Posts Tagged ‘abuse’

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Ooh! Another steamy read from A.M. Hargrove!

I’ve read all of her books and can’t wait to tell you about Tragically Flawed.

You are going to love Riviera and Shan.

Don’t forget to enter the amazing giveaway!

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Buy Links: Amazon / B&N / Smashwords

BOOK SUMMARY

Riviera Benson has a talent…one she discovered by accident. She’s a painter, but canvas isn’t her medium. She creates her lovely masterpieces on walls and ceilings of million dollar homes as murals and faux finishes. Her art is in high demand now, but life wasn’t always that way. Riviera has secrets from her past she intends to keep tightly locked away…terrifying secrets that keep her awake at night…that prevent her from getting close to anyone…anyone that is, until she meets Shan.

Benjamin Shandon, owner of Shandon Homes, works like a thousand demons are chasing him…because perhaps they are. His business has boomed, ever since the forest fire swept through the canyon and destroyed hundreds of million dollar homes. He demands excellence in everything…from his employees to his women. He slows down for nothing, keeping a schedule that no sane person would want. But Riviera interrupts everything, twisting his guts inside out, and wedging her way into his heart, destroying a promise he made to himself.

Will they let their pasts control their future, or will they decide to let go and allow their hearts to discover each other’s?

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Enjoy this glimpse inside Tragically Flawed

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My Review

Like so many times before, A.M. Hargrove cast a spell on me. I’ve read all of her books and always found that my time spent in her stories was too brief. I’m always left wanting more.

So, when I got my hands on Tragically Flawed, I had to start reading right away.

What I discovered was a captivating love story with flesh and blood characters haunted by their past.

Riviera has escaped an abusive relationship, but the scars and bruises remain on the inside long after they fade from her body.

Starting over in a new town, she finds a roommate who becomes her close friend and supporter.

While her talent for painting lands Riviera a job quickly, her boss is insecure and has a reputation for bullying her employees.

Shan is the owner of Shandon Homes and that’s how they first meet. While working in what Riviera thinks is an empty house, her boisterous singing awakens a monster. Shan storms in, shouting abuse and reduces her to a quivering wreck.

Their first meeting may have been a disaster but as they work together and begin to know each other, their attraction grows.

Can two damaged people, one unable to forgive himself for a past tragedy and one running from the echoes of her previous life find healing and trust through each other?

Riviera is a woman to applaud. Scared and vulnerable, she’s also strong and determined. Sure, she’s danced with the devil, but she still believes there’s good in the world.

Shan is sexy, bold and alpha all the way, but he’s burdened with guilt over his part in the loss of a friend. Riviera slips past the walls he hides behind and gives him hope.

There are some secondary characters you’ll meet and want to know more about and a boss from the dark side that you’ll love to hate.

Tragically Flawed was a fast read for me. It dabbled in the dark side but it was also funny and sexy.

About the sexy. If you blush easily you’re going to have rosy cheeks. A.M. Hargrove is really good at raising your blood pressure and steaming up your kindle.

This book was beyond what I hoped it would be and I’ll be recommending it to all who’ll listen. Except for the young readers. The content is for a mature reader.

I’m tickled pink to give it a resounding 5 STARS

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A.M. Hargrove

A.M. Hargrove

One day, on her way home from work as a sales manager, A. M. Hargrove, realized her life was on fast forward and if she didn’t do something soon, it would quickly be too late to write that work of fiction she had been dreaming of her whole life.  So, she rolled down the passenger window of her fabulous (not) company car and tossed out her leather briefcase.  Luckily, the pedestrian in the direct line of fire was a dodge ball pro and had über quick reflexes enabling him to avoid getting bashed in the head.  Feeling a tad guilty about the near miss, A. M. made a speedy turn down a deserted side street before tossing her crummy, outdated piece-of-you-know-what laptop out the window.  She breathed a liberating sigh of relief, picked up her cell phone, called her boss and quit her job.  Grinning, she made another call to her hubs and told him of her new adventure (after making sure his heart was beating properly again).

So began A. M. Hargrove’s career as a YA/NA and Adult Romance writer. Her books include the following: Edge of Disaster, Shattered Edge and Kissing Fire (The Edge Series); The Guardians of Vesturon series (Survival, Resurrection, Determinant, reEmergent and Beginnings); Dark Waltz and Tragically Flawed.

