteller’s
Secret, another winner will receive a $25 Amazon gift card (4 winners / open internationally)
+ Book Tours, Lacewood Blitz HTML.docx Lacewood Twitt ... gram Post.docx #whattoread #bookstagram #igreads #booksofig #bookwormsfeature #becauseofreading #welovebooks #rabtbooktours #newrelease #romance #womensfict
Book Tour 🍃 Release Blitz
Hi Bookish Friends, And Welcome to The Release Blitz and Giveaway Of Lacewood By Jessica James
#whattoread #bookstagram #igreads #booksofig #bookwormsfeature #becauseofreading #welovebooks #rabtbooktours #newrelease #romance #womensfiction @RABTBookTours @authorjessicajames
Fiction/Contemporary Romance
Published: 6/18/2019
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/40826401941/
Sometimes
love is just too powerful for one lifetime…
TO A SMALL TOWN in Virginia is a big change for New York socialite Katie
McCain. But when she stumbles across an abandoned 200-year-old mansion, she’s
enthralled by the enduring beauty of the neglected estate—and captivated by the
haunting portrait of a woman in mourning.
the property on a whim, Katie attempts to fit in with the colorful characters
in the town of New Hope, while trying to unravel the mystery of the “widow of
Lacewood.” As she pieces together the previous owner’s heartrending story,
Katie uncovers secrets the house has held for centuries, and discovers the key
to coming to terms with her own sense of loss.
past and present converge when hometown hero Will Durham returns and begins his
own healing process by helping the “city girl” restore the place that holds so
many memories. As the mystic web of destiny is woven, a love story that might
have been lost forever is exposed, and a destiny that has been waiting in the
shadows for centuries is fulfilled.
love story, part ghost story, Lacewood is a timeless novel about trusting in
fate, letting go of the past, and believing in things that can’t be seen.
powerful and poignant tale that vividly conveys the heartache of war, the
tragedy of loss, and the fulfillment of destiny…even when souls are separated
by centuries. Lacewood takes readers on a journey that connects the past with
the present—and the present with eternity.
in a circle, Katie studied the room again. Faded wallpaper curled and peeled
above the dusty wainscoting, but the walls themselves appeared sturdy. On the
far side of the entryway, and dominating the wall, stood a mammoth fireplace
with an ornately carved hearth. And above the mantle hung a captivating
painting of a woman in nineteenth-century dress.
is she?”
sheriff turned to the dusty, sun-bleached portrait in the heavy carved guilt
frame. “One of the previous owners, they say.” He shrugged. “The family history
kind of got lost with the house. Everyone around here calls her the Widow of
Lacewood.”
stood spellbound. The woman was dressed completely in black, but the
magnificence of the gown gave the impression of sophistication and class. Her
chin was slightly elevated as if to project strength, yet there was more than a
hint of sorrow and pain in her eyes.
looks so sad.” Katie spoke without removing her gaze. “And so young. How could
she be a widow?”
sheriff had already started to walk away, but he turned back and glanced at the
painting. “Not sure, but they say she never remarried. She’s the one out in the
cemetery, too, I reckon.”
heart suddenly struggled to beat. The anguish in the woman’s eyes kept her
riveted. She could see the pain. Feel a heart ripped apart. Something was
missing that could never be replaced. Katie had felt such loss before. In a
way, that’s why she was here.
coming?”
heard the sheriff calling from the next room, and turned to follow. With one
quick glance back, she noticed particles of dust now swirled and danced in a
shaft of light, almost like a living thing. Her breath caught in her throat as
the dust seemed to materialize into the form of a woman, her eyes dull with the
same tortured despair and disbelief as the one in the portrait.
jerked her head around for a closer look and blinked. The woman was gone.
James believes in honor, duty, and true love—and that’s what she writes about
in her award-winning novels that span the ages from the Revolutionary War to
modern day.
is a three-time winner of the John Esten Cooke Award for Southern Fiction, and
has won more than a dozen other literary awards, including a Readers’ Favorite
International Book Award and a Gold Medal from the Military Writers Society of
America. Her novels have been used in schools and are available in hundreds of
libraries including Harvard and the U.S. Naval Academy.
Links
Links
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Book Review The Thirteenth Gaurdian
Hi book-lovers! And welcome to my stop on the blog tour for.
The Thirteenth Gauradain, hosted by Ya Bond Book Tours
K. M. Lewis
Author: K. M. Lewis
Publication Date: June 7, 2019
Publisher: self publish
Page Count: 295
Format: eARC
Genre: Science Fiction, Apocalyptic
Synopsis
Da Vinci’s secret pales. Michelangelo concealed an explosive truth in his famous Creation of Man fresco in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. Everything we have been taught about Eve is wrong—she didn’t cause the fall of man. Instead, Eve carried a far more devastating secret for millennia; one that will change the world forever.
As the modern-day world suffers the cataclysmic effects of the “Plagues of Egypt”, Avery Fitzgerald, a statuesque Astrophysics major at Stanford, discovers that she is mysteriously bound to five strangers by an extremely rare condition that foremost medical experts cannot explain. Thrust into extraordinary circumstances, they race against time to stay alive as they are pursued by an age-old adversary and the world around them collapses into annihilation.
