From This Moment, an all-new sexy and emotional standalone from USA Today Bestselling author Melanie Harlow is available NOW!
"Sweet, sad, angsty, happy and emotionally consuming, this read had it all!" - Craves the Angst
AUTHOR: Melanie Harlow
AGE GROUP: Adult
GENRE: Contemporary Romance
RELEASE DATE: October 10, 2017
PUBLISHER: Melanie Harlow
PAGES: Approx. 354
TOUR COORDINATED BY:
Social Butterfly PR
COPY PROVIDED BY: Author
MY GOODREADS REVIEW LINK
RATING: 5 Stars!
CLIFFHANGER: No.
BOOK BLURB:
It was like seeing a ghost.
When my late husband’s twin brother moves back to our small town, I want to avoid him.
Everything about Wes reminds me of the man I lost and the life we’d planned together, and after eighteen long months struggling just to get out of bed, I’m finally doing okay. I have a new job, an amazing support group, and a beautiful five-year-old daughter to parent. I don’t want to go backward.
But I’m drawn to him, too. He understands my grief and anger and guilt like no one else—and I understand his. Before long, that understanding becomes desire, and that desire becomes uncontrollable.
He says he doesn't care what people think, and love can never be wrong. But life has taught me its cruelest lesson--love doesn't always win.
If only my heart would believe it.
!! READ THE FIRST CHAPTER TODAY !!
REVIEWER'S NOTE: I received an eARC from the author in exchange for an honest review.
5 Stars!
The Review:
This was such a beautiful book! Everything about it, from the cover to the story to the characters, just made me fall totally and completely in love with it. And I had so many “feels” while reading it. Sweet, sad, angsty, happy and emotionally consuming, this read had it all!
I enjoy complicated, thought provoking stories. And this one made me think, hard. And I loved that!
Story/Characters...
Hannah is struggling to put the pieces of her life back together after the unexpected death of her husband. Raising their five year old daughter is the only thing that held her together after Drew's death. Now, eighteen months later, his twin brother, Wes, has come back to town and she has to find a way to cope with seeing her dead husband's face walking around town, eating across from her at family dinners and visiting with her daughter/his niece.
Drew Parks has come back to town after being away for years. He stayed away for many reasons, but one was definitely because he needed space from the happy marriage of his twin brother and the woman he loved. Now that he’s back in town, he’s determined to be there for his brothers wife and child, helping, supporting and protecting them, as he should have been doing since his brother's untimely death.
Is it okay to love the forbidden?
But when buried feelings resurface and sparks fly between Wes and Hannah, neither of them know what to do with that attraction or the complications it’s undoubtedly going to cause.
Watching Hannah struggle with her grief, her pain and her loss was so heartbreaking. The author did a phenomenal job pulling me into all those emotions. I felt those feelings right alongside Hannah as she pulled herself from despair and heartache, to confusion and fear and then ultimately to love and acceptance. It was a thrilling ride and one I can’t wait to experience in rereads.
Drew was the sweetest man ever! He understood Hannah’s loss because he lost Drew too. But he also understood that this was his chance to be with the woman who had captured his heart so long ago. He saw her first, but because he loved his brother so much, he stepped aside. He didn’t want to do that again and he was determined to have her, love her and care for her and her daughter, Abby.
What if society says you can’t?
Of course, there are those who say they shouldn’t and couldn’t be together, that they were betraying Drews memory by doing the forbidden. So can they truly have their happily ever after with all that in their path? Is love and potential heartbreak really worth the risk? That’s the questions these characters face and I very much enjoyed finding out their ending!
This story wasn’t just sweet. It was also passionate! Drew was seeeeeexy! He and Hannah were perfect together and their chemistry was smokin’ hot! I got those lovely chest pangs and butterflies so many times while reading this book!
The Wrap Up:
From This Moment was wonderfully told with impressive and energetic writing, with a story that was powerful and moving. The characters were amazing, strong and likable. Wes and Hannah’s journey to the ending was painful at times but also beautiful and touching. This was my first book by this author, but I’m very much looking forward to picking up her other works, especially if they are anything like this one!
Screw what society thinks. You have one life, live it and live it well.
EXCERPT
“Want to go out in the canoe?” he asked.
“Okay.” I ditched my flip-flops on the small, beach-level deck, and we set our wine glasses and the bottle on the deck’s little round table. Wes was already barefoot. Together we dragged the forest green canoe from the tall beach grasses on the side of the deck down to the water’s edge and tipped it over.
“Let me rinse it out a little,” Wes said, frowning at the dirt and spider webs inside. “Want to grab the paddles? They should be in the shed.”
“On it.” I went to the small shed on the embankment, opened it up and grabbed the oars, which stood in one corner. On the shelves were life jackets and sand toys and deflated rafts that probably had holes in them, and scratched into the wooden door among other graffiti was WP + CB. Huh. I’d never noticed that before. Who was CB? I glanced over my shoulder at Wes, who’d taken off his T-shirt and tossed it onto the sand.
My stomach full-out flipped.
Quickly, I shut the door to the shed and brought the oars down to the canoe.
Wes stood up straight and stuck his hands on his hips. He wore different sunglasses than Drew had worn, more of an aviator than a wayfarer. The body was similar, though Wes’s arms seemed more muscular, especially through the shoulder. Other things were the same and caused a rippling low in my body—the soft maroon color of his nipples, the trim waist, the trail of hair leading from his belly button to beneath the low-sling waistband of his red swim trunks. In my head I heard Tess’s voice. Arms. Chest. Shoulders. Skin. Stubble. Muscle. The smell of a man. The solidity of him.