Other than being in love with writing about being in love, she loves chocolate, ice cream and coffee and is positive they should be added as part of the USDA food groups.

Author Links:

Blog: http://amhargrove.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Amhargrove1

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AMHargroveAuthor

Author Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5338829.A_M_Hargrove

TRAGICALLY FLAWED Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18271624-tragically-flawed

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Life After Dane

by Edward Lorn

Published by Red Adept Publishing, LLC

August 2013

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Have I got a scare for you!

Red Adept Publishing has put together an amazing tour for Edward Lorn’s Life After Dane.

I have a peek inside for you. Chapter One!

Read on to catch my review and the scary good trailer.

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway!

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Where you can purchase Life After Dane.

Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo / Goodreads

Description

A mother’s love is undying… and so is Dane.

After the state of Arkansas executes serial killer Dane Peters, the Rest Stop Dentist, his mother discovers that life is darker and more dangerous than she ever expected.

The driving force behind his ghostly return lies buried in his family’s dark past. As Ella desperately seeks a way to lay her son’s troubled soul to rest, she comes face to face with her own failings.

If Ella cannot learn why her son has returned and what he seeks, then the reach of his power will destroy the innocent, and not even his mother will be able to stop him.

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Chapter One

 

The state of Arkansas put my son to sleep on October 25, 2013. All across the country, from Colorado to Virginia, forty-two families were finally able to rest. I knew those grieving souls by faces, not personalities. Their tears were familiar, yet their pain was not. I could recall their loved ones easily, as they were the victims. My son’s name was Dane Peters. The rest of the world called him The Rest Stop Dentist.

Not everybody from Dane’s many court sessions came that night. The watch room only held thirty chairs, and nine were taken up by the cops who had arrested my son, two local reporters, and Sven Gödel, a freelance journalist from Chicago.

When the guards led my son into the execution chamber, he strode tall, his face bereft of emotion. At some point, they’d shaved his head. His mop of brown shag was a five o’clock ghost of its former self. While one officer unshackled Dane, the other made ready the straps on the cross-like table where Dane would serve his final sentence. Unencumbered, Dane stretched his arms wide, bent back at the waist, and rocked forward to meet my eyes.

A chill ran down my spine. He looked so calm, the exact opposite of me. I could feel my hands shaking around the Bible I clutched to my stomach. Oh, God, they’re actually going to kill my child. If I had died, they would have called Dane an orphan, but what would they call a childless mother? At fifty-five, I was left all alone.

Dane groped at the front of his orange jumpsuit, patted it flat, and turned toward the awaiting table. Never breaking eye contact, he craned his neck so he could keep a bead on me. My baby boy was in there somewhere, hiding behind that cold stare. I felt myself reaching for him, though I hadn’t meant to do so.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned my head to find a man wearing a police officer’s uniform.

“You know,” he said, “that’s two-way glass. He can’t actually see you.”

Looking back at my son, I tried to tell myself that the man behind me was wrong. He had to be. Dane was gazing directly at me, into me. He sat on the edge of the metal table, twisted, and threw his legs up onto the surface, then lay back and looked toward the ceiling. The guards went about belting him down. Dane lifted his head, met my eyes, and gave me a mirthless smile.

The officer behind me said, “That monster must think he’s something. Look at that smug expression painted all over his mug. He ain’t a bit sorry ’bout what he done.”

Dane blinked twice and settled back on the table.

Too low for anyone else to hear, I said, “He’s not a monster. He’s my son.”

Dane was thirty years old when they put an IV in his arm and dosed him with pentobarbital to render him unconscious. A pump injected him with pancuronium bromide to relax his breathing until his lungs quit altogether. Potassium chloride, the “humane drug,” ceased the beating of his heart before the failure of his lungs became too painful. I watched, seated with the families of the victims, while my son was put down like a rabid dog.

One of the men behind the glass finally said, “It’s over.”

The father of Lillie Mason clapped, putting his hands together, slowly at first, then faster. Vickie Hancock’s mother joined in. Fredericka Devereau’s parents followed along until everyone surrounding me fell into a fit of raucous applause. I didn’t feel the need to celebrate my child’s death, so I remained stoic and silent.