Under sacred oath, The Guardians—a far more archaic and enigmatic secret society than the Freemasons, Templars, and the Priory—protect Avery as she embarks on a daring quest that only legends of old have been on before. Avery must come to terms with the shocking realization that the blood of an ancient queen flows through her veins and that the fate of the world now rests on her shoulders.
This book is currently on sale for only $0.99 through July!
**********Click the Amazon Icon to Purchase***********
The Thirteenth Guardian is an apocalyptic action-packed roller coaster ride from start to finish! The author delivers a creative Ya Mystical Realism novel.
Imaginative background information with astonishing theories proposing new presentation of cultural art and artifacts. This book explores Themes of conspiracy theories, ancient civilization, mythology and religion, along with secret societies.
The storyline follows a cast of six character with a genetic code, all the way through disastrous event happing to the world aground them The author delivers the book using multiple POV’s to keep the reader satisfied up until to the very end. Appealing atmospheric world building makes this an entertaining read.
Imaginative Ya science fiction, apocalyptic, mystical realism novel
Giveaway link:
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/9e540ef9539/
Social media: twitter.com/kmlewisbooks and instagram.com/kmlewisbooks
Happy Saturday Booked Friends
I seriously cannot believe it’s The Weekend …
But I am I definitely Glad It is
——✨
QUOTD:: What Book Have You Read That Seriously Did Not Live Up To The Hype??
_____✨
I think I am more Judgmental on books that have actually won awards or have been on the Top ten list. Also. If it’s a well known author.
_____✨
I am more Lenient toward YA Authors. I am thinking it’s because of the the audience the are directly too.
Ya, ya I know it shouldn’t mater, and I have know right to judge .
✨
I only have really 3 books that I have actually wanted to throw across the room.
✨
I am only going to talk about one in this post .. It’s an older book, a 2005 pub date
_____✨The Historian
The Historian has been described as a combination of genres, including Gothic novel, adventure novel, detective fiction, travelogue, postmodern historical novel, epistolary epic, and historical thriller. Kostova was intent on writing a serious work of literature and saw herself as an inheritor of the Victorian style. Although based in part on Bram Stoker‘s Dracula, The Historian is not a horror novel, but rather an eerie tale…That goes ….Nowhere,
You keep reading and reading and it’s Print Length: 704 pages!! It has a slow build that keeps you reading and reading and reading until
Nothing!
I never have in my life ever DNF a book. So I made my self finish it. Then I wanted to throw it!
Have a Wonderful Day
+ Book Review, Book Tours, Gwendalyn_Books_, Young Adult Family, #Young Adult LGBT, #Young Adult Action & Adventure, #Young Adult Fantasy #TheExalted #NetGalley @verykaitlynsage @HarlequinTEEN
Book Review ~The Exalted
The Exalted
Author: Kaitlyn Sage Patterson
Publisher: Inkyard Press 
Title: The Exalted
Author: Kaitlyn Sage Patterson
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Publication Date: May 21, 2019
Page Count: 496
My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: #Young Adult Family, #Young Adult LGBT, #Young Adult Action & Adventure, #Young Adult Fantasy #TheExalted #NetGalley @verykaitlynsage @HarlequinTEEN
Thank you to NetGalley and Inkyard Press for sending me this early Arc, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Since the founding of the Empire, Alskad has been ruled by the singleborn…but the new heir to the throne carries a secret that will change everything
When an assassin’s bullet takes the life of Queen Runa and allows an impostor to steal the throne, Bo Trousillion is forced to flee the empire that is his birthright. With few choices left and burdened with a secret that could disinherit him, Bo pursues an alliance with Noriava, the Queen of Denor, but the devious royal ensnares him in a trap and demands a huge price for her aid.
To the south, Vi Abernathy—Bo’s secret twin—joins a ragtag army of resistance fighters, determined to free Alskad and the colony of Ilor from the control of the corrupt temple and its leaders. But as Vi discovers a strength she never knew she had and prepares to rejoin her brother in Alskad, news of the coup and Bo’s narrow escape arrive in Ilor.
Determined to rescue Bo, Vi sails to Denor with the rebels at her side and a plan to outwit Queen Noriava, knowing there’s only one way she and Bo will be able to save the Alskad Empire—together.
Through sudden twists and surprising revelations, Patterson takes both Vi and Bo on painful journeys of self-discovery and growth. But there is strength in numbers, and this “diminished” girl and “singleborn” boy are no longer alone in the world — they have each other. With Bo’s help, Vi is determined to channel her anger and pain to “make myself into the spark that would set the world aflame.”
The Exalted, Is the last installment to Kaitlyn Sage Patterson,
Alskad Empire Chronicles, Patterson’s latest book takes off exactly where
The Diminished left off. Even though Vi and Bo were reunited at the end of Patterson’s debut, the sequel sees these long-lost twins separated again on different missions to save the Alskad Empire.
In Patterson’s conclusion Vi and Bo were united at the end of The Diminished, In this sequel we see the twins once again separated and on faced paced adventures. Once again the author the has executed a well developed storyline.
Great character development with both Vi,and Bo’s POV’s, and sub-characters.
The Author masterly creates a memorable fantasy world building. The books pace was brisk and vividly rendered, which enabled this follow up to live up to its anticipated hype. Engaging political intrigue and a war kept me fully invested.
What really stood out for me in both books was the diversity and the representation of caste structure system within the Alskad Empire.