“What’s the law on drinking and canoeing?” he asked.
What’s the law on staring at your brother-in-law’s nipples? I wondered, swallowing hard. What was wrong with me?
“I think we’re okay,” I said, handing the oars to him. Our hands touched in the exchange. “Let me grab our glasses.”
“Perfect. If you hold them, I’ll take us out.”
I retrieved the wine glasses from the table and walked carefully across the sand to the lake’s edge, taking deep, slow breaths. A sweat had broken out across my back. I was wearing a swimsuit beneath my cover up, a modest tankini, but I didn’t want to remove it. Wading ankle deep, I attempted to step into the canoe, but it wobbled beneath my foot.
“Whoa.” Wes took me by the elbow and didn’t let go until I was seated at one end, facing the other. “Okay?”
I nodded. Despite the heat, my arms had broken out in goose flesh.
“All right, here we go.” As he rowed us away from shore, the breeze picked up, cooling my face and chest and back.
“Drew and I used to have canoe-tipping contests.”
I snapped my chin down and skewered Wes with a look over the top of my sunglasses. “Don’t even think about it.”
He just grinned, the muscles in his arms and chest and stomach flexing with every stroke of the oars through the water. Momentarily mesmerized, I allowed myself the pleasure of watching him. It was okay if we were both thinking about Drew, wasn’t it?
In fact, it was only natural that I was intrigued by the sight of Wes’s body. He was my husband’s identical twin, for heaven’s sake, and I missed his physical presence in my life. I missed looking at him naked. I missed feeling the weight of him above me. I missed the feeling of being aroused by him, of my body’s responses to his touch, his kiss, his cock.
Deep in my body, the rusty mechanism of arousal creaked to life. My nipples peaked, my stomach hollowed, and something fluttered between my legs.
Oh, Jesus.
I sat up straighter, pressed my knees together, and closed my mouth, which I realized had fallen open. Hopefully I hadn’t moaned or anything. After another sip of wine, I turned my head and studied a freighter off in the distance. My heart was beating way too fast.
It’s only natural. It’s only natural.
Wes stopped paddling and set the oars in the bottom of the canoe, their handles resting against the seat in the middle. “We’ll have to bring Abby out here.”
“Definitely.” Did my voice sound normal? “She’ll love it. Here, want this?” I held his wine glass toward him and he reached out to take it. His fingers brushed mine, and I pulled my hand back as if the touch had burned me.
“Thanks.” He tipped the glass up then looked along the shore. “I’d like to find a place on the lake. Maybe not along this stretch of beach, though.”
I caught his meaning and smiled. “A little too close to home?”
“Yeah. But I don’t want to be too far away. I’d like to get a boat too.”
“What kind of boat? Drew always talked about it, but we never quite settled on one.”
“Not sure. Maybe just a little fishing boat, something to ski behind.”
“That sounds fun. Drew loved to ski.”
“We’ll have to teach Abby.”
I laughed. “You, not we. I managed to get up and stay up a few times, but I am not the expert.”
“You can teach her to cook, I’ll teach her to water ski.”
“Deal.” Separate activities seemed like a good idea.
“Breakfast was incredible.”
“Thanks.” I tucked a strand of hair that had escaped my ponytail behind my ear, but the wind blew it right back into my face. “I really like working there. I’m so glad Georgia suggested it to me.”
“How long have you been there?”
“Since spring, when they got busy. I’m not sure what I’ll do this winter when it slows down. I’m dreading it, actually. Abby will be in school full time, and it will just be me at home alone.” This was something else I hadn’t talked about with anyone, how worried I was that the gray skies and cold weather and silent hours would set me spiraling into depression. “I always thought I’d have another baby to take care of, but life saw things differently.”
“You’re still young, Hannah.”
I shook my head. “I’m really not. And I feel even older than I am.” Please don’t go Grief Police on me and tell me I’m being ridiculous, I begged him silently. This isn’t the life I chose. It was handed to me and I’m doing the best I can.
But he didn’t say anything more, just sipped his wine and looked out at the horizon. I was grateful.
“What about you?” I asked. “Think maybe you’ll get married now that you’re back? Have a family? Abby won’t have any siblings so she needs some cousins.”
“That seems to be a popular topic of discussion around here,” Wes said, shaking his head, “but I really have no idea.”
“Small town. We like to know everyone’s business.” I smiled. “Hey, what about CB? I saw your initials carved with hers on the door of the shed. Maybe she’s still around.”
He groaned. “Is that still there? Jesus. That had to be twenty years ago.”
Hugging my knees, I leaned forward. “First love?”
“Not even.” He hesitated, as if he were trying to decide whether to confess something.
“Come on,” I cajoled, carefully reaching out of the canoe, and splashing water toward him. “Tell me. I’ve been spilling my guts for an hour.”
“First kiss.”
I squealed. “And?”
He cringed. “It’s too embarrassing.”
“Wes, I had a completely humiliating breakdown in front of you last night. I got snot on my arm.”
“This is worse.”
“Get it out. You’ll feel better.”
“Let’s just say it was a very awkward, very fast experience.”
I gasped. “You lost your virginity to her?”
“No. Just my dignity.”
Laughing, I tilted my head back and felt the sun on my face, the wind in my hair, and something like joy in my heart.
It had been a long time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR...
She lifts her glass to romance readers and writers from her home near Detroit, MI, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and pet rabbit.
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