Book Spotight: Missed Connections by Tamara Mataya

Missed Connections
Summer Love #1

By: Tamara Mataya

Released June 7^th, 2016
Sourcebooks Casablanca

Missed Connection: I saw you standing there, and I was struck by your eyes. Gorgeous, but not as gorgeous as your smile.

Thanks to her job at a crazy New Age spa, what should have been a sizzling NYC summer is being hijacked by demanding hippie bosses. To unwind, Sarah spends her nights cruising Missed Connections, dreaming of finding an uber-romantic entry all about her. Of course, the moment she finds that Missed Connection, real life comes crashing down around her in a night of unbridled passion with someone completely different: totally off-limits Jack.

Best. Hookup. Ever.

Gorgeous and wealthy, hot as sin, Jack can give Sarah everything she needs-except an emotional connection. That she gets from her Missed Connection, the romantic stranger who never fails to make her swoon. But there's only so much of Sarah to go around. Torn between the bad boy she can't keep and the sensitive stranger who bares his soul online, her heart and body are soon in two very different relationships...or are they?

Link to Follow Tour: HERE

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Has an elevator ride ever taken so long? The slow circles he traces on the back of my hand with his thumb have me debating stopping the elevator and dragging him into a stairwell to get him naked now, but the elevator stops on my floor and we’re so close to my bed.

Door open, door closed, shoes were on, kick them off. No stopping to ask if he’d like something to drink, I pull him straight to the bedroom and turn to face him. His momentum crushes us together, and I press harder against him, wrap my arms around and grab that tight ass I’ve wanted to squeeze for years and grind against him. This time when my lips meet his, they’re curled into a satisfied smile because now there’s nothing stopping us but clothes and common sense.

One down.

His skin is smooth and warm beneath my hands, which I slide beneath the hem of his t-shirt before coaxing it over his head. Kissing down his throat and chest, lightly grazing it with my teeth, I’m rewarded with his intake of breath and his hands finding their way to my shoulders. He pulls me upright and kisses me hungrily. One hand wraps around, bending me back like a cobra, and he tangles his hand in my hair, squeezing my body in his arms like he can’t get enough.

I want him on top of me. Now.

We’re riding the same lusty wavelength, because he straightens and pulls back. “Take your shirt off. I need to see you.”

“Take your pants off,” I counter. “I need to feel you.”

His jeans hitting my floor is the most glorious sound I’ve ever heard.

“Now you.” His order is paired with hungry eyes.

I pull my shirt over my head slowly to make him wait. When I get it over my head and can see again, he’s moved closer and stands only inches away from me.

“Hi.” His voice is a smoldering bed of hot coals I want to roll around in.

“Hi.” I smile. “Want to help me with my pants?”

His long, well-formed fingers curl into the belt loops of my jeans and tug me closer. “You sure you need help, beautiful girl?”

I trail my hands over the chiseled contours of his abs and up his well-defined chest. “My hands are busy.”

The pull of the button and slide of the zipper and cool night air greets my thighs and calves. He’s bent closer to coax my jeans down and his hair smells woodsy and fresh like a forest after a storm. I stop him on his way up, my mouth on his again, and how will I ever get enough of these lips, this tongue, now that I’ve tasted this forbidden fruit?

Tamara Mataya is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, a librarian, and a musician with synesthesia. Armed with a name tag and a thin veneer of credibility, she takes great delight in recommending books and shushing people. She puts the 'she' in TWSS and the B in LGBTQIA+. She’s the co-creator of Pitchmas, a bi-annual pitch contest for writers, and as a freelance editor, has worked with NYT Bestselling authors.

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New Release Spotlight: This Earl Is On Fire by Vivienne Lorret

This Earl is on Fire
Season's Original #2

By: Vivienne Lorret

Releasing August 2^nd, 2016
Avon Impulse

This Earl is on Fire

Season's Original Series

The sheltered daughter of a country baron, Miss Adeline Pimm comes to London looking for adventure… and finds it in the form of a bloody, unconscious man slumped in the doorway of her family's rented townhouse. Though his identity is a mystery, Adeline is inexplicably drawn to the handsome, injured man and vows to nurse him back to health.

Liam Cavanaugh, the scandalous Earl of Wolford, is startled when he awakens in an unfamiliar bed, wrapped in bandages that hinder his eyesight, with no memory of why he was beaten half to death. Although he can't see the witty young woman who tends to his wounds, her alluring voice--and a single stolen kiss from her soft lips--help soothe his pain. But when he is fully healed, Liam is not ready to let go of the one woman who stirs his deepest longings.

Liam will do whatever it takes to see Adeline again, even if it means giving up his rakish ways. But his disreputable past is not so easily forgotten and his secrets are far more dangerous than he-or Adeline-ever imagined. 

Link to Follow Tour: HERE

The moment Adeline Pimm saw the body slumped against the doorway, she knew that London was a city full of adventure. Oh . . . and, of course, danger.

A series of indrawn breaths followed.

Father’s gasp was more of a wordless exclamation as the man beneath the narrow portico of their rented townhouse tipped over the threshold and crumbled into his arms. Mother’s accompanied a jolt of her limbs, an ever-preparedness to manage any given situation. While Adeline’s stalled in her throat. Tiny grains of gooseflesh rose on her arms. Her skin tingled. And some strange force clutched her heart.

Her own response made little sense to her. After having been shielded from . . . well . . . everything for her entire life, a more understandable reaction might have been to faint, perhaps. Yet instead, she felt compelled to rush across the foyer to offer aid.

