by Amanda Grace
Available Now
Pages: 264
Publisher: Flux
Amazon, B&N, Goodreads
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Smart girls aren't supposed to do stupid things.
Madelyn Hawkins is super smart. At sixteen, she's so gifted that she can attend college through a special program at her high school. On her first day, she meets Bennett. He's cute, funny, and kind. He understands Madelyn and what she's endured - and missed out on - in order to excel academically and please her parents. Now, for the first time in her life, she's falling in love.
There's only one problem. Bennett is Madelyn's college professor, and he thinks she's eighteen - because she hasn't told him the truth.
The story of their forbidden romance is told in letters that Madelyn writes to Bennett - both a heart-searing ode to their ill-fated love and an apology.
Excerpt
Dear Bennett,
You might not read this, but maybe they will, and maybe somehow that will help you. This letter can’t help us, because there is no us, not any more.
Just saying that makes it hard to breathe.
I hope you do find it in yourself to read this letter, right down to the very last word, because maybe if you remember the way things unfolded—if you see it all through my eyes—you won’t be able to hate me.
You never said you hated me, but I can’t help but think maybe you do, because of what I did. What I made you believe.
I had to do it, though. I had to lie because I needed you, and if you had known the truth, you never would’ve set the gears in motion, wouldn’t have started something like two freight trains barreling down the tracks.
The crash was inevitable, because I wasn’t who you thought I was.
I’m still two years from being who you thought I was.
Those false-hoods and half-truths started something that ruined you, and I know you can’t forgive me, but I want you to remember me the right way, the realway it all happened, and not the ugly way they’ll try to make it sound.
So for you, for me, for them, here it is:
The truth about you and me.
I LOVE this book! Bennett is so genuine and just opens himself up completely, and all the while Madelyn has this horrible secret that will ruin him. How do you come back from a betrayal like this? She is sooo young, and as a man how can he live with himself after that?
You will fall in love with Bennett, you will find yourself wanting him to never know the truth. Much like STOLEN by Lucy Christopher you are rooting for two people who cannot be together. Trust me, this book lives up to every expectation.
Find You In the Dark
Find You In the Dark, Book One
Available Now
Pages: 308
Publisher: Create Space
by A. Meredith Walters
Amazon, Goodreads
-----------------------------------Maggie Young had the market on normal. Normal friends, normal parents, normal grades...normal life.
Until him.
Clayton Reed was running from his past and an army of personal demons that threatened to take him down. He never thought he had a chance at happiness.
Until her.
Maggie thought their love could overcome anything. Clay thought she was all he needed to fix his messy life.
That together, they could face the world.But the darkness is always waiting.
Sometimes the greatest obstacle to true love is within yourself.
Excerpt
Find You In the Dark, Book One
Available Now
Pages: 308
Publisher: Create Space
by A. Meredith Walters
Amazon, Goodreads
-----------------------------------Maggie Young had the market on normal. Normal friends, normal parents, normal grades...normal life.
Until him.
Clayton Reed was running from his past and an army of personal demons that threatened to take him down. He never thought he had a chance at happiness.
Until her.
Maggie thought their love could overcome anything. Clay thought she was all he needed to fix his messy life.
That together, they could face the world.But the darkness is always waiting.
Sometimes the greatest obstacle to true love is within yourself.
Excerpt
How did I get here? When was it that my life took this insane detour into the gigantic mess that I now saw when I looked in the mirror? Sure, everything had started so simply. A look, a touch, a kiss. Your first love is supposed to be beautiful, right?
And maybe it still is. I don’t know. All I do know is that I’m kneeling on this nasty bathroom floor in a dingy motel room in bum fuck Egypt, wiping my boyfriend’s blood off the gritty tiles. The skin of my knees raw from my morbidly methodical task. The stinging of tears burns my vision and I feel like I’m about to follow him off the edge.
Wipe, scrub, sweep. That’s what I’m doing. Wiping up the turmoil of our relationship. Sweeping away the anger, the hurt, the fear. Scrubbing it all away as I try to figure out how to piece myself back together.
But then I remember those elusive moments. The tiny slivers of time that help me recognize that it wasn’t all bad. Because I love him. And he loves me, in the only way he can. Perhaps my only failing was not seeing that I wasn’t able to hold it together on my own.
But I’m not one to give up - or forget. As much as they wanted me to. Because he had, for a moment in time, been my world. My focus, my entire being. And it’s hard to think I’m now without that. And maybe what we had, for those few blissful months, had truly been beautiful. Crazy beautiful. Or maybe just crazy.
Who knows. I was scared, tired and alone and missing that vital part of myself that had once felt whole and complete and now felt sad and empty. Wipe, scrub, sweep.
The holes would close up. The ripping seams would come together. But I would never be as I was before. Before him. My crazy beautiful love.
There are bad boys you love because they are dangerous, but then there are bad boys you love because they are dangerous to themselves. Find You In the Dark & it's sequel Light In the Shadow are books dealing with mental illness, about loving someone who is unraveling before your eyes?
Walters does an amazing job articulating Clay's state of mind as he descends further and further into his mental illness. And maybe Walters gave all that she has to Clay, because as a character he is perfectly realized. This is an intense love story, and it's sequels give readers everything they could possibly want, need, have to have.
Giveaway
Giveaway
