I liked this book at times it seemed to drag on and on but it really was a good book. I had to wonder what was going to happen and who she would end up with. The author did a great job of keeping you reading and wanting to know what was going to happen with the characters. This is the first book in the series and I can’t wait to read other books in the series.
About The Book
Secrets…
Evie Sandstrom has always had secrets. She has grown up with them and now they are starting to come back and chip away at her confident facade. Always one for an adventure, she decides to leave after college break and spend the summer in Boston.
The Irish Gangster…
Finn Reilly is not only a bad-boy drug dealer but he is also Evie’s first love. When they meet again in Boston, sparks begin to fly and although they share one huge secret that should have destroyed them forever, it unites them at a time when she needs all the help she can get.
The French Model…
Evie’s mother, superstar actress Athena Donahue, has remarried to Etienne Fournier, a model who is eighteen years her mother’s junior and wants to get to know Evie in more ways than one.
Once Athena drags her daughter back to L.A. under dubious circumstances, she is within the sights of Etienne yet out of the sights of Finn. Can they resolve their differences and will true love prevail or will life get in the way and spoil their chances of happiness?
About The Author
Elle Chardou is a world traveler and author of several different series.
Ms. Chardou is the author of The Ties That Bind Trilogy, The Atonement Series, The Hart Family Saga, The Vamp Saga, The Supernaturals, Beginnings: Book I (The Plague) series.
She is currently working on Undertow, Only Love (The Atonement Series), and several other novels for her continuing paranormal series, The Vamp Saga.
Ms. Chardou has lived abroad in Stockholm (Sweden), Manchester (England), Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Portland. She currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.
So this week the thing that has driven me insane are two-faced people. I am so tired of people who will say one thing to your face and then turn around and say or do something that goes against what they said to your face. I have been at my current job of years now and lets just say I deal on a daily basis with people like this and I am reaching my limit with this kind of stuff.
The industry that I work in being two-faced is pretty common and I will never understand why people can’t just say to my face what they are thinking about what they are saying behind my back. I was on Facebook a few weeks ago and I saw this saying and I loved it!
This is how I am feeling about how things are at my job. I have really reached my limit but I don’t think there is anything that I can really do about it. It just amazes me that the people who I work with act like they are in high school. It is just old and it sucks that the people who are doing it think that I am not smart enough to know what is going on but that is a whole different post.
I guess the point of this post is that I am so tired of people who can’t just be honest and tell me what they think of me while I am standing there.
A few Monday’s ago I went to turn on my laptop and it wouldn’t start up. I had been using it on Sunday and it worked just fine and then it didn’t work Monday night. I tried to get it to turn on all night Monday and even Tuesday but it just does the pin wheel thing that Mac’s do and it doesn’t start.
Needless to say I am pissed off and depressed all at the same time because I am now without a laptop. Which to someone who doesn’t blog and/or design blogs wouldn’t be to bad but for me it is driving me crazy. All of my files are hopefully on my external hard drive but since I don’t have another mac I can’t check and I also can’t get them off of the drive. So I am forced to either redownload them or just do without them.
It also sucks because it means that the designs I had almost finished with for my own sites are now lost to me until I can at least get another mac to grab the files off the external hard drive.
Movie star Mercedes Montague has it all – the fame, the fortune, and the glittering celebrity lifestyle. But she lost herself somewhere along the way. On a publicity tour for her next movie she realizes she’s just fifty miles from her hometown. Mercedes – real name Marie Dillard – decides to bolt and go home to see if she can find what’s left of herself. Hiding away in her grandparents’ old home in a working class neighborhood she’s haunted by memories and reminders of her first and only love, Joe Shelby.
Marie’s stunned when Joe shows up at her door. Passion kindles between them from the first moment their eyes meet but she won’t let it consume her unless it’s going to include a lasting love. As they renew their relationship, Marie and Joe face many struggles.
Can a movie star return to reality or is love just a distant dream?
Warning: This title is intended for readers over the age of 18 as it contains adult sexual situations and/or adult language which may be considered offensive to some readers.
About The Author
Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy writes romance about everyday people often caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Her titles range from contemporary to historical to time travel and sometimes stray into the paranormal. She is a native of the historic city of St. Joseph, Missouri, a jumping off spot for countless wagon trains in the days of the old west and where outlaw Jesse James met his death. She now lives in a small Ozark town in what passes for the suburbs. As a member of Romance Writers of America, Missouri Writers Guild, and the Ozark Writers League, Lee Ann pens a weekly column for the local newspaper. She has served on the local library board and arts council. As a member of the Rebel Elite team, her upcoming releases will shift to exclusive Rebel in 2013. Lee Ann is also one of the short list of Rebel authors named Best of 2012. She was also among the Best of 2011. She’s married with three children and one spoiled Jack Russell terrier.
Excerpt From The Book
As Mercedes Montague she’d locked lips with most of Hollywood’s leading actors, the stars who incited lust in every woman across America from pre-teens to great-grandmas. More than a handful found their way into her bed and onto her expensive silk sheets for intimate encounters yielding physical release but nothing more. Sex turned into a celebrity rodeo as each man tried to prove his talents, to top the others and although maybe Mercedes liked it, Marie loathed it. She hated the lack of any real emotion, any passion beyond the need for another body in the lonely night and the few times she felt a spark with someone always faded fast with morning light.
Joe brought back expectations long forgotten and evoked desire with such depth Marie sank into it as it sucked her down like quicksand. She should fight it but couldn’t and didn’t even want to struggle against it. Her fingers clawed against his plaid flannel shirt as he tightened his grasp on her, his tongue darting into her mouth like an exploring snake. New waves of pleasure brought intense delight and Marie leaned against him so her weak knees wouldn’t dump her onto the floor.