Dane’s body was transferred from the execution table to a beige body bag atop the stainless surface of an awaiting gurney. I’d seen enough.

Rising from my chair, I took an unsteady step forward and almost fell. A hand wrapped around my bicep, keeping me upright. Glancing to see who’d saved me from a tumble, I came face to face with that Chicago journalist, Sven Gödel.

He asked, “Are you all right?”

“Leave me alone.” I snatched my arm from his grasp, turned on my heel, and headed for the door.

Sven called after me, “We should talk, Mrs. Peters.”

I didn’t justify his comment with an answer.

The watch room door opened onto a courtyard surrounded on all sides by razor-wire-topped fencing. October in Arkansas wasn’t quite as cool as back home in Colorado. In fact, the air was uncomfortably warm, like sitting down on a public toilet and finding the previous users’ body heat radiating up into my own butt. Sweat popped out on my forehead. I swiped it away with the back of one hand.

At the main gate, a bald prison guard let me out into the free world. I thought of it like that, “the free world,” because during Dane’s trial and the time up until his death, I’d felt like a prisoner alongside him. With Dane gone, I was free.

I crossed the parking lot to my gold Camry. Once behind the wheel, I let my emotions take over. Tears choked me. To clear my pipes, I lit a Virginia Slim and allowed the menthol to soothe my clogged throat.

I smoked the entire cigarette in less than three minutes. I rolled down my window and flicked the butt into the prison’s lot, leaving a piece of myself behind. Lighting another one, I drove away from that edifice of justice, wondering what else I had left back there. That thought haunted me across seven hundred miles, two fast-food cheeseburgers, four restroom breaks, and a whole pack of Slims, until I crossed the city limits of Well Being, Colorado. Home sweet home.

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My Review

I’ve read several of Edward’s books and I have to say Life After Dane is his best work yet.

I would call it a psychological thriller and horror story. But it’s more than that. You could also call it a ghost story but it isn’t a house that’s haunted.

They say a serial killer can be born one or made into one. I’m not sure which it was for Dane, but he was prolific, killing 42 people. His moniker, The Rest Stop Dentist, was earned because he stalked and killed his victims at rest stops and left a trail of their teeth, like bread crumbs, leading to their discarded corpses.

Like in real life, the law does catch up with him and on October 25, 2013, Dane Peters is sent to hell.

But Dane isn’t planning on staying there, and before long, he pays a visit to his loving mother, the chain-smoking woman who stood by and watched him suffer at the hands of his abusive father.

Dane is back and he wants his own brand of justice.

I like how the author  showed you both sides of the story, both Danes and his mother, Ella May’s. It helped me to see behind their actions and connect with them.

Dane is horrific, but you almost feel sorry for him. Good writing there.

Ella May is sweet and loving, but she’ll tick you off, making you want to slap her down. More good writing.

I would put the pacing of this story as relentless. Once you start reading, you’ll not want to stop until the white-knuckled read is over.

When I reached the end, my heart was pounding in my ears and my jaw ached from clenching my teeth. I just sat there, thinking. Then I got up and grabbed a romance book to read so I wouldn’t be thinking about Dane when I went to sleep!

5 Stars

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About  Edward Lorn and where to stalk him.
Image of Edward Lorn

Edward Lorn is an American horror author presently residing in the southeast United States. He enjoys storytelling, reading, and writing biographies in the third person. Once upon a time, during a session of show and tell, a seven-year-old Edward Lorn shared with his class that his baby brother had died over the weekend. His classmates, the teacher included, wept while he recounted the painful tragedy of having lost a sibling. Edward went home that day and found an irate mother waiting for him. Edward’s teacher had called to express her condolences. This was unfortunate, as Edward had never had a baby brother. With advice given to her by a frustrated teacher, Edward’s mother made him start writing all of his lies down. The rest, as they say, is history. Edward Lorn and his wife are raising two children, along with a handful of outside cats and a beagle named Dot. He remains a liar to this day. The only difference is, now he’s a useful one.

For more about Edward Lorn and his books:

Website / Twitter / Goodreads / Amazon

Edward’s page on RAP: http://redadeptpublishing.com/edward-lorn/

Edward’s blog: http://edwardlorn.wordpress.com/

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I’ve read other books by Edward and loved them.

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