One aspect of the book that I especially loved was the way the authors depicts the twin relationship allowing for both male and female leads to be equally strong, regardless of their upbringings or their desires to rule the empire.
Patterson’s unique premise, and non stop action engages the reader all the way up to an emotional end.
You will definitely will want to add this to your reading list for this year.
I definitely will be looking forward to more work from this creative new voice in Ya Fiction.
Young Adult Family, Young Adult LGBT, Young Adult Action & Adventure, Young Adult Fantasy
Kaitlyn Sage Patterson grew up with her nose in a book outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. After completing her M.F.A., she moved to South Korea, where she taught English and started writing her debut novel. THE DIMINISHED was published by HarlequinTEEN on April 10, 2018. Its sequel, THE EXALTED, will follow in 2019.
When she’s not staring off into space and trying to untangle some particularly troublesome plot point, she can be found in her kitchen, perfecting the art of the macaron; or at the barn, where she rides and trains dressage horses; or with her husband, spoiling their sweet rescue dogs.
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Blog Tour For ~ What We Do For Love ❤️
Hello there Bookish People and Welcome,
to the What We Do For Love Blast Tour
I am happy to be hosting a stop on the blog tour for WHAT WE DO FOR LOVE by Anne Pfeffer! I have an excerpt with you today check it out and enter to win the giveaway below
What We Do For Love
Anne Pfeffer
Publication date: May 21st 2019
Genres: Adult, Contemporary
Goodreads
Amazon
Don’t forget to enter the Giveaway
- $20 Amazon gift card
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“If Lorelai Gilmore of Gilmore Girls was dropped into a thriller, it might resemble this appealing novel.” –Kirkus Reviews
What We Do For Love won the Chick Lit category and made finalist for Best Cover Design/Fiction in the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards!
Thirty-eight year old Nicole Adams has given up on finding love. Instead, the single mother focuses on the things she cherishes most—her sixteen-year old son Justin, her friends, and her art.
When she convinces a prominent Los Angeles museum to feature a piece of her work, a large-scale installation, she thinks her life has finally turned a corner.
Then Justin brings a girl, Daniela, home to live with them. Daniela’s angry parents have thrown her out of the house, because she’s pregnant with Justin’s child. Shattered, Nicole takes Daniela in and, in so doing, is drawn into the inner circle of Daniela’s family—a frightening world of deceit and violence.
Nicole struggles to keep life going as normal. Forced to deal with people she doesn’t trust or like, fearful for the future of both her son and the grandchild they’re expecting, Nicole wonders if she can do what she tells Justin to do: always have faith in yourself and do the right thing.
—
What We Do for Love won the Chick Lit category of the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and finalist for Best Cover Design/Fiction!
Funny how one’s life can make a U-turn.
My life made two. In a single day.
I started that day as a mere potter—yes, a person who hand-makes vases and dinner plates for a living—wearing borrowed clothes and driving to the most important interview of my life. A few hours later came U-turn number one: the board of directors of CCMLA, the Contemporary Crafts Museum of Los Angeles, offered me a place in their upcoming show!
In an instant, I had become an artist. I pondered this fact wonderingly as I drove home that afternoon. I was to provide them with a brand-new, never-before-seen mural in ceramics, an installation piece. My wall would be located at the entrance to the exhibit, the first thing you saw as you walked in. This was my chance, an incredible opportunity.
I was an artist!
It didn’t bother me that desperation clearly underlay the board’s decision. All the better when I saved the day with a great contribution to their show!
I hoped.
Flushed with success, I revved my ancient Toyota, Bernice, up to twenty-two miles per hour. We practically skipped over the potholes as we barreled our way up the Trail of Terror. This was the name my son Justin had given the rutted, one-lane road that wound its way up the side of Laurel Canyon to our house.
Of course, I was a fill-in, hired at the last minute. I’d gotten this job when Miriam Fletcher, a customer of mine who happened to be on the museum board, moaned to me that an artist had dropped out of a show scheduled to open in six weeks. “We’re in such a pickle! We don’t know what to do!” Though her crepey neck revealed a senior citizen, Miriam otherwise projected youth, running long acrylic nails through her cropped, bleached and spiked hair, her copper earrings swinging.
My cue to pipe up. “I’m sure I could help you!”
Miriam trained her eyes upon me. She had recently ordered customized hand-made pieces from me to give to her granddaughters—a miniature tea set for the youngest and a statuette of a mermaid for her older sister.
“You do such beautiful ceramics work, Nicole!”
“What you’ve seen is my commercial work, which I do through my business Clayworks. I create as an artist under my own name.” That is, I hoped to create as an artist under my own name, if I could ever get the proper start.
And now I had. I could hardly wait to tell my son the news. After sixteen years of single motherhood and hard work, struggling to support myself and Justin, I couldn’t blow this chance. And yet, I’d never done anything like this before.
A twelve-by-nine foot mural. In just six weeks.
You can do this, I told myself. I had to. Letting the museum—and myself—down was unthinkable.
I could practically hear the snap-crackle-pop of my nerves.
I pulled into what we called the car park, an open space situated beside the house at the top of the Trail of Terror, big enough to park a half dozen cars. Justin’s Ford Focus wasn’t there.
When he got home from school, which should be any minute, we would raise a toast, our champagne glasses filled with sparkling apple cider.