His mouth stirred the ashes of their past and restored dozens of memories, brought back the memory of other kisses just as sweet. Whatever emotions they once claimed, all the old bonds connecting them renewed as power roared to life between them. Marie never knew how long it lasted and she never thought of anything but Joe within the same span. Her world shrunk to this, to his mouth and hers, connected. Driving in St. Joe yesterday she thought she came home but she hadn’t, not until now.
If Joe wanted to take her upstairs, he could and if he decided to have her on the floor between Ma’s living room and dining room, Marie wouldn’t resist. Instead, he pulled back and put her at arm’s length. “See?” he said as a tiny smile flirted with his mouth. “The way I feel about you hasn’t changed, Marie. You still make me crazy.”
“Crazy good or certifiably insane?” she asked, happiness bubbling up from within like a wet weather spring.
Joe chuckled. “Crazy good, I think. Hell, I don’t even know you now and you don’t know me but I’d like to get reacquainted. What do you say?”
His request blindsided her. When she walked away from her celebrity life, she didn’t expect to even see Joe but Marie wanted to spend more time with her first love. “I’d like to, Joe, very much.”
“Good,” Joe said. His blue eyes shimmered now, reminding her of placid lake waters touched with sunshine. “I can’t stay now. Would you like to go out for dinner tonight?”
“Yes,” Marie said. “It may sound like an excuse but I don’t have a thing to wear but I can get something. What time?”
“Is six too early?” Joe asked. “I figure you’re still on California time but by six, the kid’ll have come and gone so he won’t wonder where I’m at, not that he would.”
Her floating happiness threatened to nose dive into despair. “Kid? Are you married?”
Joe shook his head. “I was but she’s dead. The kid’s my step-son. Trust me, he’s a problem child but I’m all he’s got. Six okay?”
Marie made a quick time calculation and sneaked a glance at the clock. “Six thirty would be better,” she said.
“All right,” Joe said. “I’ll pick you up then. Be prepared – I’d like to hear the long version, Marie.”
“Sure,” she said. And I want to hear the story of your life, she thought but didn’t dare speak it aloud, everything you’ve done, about your wife, and why you’re not in the Army. “I’ll be ready.”
The Virus spread. Billions died. The Ending began. We may have survived the apocalypse, but the Virus changed us. When people started getting sick, “they” thought it was just the flu. My roommate, my boyfriend, my family…they’re all gone now. I got sick too. I should have died with them—with the rest of the world—but I didn’t. I thought witnessing the human population almost disappear off the face of the earth was the craziest thing I’d ever experience. I was so wrong. My name is Dani O’Connor, I’m twenty-six-years-old, and I survived The Ending. The Virus changed everything. The world I knew is gone, and life is backwards. We’ve all had to start over. I’ve been stripped of my home, my dreams…all that is me. I’m someone else now— broken and changed. Other survivors’ memories and emotions haunt me. They invade my mind until I can no longer separate them from my own. I won’t let them consume me. I can’t. My name is Zoe Cartwright, I’m twenty-six-years-old, and I survived The Ending. We’ve been inseparable for most of our lives, and now our friendship is all we have left. The aftermath of the Virus has stranded us on opposite sides of the United States. Trusting strangers, making sacrifices, killing—we’ll do anything to reach one another. Fear and pain may be unavoidable, but we’re strong…we’re survivors. But to continue surviving in this unfamiliar world plagued by Crazies and strange new abilities, we have to adapt. We have to evolve.
EXCERPT
Looking around apprehensively, I made my way toward the convenience store in hopes of finding a bathroom. The vacant world around me was eerily silent. All I could hear was the creaking of a giant wooden billboard being assaulted by the wind. How long has it been since anyone was here? Through the dark windows I saw a bathroom sign that looked promising, but I couldn’t bring myself to enter. I wonder if it’s safe…
As I stood outside of the store, I noticed a newspaper box still filled with papers. I leaned closer. The headline read, BILLIONS DEAD, and the paper was dated December 9, right before everything had started to shut down. I inserted a quarter and snatched out a paper. Scanning its contents, my mouth grew dry and my body stiffened.
…the H1N1/12 pandemic…
…looting and riotous outbreaks everywhere…
…end of civilization as we know it…
…survivors losing their minds…
…governments can’t control…
…the Apocalypse…
The newspaper slipped from between my fingers. Frozen in place, I was suffocated by the reality of our situation.
This isn’t going away.
The world ended. Thinking of the strange feelings I’d been experiencing, I once again questioned my own sanity. My thoughts were too loud to silence. My heart thudded, and I couldn’t swallow the lump in my throat. Looking out into the abandoned world around me, I realized how alone we really were. I bent down to reclaim the paper and turned on my heels to head back toward the truck, completely awestruck as the words I’d read replayed in my mind. Each was a reminder that the only world I’d ever known had ended.
Author Bio:
Lindsey Fairleigh lives her life with one foot in a book—as long as that book transports her to a magical world or bends the rules of science. Her novels, from post-apocalyptic to time travel and historical fantasy, always offer up a hearty dose of unreality, along with plenty of adventure and romance. When she’s not working on her next novel, Lindsey spends her time reading and trying out new recipes in the kitchen. She lives in the Napa Valley with her loving husband and confused cats. Lindsey Pogue has always been a little creative. As a child she established a bug hospital on her elementary school soccer field, compiled books of collages as a teenager, and as an adult, expresses herself through writing. Her novels are inspired by her observations of the world around her—whether she’s traveling, people watching, or hiking. When not plotting her next storyline or dreaming up new, brooding characters, Lindsey’s wrapped in blankets watching her favorite action flicks or going on road trips with her own leading man.
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