Title: Innocents (Dusty #1)
Author: Mary Elizabeth & Sarah Elizabeth
Genre: Romance
Amazon CA: http://tinyurl.com/knsquc7
Amazon UK: http://tinyurl.com/k48jgey
Barnes & Noble: http://tinyurl.com/l6vebcj
iBooks:
Will send when available
Smashwords:
http://tinyurl.com/mjmxpn3
Synopsis
Bliss knows all about bad choices but has yet
to make them herself. With an innocent heart, she searches for freedom and
finds it in the delinquent down the hall.
Dusty is a foul-mouthed troublemaker, tear-maker and heartbreaker. The boy with summer sky-blue eyes knows to stay away, but he can't resist the girl who made his house a home.
She's his reason, but he might not catch her when she falls.
She loves him. He loves her crazy.
This is what happens when a love made of secrets is kept with rules instead of promises.
Dusty is a foul-mouthed troublemaker, tear-maker and heartbreaker. The boy with summer sky-blue eyes knows to stay away, but he can't resist the girl who made his house a home.
She's his reason, but he might not catch her when she falls.
She loves him. He loves her crazy.
This is what happens when a love made of secrets is kept with rules instead of promises.
My Review
I’m having a hard time trying to put into words how this
book made me feel! I am so stunned how the story just captures you and how much
you connect not just with the main characters, but all of them. You watch them
grow up throughout the story. There were moments it took me back in time to
things I could relate to.
This book blew me away! It’s not like any other book I’ve
read. So many books are the same story these days and you pretty much know how it’s
going to end. This book is far from that! I will say there were times when I got
frustrated but it made sense. You watch a group of kids grow up to teens and experience
real life stuff. None of them have a perfect life growing up and they all have
their own issues. This story focuses on Dusty and Bliss. She’s the shy, sweet
and innocent girl and Dusty is the trouble maker, liar and the older brother
of her best friend. As they grow up you see each one take a different path.
He’s reckless and she’s naïve. You watch them struggle with young love, high
school, friendships and family life.
“She’s the friend my sister needs, the daughter my mom wants, a child
my dad doesn’t feel guilty about and the reason my heart beats.”
I reads this book in one day. I couldn’t put it down and was
so wrapped into it. I do have to say that the ending leaves you hanging. So be
prepared, but don’t let that sway you from not experiencing an phonomenal book.
There is a second book coming in October. YAY!!!!
“Tell me
a secret.” - Bliss
“I love you.” – Dusty
“We don’t pull wings off butterflies.” – Dusty
“She’s my softer side, and I’m her motherfucking monster.”
“And it’s the
truth-my sad reality. He could never do anything to make me leave him.”
★★☆ 5 Fantastic Stars ☆★★
Reviewed by Ashley Lenderman
Buy it
Read it
Love it
EXCERPT
EXCERPT
Front windows
cracked, we’re relaxed in the back of his parents’ old Audi and it feels good
again.
“Caffeine isn’t
good for you, you know,” Thomas says, glancing over.
The sun has set and the purple sky and the
Yaquina lighthouse paint my temperamental troublemaker in soft hues. The scent
and sounds of the sea drift in with the breeze, mixing with smoke from the
blunt he’s relit and the low melodies of Citizen Cope singing about a girl that
won’t give in
and he’ll never
let go of.
Taking another
drink of the coffee he bought me, I shrug. I don’t know what he said to get the
baristas to make a pumpkin spice latte in February, but cinnamon and caffeine
fill me with warm relief.
Under his breath
and around a hit, Thomas chuckles.
“It’s bad for your
bones and skin,” he says, smirking as I tuck my toes under his leg. “And your
heart. Uncontrolled beats are a prelude to heart attack, princess.”
I roll my eyes and
laugh some, because I do feel them. I felt them earlier in his bed, and before
that, when I was thinking of him. My unsteady heartbeats have nothing to do
with coffee.
“Bring on the
palpitations,” I say before taking another drink, letting Dusty lecture me about
bad habits, as if I’m too young to understand irony.
“I’m serious,” he
continues, smoking up and blowing out. “Your body will build a tolerance. When
you feel it’s becoming bad for you, you’ll want more. You’ll need more.
Caffeine’s a drug, Leigh.”
I laugh. I can’t
help it. Maybe I’m still high.
“Oh yeah?” I ask.
“Like pot?”