The day was unseasonably hot, and I was boiling in Bernice, her air conditioner long dead. Thank heavens my hair had stayed up all day in the deliberately loose knot that I’d coaxed it into this morning, with pretty little bits of hair hanging down around my face. A chignon, according to the YouTube tutorial. One more degree of humidity and my whole head would have coiled itself into a giant Brillo pad right there before the entire board of directors.
And thank goodness I’d been able to borrow my sister’s striking red-and-orange color-blocked linen dress, which had given me just the boost of artist/business woman confidence that I’d needed. Now though, its linen skirt was hopelessly creased and hiking up around my hips. I bounded out of the car and proceeded along the circuitous route that we all used to enter the house, going through the rickety side gate, and past what was technically our front door, which no one ever opened. Instead, I followed the path that ran along the side of the house toward the yard and pool, giving a glance to my irises and roses, which grew under our bedroom windows.
The white, yellow, and purple irises stood tall and elegant, but it was the roses I really loved—the fluttery, home-grown variety that came in every color of the sunrise. I would have to harvest some for tonight’s dinner table.
As I reached the yard, I stepped from the cool shade of the side path into direct, hot sunshine. The sliver of Los Angeles ahead of me that appeared on clear days like this one, the perfume of herbs and blooming plants, the swimming pool that shimmered invitingly—except for my college years, this had been home all my life. Along with my sister Caroline, I’d inherited the small, dilapidated house on its magnificent parcel of land in the Hollywood Hills. At today’s prices, neither of us could have ever afforded to buy it.
Entering the house as always through the French doors off the living room, I waltzed into my bedroom. It was the beginning of a new era. Soon there would be no more making pottery on consignment! No more sets of dinnerware for twelve!
I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Of course, I would continue to operate Clayworks. Those dinner sets paid the bills after all. Still though, there was now a chance I could taper off the business over time, if I could sell some of my more creative pieces. Imagine me, finally, at age thirty-eight, beginning to show in museums and galleries!
I changed into my regular daywear—a sleeveless cotton blouse, long flowy skirt in the coolest feather-light cotton, and Teva sandals.
My old friend Mike Sawyer would be over to eat with me and Justin, as he did most weeks, once or twice. Maybe I’d give them both my wonderful news at the same time.
No, I couldn’t wait that long to spill the news. I knew I would tell Justin the minute he walked in.
Hearing the muffled noise of a door opening, I sprinted to the kitchen, where my son, home at last, would for sure want to hear all about it.
I stopped short when I saw that Justin was not alone.
Author Bio:
Hi! I grew up in the desert around Phoenix, Arizona, where I had a bay quarter horse named Dolly. If I wasn’t riding, I was holed up somewhere reading Laura Ingalls Wilder or the Oz books or, later on, Jane Eyre and The Grapes of Wrath. Horses eventually faded as an interest, but I ended up with a lifelong love of books and reading.
After college and eight years of living in cold places like Chicago and New York, I escaped back to the land of sunshine. I now live in California, one mile from the Pacific Ocean, with my dachshund Taco. I have worked in banking and as a pro bono attorney, doing adoptions and guardianships for abandoned children.
As a writer, I’d always been interested in children’s books, since they had meant so much to me as a kid. I’ve found I especially like writing books about teens and twenty-somethings, an age where you make so many decisions about who you are and how you want to spend your life.
I love hearing from readers, so please write to me any time at my website http://www.annepfeffer.com.
GIVEAWAY!
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Book Tour and Cover Reveal
Good Morning Bookish Friends and Welcome to the Cover Reveal Of A Midnight Clear.
💀Six stories of not-so-merry Yuletide whimsy from the authors of Black Spot Books.
💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
COVER REVEAL FOR A MIDNIGHT CLEAR
JUNE 10, 2019
Publisher: Black Spot Books
Release Date: November 15, 2019
Six stories of not-so-merry Yuletide whimsy from the authors of Black Spot Books.
http://www.jeanbooknerd.com/2019/05/trailer-cover-reveal-midnight-clear.html
A woman so cold she hardens to ice on a winter’s eve. Risen from his grave before his time, a winter god alters the balance between seasons. A wolf’s holiday season is interrupted by a strange curse. From a murder at the Stanley Hotel to demons of Christmas past, present, and future, and a mad elf and Santa’s Candy Court, the authors of Black Spot Books share their love for winter holidays in this collection of dark winter tales, destined to chill your bones and warm your heart for the Yuletide season.
💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
EXCLUSIVE GIVEAWAY
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/e849f7751635/
FANTASTIC NEWS BOOK NERDS!! First 100 PRE-ORDERS directly from >>>BLACK SPOT BOOKS<<< will received a Signed Bookplate from ALL the authors! Starting NOW! Click Link Above!
Sam Hooker writes darkly humorous fantasy novels about thing like tyrannical despots and the masked scoundrels who tickle them without mercy. He knows all the best swear words, though he refuses to repeat them because he doesn’t want to attract goblins.
Alcy Leyva is a Bronx-born writer, teacher, and pizza enthusiast. He graduated from Hunter College with a B.A. in English (Creative Writing) and an MFA in Fiction from The New School. He has been published in Popmatters, The Rumpus, Entropy Mag, and Quiet Lunch Magazine.