Her body answered this urge. Automatically she took a step forward. Unfortunately, so did her mother, effectively blocking her path.

Hildebrand Pimm—Bunny to all those who knew her—clapped a hand over her daughter’s eyes. “Adeline, hasten to your room. This sight is too troubling for your eyes.”

Not just any young woman’s eyes, Adeline noted, but hers and hers alone.

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USA Today bestselling author, VIVIENNE LORRET loves romance novels, her pink laptop, her husband, and her two sons (not necessarily in that order … but there are days). Transforming copious amounts of tea into words, she is an Avon Impulse author of works including: Tempting Mr. Weatherstone, The Wallflower Wedding Series, The Rakes of Fallow Hall Series, The Duke’s Christmas Wish, and the Season’s Original Series.

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Release Day Spotlight: Swear on This Life by Renee Carlino

SWEAR ON THIS LIFE

By: Renée Carlino

Release Day: August 9. 2016

From USA TODAY bestselling author Renée Carlino (Before We Were Strangers), a warm and witty novel about a struggling writer who must come to grips with her past, present, and future after she discovers that she’s the inspiration for a pseudonymously published bestselling novel.

When a bestselling debut novel from mysterious author J. Colby becomes the literary event of the year, Emiline reads it reluctantly. As an adjunct writing instructor at UC San Diego with her own stalled literary career and a bumpy long-term relationship, Emiline isn’t thrilled to celebrate the accomplishments of a young and gifted writer.

Yet from the very first page, Emiline is entranced by the story of Emerson and Jackson, two childhood best friends who fall in love and dream of a better life beyond the long dirt road that winds through their impoverished town in rural Ohio.

That’s because the novel is patterned on Emiline’s own dark and desperate childhood, which means that “J. Colby” must be Jase: the best friend and first love she hasn’t seen in over a decade. Far from being flattered that he wrote the novel from her perspective, Emiline is furious that he co-opted her painful past and took some dramatic creative liberties with the ending.

The only way she can put her mind at ease is to find and confront “J. Colby,” but is she prepared to learn the truth behind the fiction?

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During the winter we pretended our way through the classics, read every popular kid’s book and by spring of our sixth grade year, the spring of all the rain, we were ready to be outside and explore again. There was a creek about half a mile back from our houses, past the tree line. Because of all the rain that year, it had become more of a river with the strongest currents right behind where we lived. Every adult warned us to be careful, even my dead-beat dad would say, “You better use that big brain of yours and stay out of the creek. You want to go swimming, you can go to the pool in town.”

Funny he would say that because the community pool was a seven-mile bike ride and it cost three dollars to get in. There was no way I was going unless Leila, Jax’s mom gave us a ride and even then, I would have to borrow the money to get in. Frankly, going to the town pool was a pipe dream. It became a myth to us, a fantasy like Disneyland or Europe. Jax and I would try to imagine what it was like to go there.

“I bet they sell popsicles and popcorn and they probably have clowns too,” I said.

It was a warm day; we had made a picnic in the weeds. I laid out my Toy Story sleeping bag I’d had from when I was a kid. Jax brought a jar of applesauce and I brought Fun Dip that my dad had bought me at the 7-11. We mixed the fun dip into the jar and took turns eating spoonfuls.

“Community pools don’t have clowns, genius.”

“How do you know?” I said.

“Because I just do.”

“I bet there’s a high dive, like fifty feet in the air.”

“Do you know how high fifty feet is? You would die hitting the water. The impact would kill you.”

“You’re such a know-it-all, Jackson. Why can’t you let a girl dream? We’re never going to that pool because no one will ever take us, plus, it costs money, and last time I checked you weren’t making any.”

He lay back on the blanket and propped his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “I’m not a know-it-all, I just have cable. And as soon as I turn sixteen, I’m getting a job. I’ll pay for us to go to the pool. You’ll see, it’s just a big hole with water in it.”

I never really stared at him until that day. His eyes were closed so I took the time to inspect every inch of him. I was so curious about his body. My own body was changing and I was terrified of it. Jax was getting taller. He was going to be tall like his father, but he looked more like his mother in coloring and features. Jax’s mom was French, so they had this creamy skin that looked sun-kissed year around and his brown hair and brown eyes had streams of gold running throughout it. He was letting his hair grow longer because he’d been watching some show on TV that took place in California. He said everyone in California had long hair.

I was trying to grow my own unruly, brown locks out. I don’t know why, I always had it in a braid. Maybe because I thought I would go to California with Jax one day. We both yearned for more than weeds and corn. All the books gave us those silly ideas and filled our heads with things that might never be.

I lay down beside him and stared directly into the sun. He turned on his side and propped his head on his elbow.

“You’ll go blind doing that,” he said in a low voice.

“Leave me alone.”

“Why are you in such a bad mood? You PMSing?”

“What do you know about it?”

“A lot.”

“I doubt that and even if I were, it’s beyond rude to talk to me about it.” I hadn’t started my period yet but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

Renée Carlino is a screenwriter and bestselling author of contemporary women's novels and new adult fiction. Her books have been featured in national publications, including USA TODAY, Huffington Post, Latina magazine, and Publisher's Weekly. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two sons, and their sweet dog June. When she's not at the beach with her boys or working on her next project, she likes to spend her time reading, going to concerts, and eating dark chocolate. Learn more at www.reneecarlino.com

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