This boy blows a
cloud of smoke up, and I watch it swirl-spread out across the car’s ceiling.
“Pot’s from the
earth,” he says, puffing smoke rings while I wrap both hands around my cup,
absorbing its warmth through my palms. I inhale the cream-sweet scent of
cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger, and it may be full of stimulants, but I feel
calm.
Thomas’ presence
is the best Valentine’s Day gift. Candy is nice, and candy flavored blunt wraps
were thoughtful, but this is what I wanted most. Just us.
“Pumpkins are from
the earth,” I say. “And coffee beans.”
“You think there’s
real pumpkin in that?” he asks. When I can’t do more than smile and stare at
his lips, he sits up straighter.
“Caffeine’s an
analeptic. It fucks with your impulse control and your insulin resistance.”
I laugh because,
“What?”
He pulls a hit.
“That shit will give you stress hormones, Bliss.”
“How do you know
all this?”
“Baseball.”
We’re quiet for a
second, looking at each other. His carefreeness is back, but his smile is
understated.
“You sure you’re
not worried it’ll stunt my growth?”
Between licking
his bottom lip and bringing the blunt back up, Dusty glances at my chest
without a stitch of modesty.
“You’re growing up
fine, girl.”
My cheeks heat,
and I hide my smile with another drink.
After I’ve
finished my coffee, Thomas offers me the blunt. When I decline, my actual
addiction leans into me, nudges his hood from my head, and exhales his smoke
all over my neck.
The playful punk
that was lecturing me is gone. This honest to a fault, recklessly unflinching,
too-beautiful, fated youth is a person only I know. This is my person.
He tosses the
blunt out the window while I drop my empty cup to the floorboard, and we shift
together. We kiss open and deep, claiming and binding. We kiss the way I wanted
to earlier, with eyes closed and hearts open, and I know the real drug is here.
It’s between us and inside us.
It’s the way he
opens my lips with his lips to kiss me deeper, and the way my pulse feels like
his name is in my veins.
It’s the way I
can’t stay hurt or mad or jealous, and the way he can’t stand for me to.
It’s the craving
that never goes away, the need for more that grows as we feed it. It’s the
tolerance he was talking about and knowing he’s right.
It’s this, our
secret.
We’re the drug.
TEASER
About the Authors
Mary Elizabeth is an up and coming author who finds words in chaos,
writing stories about the skeletons hanging in your closets. Known as The
Realist, she is one half of The Elizabeths—a duo brave enough to never hide the
truth. Born and raised in Southern California, she’s a wife, mother of four
beautiful children, and dog tamer to one enthusiastic Pit Bull and a prissy
Chihuahua. She’s a hairstylist by day but contemporary fiction, new adult
author by night. Mary can often be found finger twirling her hair and chewing
on a stick of licorice while writing and rewriting a sentence over and over
Brought together by their love of storytelling, Mary
and Sarah Elizabeth are a pair of dedicated writers with complementary strengths
who’ve cultivated a literary style that captures a Realist’s brutality with a
Poet’s grace, uncovering the self-seeking side of tenderness and the
undisguised truth of honesty. Inspired by the lyrics of a song, Dusty was born between emails and long
G-chats before a single chapter was ever typed. A short story turned into a
monster, and more than four years and several edits later, the first half of
their collaboration, Innocents, will
be released on July 14, 2014.
And its conclusion, Delinquents, is set to release on October 23, 2014.
until
it’s perfect. She discovered her talent for tale-telling accidentally, but
literature is in her stranglehold. And she’s not letting go until every story
is told.
To follow Mary’s upcoming solo and collaborative projects, she can be found at her website.
Follow the author at these links
Listener,
messenger, secret keeper, Elizabeth, and TrueLove, Sarah works two jobs by day
so that she's able to really work by night. She's written since she was old
enough to hold a marker, and her writing bridges the sacred and profane, from
first love to forbidden, with a longing for truth and a passion for
hearts. She is currently based in Kansas City where her army is comprised
of one little buffalo. Her best friends are girls named Moses and Bunny. Her
hero is a boy named Bishop, and the one she loves has ocean eyes. In addition
to Dusty, Sarah also has a
collaborative novella, Light and
Wine, due to be released on June 8th, and her solo work will be featured in the
anthology Branded, this
August.
And its conclusion, Delinquents, is set to release on October 23, 2014.
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