Laura Morrison lives in the Metro Detroit area. She has a B.S. in applied ecology and environmental science from Michigan Technological University. Before she was a writer and stay-at-home mom, she battled invasive species and researched turtles.
INSTAGRAM | TWITTER | WEBSITE | GOODREADS
Dalena Storm has lived in India, Japan, Germany, and on both coasts of the United States. She currently resides in a converted general store in the woods of Western Massachusetts with a rare Burmese temple cat, a purring black fluff-beast, a professor of magic, and an infant with an astonishing ability to resist sleep.INSTAGRAM | TWITTER | WEBSITE | GOODREADS
What We Do For Love
Anne Pfeffer
Publication date: May 21st 2019
Genres: Adult, Contemporary
Thirty-eight year old Nicole Adams has given up on finding love. Instead, the single mother focuses on the things she cherishes most—her sixteen-year old son Justin, her friends, and her art.
When she convinces a prominent Los Angeles museum to feature a piece of her work, a large-scale installation, she thinks her life has finally turned a corner.
Then Justin brings a girl, Daniela, home to live with them. Daniela’s angry parents have thrown her out of the house, because she’s pregnant with Justin’s child. Shattered, Nicole takes Daniela in and, in so doing, is drawn into the inner circle of Daniela’s family—a frightening world of deceit and violence.
Nicole struggles to keep life going as normal. Forced to deal with people she doesn’t trust or like, fearful for the future of both her son and the grandchild they’re expecting, Nicole wonders if she can do what she tells Justin to do: always have faith in yourself and do the right thing.
—
What We Do for Love won the Chick Lit category of the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and finalist for Best Cover Design/Fiction!
Author Bio:
Hi! I grew up in the desert around Phoenix, Arizona, where I had a bay quarter horse named Dolly. If I wasn’t riding, I was holed up somewhere reading Laura Ingalls Wilder or the Oz books or, later on, Jane Eyre and The Grapes of Wrath. Horses eventually faded as an interest, but I ended up with a lifelong love of books and reading.
After college and eight years of living in cold places like Chicago and New York, I escaped back to the land of sunshine. I now live in California, one mile from the Pacific Ocean, with my dachshund Taco. I have worked in banking and as a pro bono attorney, doing adoptions and guardianships for abandoned children.
As a writer, I’d always been interested in children’s books, since they had meant so much to me as a kid. I’ve found I especially like writing books about teens and twenty-somethings, an age where you make so many decisions about who you are and how you want to spend your life.
I love hearing from readers, so please write to me any time at my website http://www.annepfeffer.com.
GIVEAWAY
- $20 Amazon gift card
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Today I am extremely excited to Joining the Author, Sarah Porter, and Tor Teen for the
Never Contented Things Book Tour
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Tor Teen (March 19, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0765396734
ISBN-13: 978-0765396730
Praise for NEVER-CONTENTED THINGS
“Sarah Porter is a genius. Her language is lush and dangerous, and her books burn with the beautiful, ferocious intensity of a bonfire in the darkest night. Read Never-Contented Things with the lights on. Then read it again.” ―Brittany Cavallaro, New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Charlotte
“Sarah Porter’s Never-Contented Things creates a creepy new world like none I’ve seen before. Eerie, edgy, and filled with mystery, Porter takes us to the depths of the magical and psychological.” ―Danielle Paige, New York Times bestselling author of Dorothy Must Die
Praise for WHEN I CAST YOUR SHADOW
“You’ll never think of your nightmares the same way again. Darkly seductive. Sarah Porter’s writing glitters and her storytelling stuns in this twisted tale of siblings, love, and death.” —Stephanie Garber, New York Times bestselling author of CARAVAL
“Sarah Porter’s darkly imaginative WHEN I CAST YOUR SHADOW intrigues from the start. Tragic and engrossing, filled with nightmarish dreamscapes and menacing villains, it also treads the tender terrain of family, and the strange and sometimes dysfunctional ties between siblings. Highly recommended!” —Kendare Blake, New York Times bestselling author of THREE DARK CROWNS
Seductive. Cruel. Bored.
Be wary of…
Prince and his fairy courtiers are staggeringly beautiful, unrelentingly cruel, and exhausted by the tedium of the centuries ― until they meet foster-siblings Josh and Ksenia. Drawn in by their vivid emotions, undying love for each other, and passion for life, Prince will stop at nothing to possess them.
First seduced and then entrapped by the fairies, Josh and Ksenia learn that the fairies’ otherworldly gifts come at a terrible price ― and they must risk everything in order to reclaim their freedom.
Enter a chance to win won of 5 copies of Never Contented Things
Must be 13 to Enter
ENDS: JUNE 25, 2019
Timescale for a closed universe
It wasn’t an afternoon that I like to remember, and not just because of my shrieking tantrum. Once I’d calmed down, Mum told me I’d been very silly, because it was all make-believe on a cinema screen. I reminded her that she’d cried when Bambi’s mum died, and that was a film and a cartoon. Mum said that it wasn’t the same thing at all. But I wasn’t being silly because I wasn’t old enough to know the difference between pretence and reality.
Dad had looked pretty dead on the screen. The blood on his chest had looked pretty real. If it had been a different dead person, I would have been OK. Children don’t really know where make-believe ends and the real world begins and, partly because of who I am, it’s remained pretty hazy ever since. I also don’t like to remember that film because it was the moment when I realised that our lives were about to change, and I didn’t know if that would be a good thing.
