Release Day Spotlight & Review: The Story Of Us by Tara Sivec

THE STORY OF US

by Tara Sivec

June 11, 2017; Forever Yours eBook; $3.99)

How much can a man take before he breaks?
1,843 days. That's how long I survived in that hellhole. They tried to break me, but I resisted. And I owe it all to the memory of warm summer nights, the scent of peaches, and the one woman who loved me more than I ever deserved to be loved. Now, I'll do anything to get back to her.
Only Shelby Eubanks isn't the girl I left behind all those years ago. She's someone else, a stranger. My Shelby-my little green-eyed firecracker-would never give up her dreams, would never disappear into her mother's ambitions. But I won't give up on her. On us. I may be broken, and scarred, and not the man I used to be, but I will do whatever it takes to remind her of the story of us.

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I just need a moment alone, to remember how to breathe and to remember how to push the hurt away so I can go back out there and do my job. Hold my head high with a smile on my face and pretend like dancing with Eli, being close to Eli, and letting him rain insults down on me, didn’t cut me in half.

As soon as I turn the handle and push open the office door, I feel something solid slam into me from behind, moving me faster into the dark room. I trip over my feet and an arm slides around my waist to steady me before whirling me around. I smell his soap and recognize his firm hold on me before the moonlight shining in the floor-to-ceiling windows behind me illuminates the shadow of his face, but that doesn’t stop the rapid thumping of my heart as the door is kicked shut with a slam and my body is turned and pushed roughly against the wall next to it. With the first touch of his hands, the first feel of the heat from his skin against me, I’m lost. I’m drowning in a pool of desire I’ve only ever felt with him, and I never want to come up for air. Every inch of my body is on fire, begging for more, needing everything I’ve been missing, but knowing everything about this moment is wrong. This can’t happen. I can’t want this and I certainly can’t act on what I’m feeling.

Before I can shove him away, shout at him, and tell him to let me go, his mouth is on mine. His chest pins my arms between us and I clutch a fistful of his dress shirt in my hands when my lips automatically part for him. His tongue quickly pushes into my mouth and I feel tears prickling behind my eyelids when I taste him, so familiar and so beautiful it breaks off yet another piece of my heart. One of his hands moves from around my waist and I feel the heat from his palm as it slides against the side of my neck to the back, his fingers gripping tightly to the hair at the base of my skull to hold my head in place. His kiss is punishing and hard and I can do nothing but hold tightly to the front of his shirt as our tongues battle together and I try to remember how to breathe.

What happens when the man you love...your forbidden love suddenly walks out of your life? How can a man survive despicable atrocities by sheer will alone of memories for a woman he left behind? The Story Of Us is a complex second chance romance, which will assault your emotions head on.

I admit I was a little apprehensive when I decided to read another Tara Sivec novel. I'd previously read Fisher's Light and found it barely okay, so choosing to read The Story Of Us was a gamble. Thankfully, my decision to give this author another go paid off. Admittedly, it took me a little time to settle into the book initially due to the narrative shifting between the past and present. However, once we remain within the present, I'm held captive as Shelby and Eli's complicated lives unfurl.

Intense and heart-wrenching, Shelby and Eli's story is beyond emotional. Written with a dual point of view, the narrative starts with a harrowing but necessary prologue which was uncomfortable to read. The scene's set, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. As further tragic events from the past are revealed and presumptuous thoughts are blown away when the painful truths come to light.

The chemistry between the protagonists is palpable. Their connection unwavering as they gain strength to right the wrongs of the past.

"For five years, you saved me, and you didn't even know it. Now it's my turn to save you."

Ms Sivec takes her readers on a journey and blind sides them with a slew of emotions with a tragic and heart-warming narrative. The Story Of Us is a beautifully crafted novel which will captivate you with its strong undercurrent that love can and will conquer all.

***arc generously received courtesy of Yours Forever via NetGalley***

Tara Sivec is a USA Today best-selling author, wife, mother, chauffeur, maid, short-order cook, baby-sitter, and sarcasm expert. She lives in Ohio with her husband and two children and looks forward to the day when they all three of them become adults and move out.
After working in the brokerage business for fourteen years, Tara decided to pick up a pen and write instead of shoving it in her eye out of boredom. Her novel Seduction and Snacks won first place in the Indie Romance Convention Reader's Choice Awards 2013 for Best Indie First Book and she was voted as Best Author in the Indie Romance Convention Reader's Choice Awards for 2014.
In her spare time, Tara loves to dream about all of the baking she'll do and naps she'll take when she ever gets spare time.