Sounds strange, yes? Here’s something stranger: I am a child of the sea, I sometimes think, and have done ever since we first moved to live beside it. I feel subject to its vagaries and tempers, with its foaming margins framed against a towering sky. I am familiar with its unchanging mood swings. That’s how I like things; I find the familiar comforting. I find change threatening.
I am the daughter of someone who, not long after that ghastly cinema outing, became one of the most famous actors of his generation and, importantly for me, the granddaughter of a rather brilliant but obscure physics professor. But despite their overachievements, I have inherited no aptitude for mathematics and my father positively hated the idea of his only offspring following in his thespian footsteps. He knew how cruel and badly paid the profession could be. But I still look up to my grandfather, and think of his ludicrous moustache with affection.
Gramps once told me that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth. Just think of all those sandpits, beaches and deserts! That’s an awful lot of stars. He then told me, his only grandchild, that I was his shining star, which was a nice thing to say and why I remember him talking about sand and stars. On clear nights, with stars twinkling, I often think about him.
I still believe in my grandfather, and admire his stoic acceptance in the face of professional disdain, because I believe in the unique power of ideas, right or wrong, and that it’s our thoughts that shape our existence. We are who we believe ourselves to be.
I gave up believing in my father long ago, because speaking other people’s words and ideas seemed like a lame excuse for a job, even if he was paid millions, and met the Queen on several occasions. She must have liked him because she awarded him an OBE for services to film, theatre and charity. Charity! Who the hell told the Queen that?
I stopped believing in him one Christmas Day, a long time ago, when he simply didn’t turn up. It wasn’t his presents that I missed, or even his presence, but the warm, fuzzy feeling of being important to him. During that day of absence and loss I concluded that his wife and daughter couldn’t much matter to him, otherwise he’d have made a bigger effort to get home. That Christmas Day, my father was simply somewhere else, probably in a bar, immaculately dressed, his hair slicked back, the object of male envy and the centre of every woman’s attention for miles around.
In that respect, Dad was more tomcat than father, except that by then his territory, his fame, stretched around the globe. I know this: by then he had a Golden Globe to prove it. He gushed pheromones from every pore, squirting attraction in every direction, and even women with a poor sense of smell could sniff him out.
I feel mostly Scottish, but am a little bit Italian. It explains my name, Emma Maria Rossini; my dark complexion, black hair, the slightly long nose, and thin and lanky body. Obese I am not, and will never be, however much pasta I eat, and I eat lots. It also explains my temper, according to some people, although I don’t agree with them, and my brown cow’s eyes, as an almost-boyfriend once described them, thinking he was paying me a compliment, before realising that he had just become an ex-almost-boyfriend.
But mostly I am a child of the sea. That’s what happens if you live for long enough by its margins: it becomes a part of you; its mood echoing your mood, until you know what it’s thinking, and it knows everything about you. That’s what it feels like when I contemplate its tensile strength and infinite capacity for change. On calm flat days in North Berwick, with small dinghies marooned on the glassy water, and loud children squealing in its shallows, it can make me anxious and cranky.
The sea, on those days, seems soulless and tired, bereft of spirit. But on wilder days, the beach deserted, or with only a hardy dog-walker venturing across the sand, with large waves thundering in, broaching and breaking, then greedily sucking back pebbles into the foam, I feel energised: this is what the sea enjoys, a roaring irresponsibility, and I share in its pleasure. We are all children of the sea, I sometimes think, orwe should be – even those who have never seen an ocean or tasted its saltiness; I can stand for hours and contemplate its far horizons, lost within myself, sharing its passion. In the Firth of Forth is the ebb and flow of my past and my existence, wrapped tight against the west wind. It is what I am, placid and calm, or loud and brash.
Mum is waiting for me outside the school gates and is surrounded by several other mothers who, like hyenas, all seem to want to devour her. How do they know who she is, I wonder? They’re all talking to her at once and Mum is gamely trying to smile and engage in several simultaneous conversations. Mum, as always, looks like a million dollars. The other mothers, dressed sensibly in beige, look like loose change collected from underneath the sofa. Mum sees me and waves, extricates herself from her tormentors, and ushers me quickly towards her car which is partly parked on the pavement and mostly on a pedestrian crossing.
‘From now on, Emma,’ she immediately says, once we’re safely inside and buckling up seatbelts, and before she’s even asked me how my first day has been, ‘I will either meet you further down the road or leave you to walk home. I do not want to go through that again.’ She looks in the rear-view mirror, just in case the hyenas are snarling and whooping and giving chase.
It turns out that she’s already been asked to join the Parent-Teacher Association and, being a parent, has felt obliged to accept. But, in the mêlée outside the school, she’s also been asked to be honorary chairperson of something else, and didn’t really hear what she was being asked to be chairperson of, or if she’s said ‘yes’. It happens to her sometimes. Her mind just goes blank, thoughts and words wafting around her head and then drifting from her ears.
Mum’s worried that she might inadvertently now be in charge of the North Berwick & District Paedophile Society, or something worse. It turned out that she hadn’t said ‘yes’, but hadn’t said ‘no’ either, so the Pottery Club assumed that she meant ‘yes’, which amounts to the same thing. She did attend a couple of their throw-downs, an expression that neither of us had heard of before, coming home with a well-turned if rather wonky bowl, with only a couple of small cracks, and decorated with painted flowers nicely arranged in a vase: Mum’s presidential way of neatly killing two birds with one stone.
From then on, I generally walked home after school.
SARAH PORTER is the author of the Lost Voices Trilogy (Lost Voices, Waking Storms, The Twice Lost) in addition to Vassa in the Night—all for the teen audience. For over ten years she has taught creative writing workshops in New York City public schools to students in grades K-10. Porter also works as a VJ, both solo and with the art collective Fort/Da; she has played venues including Roseland, Galapagos, Tonic, Joe’s Pub, The Hammerstein Ballroom, The Nokia Theater, and the Burning Man festival. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two cats.
WEEK ONE
JUNE 3rd MONDAY JeanBookNerd GUEST POST
JUNE 4th TUESDAY BookHounds YA REVIEW
JUNE 4th TUESDAY The Book Enigma REVIEW
JUNE 5th WEDNESDAY Insane About Books REVIEW
JUNE 5th WEDNESDAY Rose’s Book Corner EXCERPT
JUNE 6th THURSDAY Sabrina’s Paranormal Palace REVIEW
JUNE 6th THURSDAY Two Points of Interest REVIEW
JUNE 7th FRIDAY Movies, Shows. & Books EXCERPT
JUNE 7th FRIDAY Gwendalyn Books REVIEW
WEEK TWO
JUNE 10th MONDAY Wishful Endings INTERVIEW
JUNE 11th TUESDAY A Dream Within A Dream REVIEW
JUNE 11th TUESDAY Bibliobibuli YA INTERVIEW
JUNE 12th WEDNESDAY Lisa Loves Literature REVIEW
JUNE 12th WEDNESDAY A Bookish Dream REVIEW
JUNE 13th THURSDAY Nay’s Pink Bookshelf REVIEW
JUNE 13th THURSDAY TTC Books and More EXCERPT
JUNE 14th FRIDAY Casia’s Corner REVIEW
JUNE 14th FRIDAY Crossroad Reviews REVIEW
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Blog Tour and Review
Hello Bookish Friends, Today is my Stop on this Month long Mega Tour 
Welcome to the month-long mega tour for Charlie Laidlaw’s newest book, The Space Between Time, due for release on June 20th! There will be fantastic bloggers participating, who will be posting interviews, excerpts, reviews, and other exclusive content!
Additionally, there are loads of goodies being given away, so be sure to enter at the bottom!
The Space Between Time
Expected Publication Date: June 20th, 2019
Genre: Contemporary Fiction/ Dark Comedy
There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth…
Emma Maria Rossini appears to be the luckiest girl in the world. She’s the daughter of a beautiful and loving mother, and her father is one of the most famous film actors of his generation. She’s also the granddaughter of a rather eccentric and obscure Italian astrophysicist.
But as her seemingly charmed life begins to unravel, and Emma experiences love and tragedy, she ultimately finds solace in her once-derided grandfather’s Theorem on the universe.
The Space Between Time is humorous and poignant and offers the metaphor that we are all connected, even to those we have loved and not quite lost.
Add to Goodreads
Timescale for a Closed Universe
It wasn’t an afternoon that I like to remember, and not just because of my shrieking tantrum. Once I’d calmed down, Mum told me I’d been very silly, because it was all make-believe on a cinema screen. I reminded her that she’d cried when Bambi’s mum died, and that was a film and a cartoon. Mum said that it wasn’t the same thing at all. But I wasn’t being silly because I wasn’t old enough to know the difference between pretence and reality.
Dad had looked pretty dead on the screen. The blood on his chest had looked pretty real. If it had been a different dead person, I would have been OK. Children don’t really know where make-believe ends and the real world begins and, partly because of who I am, it’s remained pretty hazy ever since. I also don’t like to remember that film because it was the moment when I realised that our lives were about to change, and I didn’t know if that would be a good thing.
Sounds strange, yes? Here’s something stranger: I am a child of the sea, I sometimes think, and have done ever since we first moved to live beside it. I feel subject to its vagaries and tempers, with its foaming margins framed against a towering sky. I am familiar with its unchanging mood swings. That’s how I like things; I find the familiar comforting. I find change threatening.
I am the daughter of someone who, not long after that ghastly cinema outing, became one of the most famous actors of his generation and, importantly for me, the granddaughter of a rather brilliant but obscure physics professor. But despite their overachievements, I have inherited no aptitude for mathematics and my father positively hated the idea of his only offspring following in his thespian footsteps. He knew how cruel and badly paid the profession could be. But I still look up to my grandfather, and think of his ludicrous moustache with affection.
Gramps once told me that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth. Just think of all those sandpits, beaches and deserts! That’s an awful lot of stars. He then told me, his only grandchild, that I was his shining star, which was a nice thing to say and why I remember him talking about sand and stars. On clear nights, with stars twinkling, I often think about him.
I still believe in my grandfather, and admire his stoic acceptance in the face of professional disdain, because I believe in the unique power of ideas, right or wrong, and that it’s our thoughts that shape our existence. We are who we believe ourselves to be.