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Release Day Spotlight: Royal Treatment by Parker Swift

ROYAL TREATMENT

by Parker Swift

(June 11, 2017; Forever Yours eBook; $3.99; Royal Scandal Book 3)

All this duke needs is his duchess…
For five blissful months I've been engaged to Dylan Hale, the most handsome, commanding, and wickedly sexy duke in England. For five months I've woken up next to the man I love, indulged in secret trysts, and submitted to every delicious desire. Even better? We've managed to keep it hidden from everyone. That means no paparazzi scandals, no snide comments from Dylan's mother, and no harsh public scrutiny. It's been heaven, but with Dylan's royal responsibilities looming, our time alone is running out. And while I can't wait to be Dylan's wife, I'm terrified that becoming Dylan's duchess might mean losing myself.

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For the past five months, I’d taken my mission to heart: Put yourself first. Enjoy the freedom of life out of the spotlight. Get your career off the ground before it competes with running an ancient estate and being on your husband’s arm.

For five months, I’d said yes to all things. Late nights dancing with Fiona and Josh. Girlie nights with Emily. Paris for Fashion Week. Long runs in the park by myself without paparazzi trailing me. Late nights working on the launch of Fiona’s online store. Dylan and I had kept our relationship low profile so that I could do all those things, so I wouldn’t get sucked into the aristocratic machine, so I could move freely and make choices without fear of how it would look or who would be watching. And it had been great. It did feel freeing, like I’d been slipping into a version of adulthood I’d always been waiting for, figuring out who I wanted to be in the world, taking a deep breath while I thought about the reality of being a duchess. But no matter what I did, I was always happy to go home to Dylan, to find him there, to let him find me there. Nothing had changed in that regard—I wanted to be with him.

I had figured I’d wake up one day and just know, now’s the time. And on that day I’d replace soon with yes. We’d make a big announcement, open the door, I’d officially be Dylan’s fiancée and soon after his wife, with everything that came with it. But that aha moment hadn’t happened yet, and now there was this. This decision, going to New York for six months, would change everything. If I said no to Hannah’s offer and stayed in London, I knew that, in some plates-shifting kind of way, it meant that I was ready to say yes to Dylan, to all of this, to everything he was asking for. But if I said yes to Hannah, to effectively leaving behind everything I’d built in London for a half a year in New York, my long engagement would be longer than I’d ever really wanted it to be.

With each block I passed through, my mind changed, I swayed back and forth. Yes, I’d go to New York for six months. No, I’d stay in London with Dylan. Yes. No. Yes. No. It felt like everything was pitted against one another. London versus New York. My career versus my relationship. My present versus my future.

I was swimming so feverishly in my own mind, my heels clacking on the pavement, my bag swinging against my hip, that didn’t realize I was standing in front of our house.

Our house.

I hadn’t walked to the store. I’d walked home.

As I looked in the window, I could see Dylan in the library on the ground floor. It looked like he was searching for a book, his arm stretched up to one of the higher shelves. He’d been working on a restoration recently and had been researching like a madman. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that fitted his muscular frame perfectly. His hair was tousled, uneven from running his fingers through it. He looked at the book in his hands and then stared into the room, thinking. I knew that in a moment he would begin absent-mindedly spinning the pencil in his hand, tapping it against his shoulder, deep in thought. I knew, without looking, that his feet would be bare. I knew there was probably a half-consumed cup of tea on a stool by his drafting table. I knew him.

The beauty I saw when I looked through that window made my chest tighten. I was looking into a home that had become mine, ours. I was looking at my future.

Parker Swift grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and then grew up again in New York, London, and Minneapolis and currently lives in Connecticut. She has spent most of her adult life examining romantic relationships in an academic lab as a professor of social psychology. Now, she's exploring the romantic lives of her fictional characters in the pages of her books. When she's not writing, she spends her time with her bearded nautical husband and being told not to sing along to pop music in the car by her two sons.

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