I gave up believing in my father long ago, because speaking other people’s words and ideas seemed like a lame excuse for a job, even if he was paid millions, and met the Queen on several occasions. She must have liked him because she awarded him an OBE for services to film, theatre and charity. Charity! Who the hell told the Queen that?
I stopped believing in him one Christmas Day, a long time ago, when he simply didn’t turn up. It wasn’t his presents that I missed, or even his presence, but the warm, fuzzy feeling of being important to him. During that day of absence and loss I concluded that his wife and daughter couldn’t much matter to him, otherwise he’d have made a bigger effort to get home. That Christmas Day, my father was simply somewhere else, probably in a bar, immaculately dressed, his hair slicked back, the object of male envy and the centre of every woman’s attention for miles around.
In that respect, Dad was more tomcat than father, except that by then his territory, his fame, stretched around the globe. I know this: by then he had a Golden Globe to prove it. He gushed pheromones from every pore, squirting attraction in every direction, and even women with a poor sense of smell could sniff him out.
I feel mostly Scottish, but am a little bit Italian. It explains my name, Emma Maria Rossini; my dark complexion, black hair, the slightly long nose, and thin and lanky body. Obese I am not, and will never be, however much pasta I eat, and I eat lots. It also explains my temper, according to some people, although I don’t agree with them, and my brown cow’s eyes, as an almost-boyfriend once described them, thinking he was paying me a compliment, before realising that he had just become an ex-almost-boyfriend.
But mostly I am a child of the sea. That’s what happens if you live for long enough by its margins: it becomes a part of you; its mood echoing your mood, until you know what it’s thinking, and it knows everything about you. That’s what it feels like when I contemplate its tensile strength and infinite capacity for change. On calm flat days in North Berwick, with small dinghies marooned on the glassy water, and loud children squealing in its shallows, it can make me anxious and cranky.
The sea, on those days, seems soulless and tired, bereft of spirit. But on wilder days, the beach deserted, or with only a hardy dog-walker venturing across the sand, with large waves thundering in, broaching and breaking, then greedily sucking back pebbles into the foam, I feel energised: this is what the sea enjoys, a roaring irresponsibility, and I share in its pleasure. We are all children of the sea, I sometimes think, or we should be – even those who have never seen an ocean or tasted its saltiness; I can stand for hours and contemplate its far horizons, lost within myself, sharing its passion. In the Firth of Forth is the ebb and flow of my past and my existence, wrapped tight against the west wind. It is what I am, placid and calm, or loud and brash.
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This book was received as an ARC, in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own
Charles Laidlaw, delivers a compelling, intriguing, thought-provoking, and well-written read here that totally captivated and immersed me into the storyline. Emma Maria Rossini is the main protagonist of the story. Immediately you were drawn into Emma’s narrative, and the world she is in. Laidlaw has masterly created an engaging and and thoughts provoking book.
The book is an exploration of many emotionally resonant themes of anxiety, depression and suicide. Laidlaw also skillful captivates the Reader with comedic timing and dialogue. Over all what really grabbed my attention was how the author’s execution of Emma character development, from a young girl to a woman. Emma perceptions of her childhood and her parents. Through Emma’s eyes we see her world unravel, and we become full invested with her hardships and struggles. Laidlaw writing style continually makes the characters jump of the pages.
I really enjoyed the concept of having every chapter began with an equation, the solution of which is the chapter number and the chapter title is mostly related to a theorem. Eg.; The last chapter is called The Chandrasekhar Limit and there is an equation too, the solution of which is the chapter number.
I definitely will be recommending this book to my family and friends
“He was our star, we circled in uneasy orbit. Mum was a moon; I sometimes felt like a small piece of space junk.”
EMMA
I was born in Paisley, central Scotland, which wasn’t my fault. That week, Eddie Calvert with Norrie Paramor and his Orchestra were Top of the Pops, with Oh, Mein Papa, as sung by a young German woman remembering her once-famous clown father. That gives a clue to my age, not my musical taste.
I was brought up in the west of Scotland and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. I still have the scroll, but it’s in Latin, so it could say anything.
I then worked briefly as a street actor, baby photographer, puppeteer and restaurant dogsbody before becoming a journalist. I started in Glasgow and ended up in London, covering news, features and politics. I interviewed motorbike ace Barry Sheene, Noel Edmonds threatened me with legal action and, because of a bureaucratic muddle, I was ordered out of Greece.
I then took a year to travel round the world, visiting 19 countries. Highlights included being threatened by a man with a gun in Dubai, being given an armed bodyguard by the PLO in Beirut (not the same person with a gun), and visiting Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave in Samoa. What I did for the rest of the year I can’t quite remember
Surprisingly, I was approached by a government agency to work in intelligence, which just shows how shoddy government recruitment was back then. However, it turned out to be very boring and I don’t like vodka martini.
Craving excitement and adventure, I ended up as a PR consultant, which is the fate of all journalists who haven’t won a Pulitzer Prize, and I’ve still to listen to Oh, Mein Papa.
I am married with two grown-up children and live in central Scotland. And that’s about it.
Charlie Laidlaw | Facebook | Twitter
I have 2 signed copies of The Space Between Time to giveaway, 3 fun coffee mugs featuring all 3 of Charlie Laidlaw’s books, and 3 digital copies of the book in the winner’s format of choice! Amazing right? Click the link below to enter!
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