Tuesday, November 26, 2013

BLOG TOUR - EXCERPT & GIVEAWAY: Undertow by Elizabeth O'Roark


Welcome to my stop on the Undertow blog tour. To follow along with the rest of the tour, just click on the banner above.

Title: Undertow
Author: Elizabeth O’Roark
Release date: August 21st, 2013
Genre: New Adult, Romance
Tour: Irresistible Reads Book Tours

Maura Pierce seems to have everything – a bright future, a trust fund and a boyfriend who can’t wait to settle down.

It almost seems like enough until Nate Sullivan comes home. Nate – her childhood best friend, her first love. The boy who left without a trace one night and broke her heart. 

When their attraction threatens the future she and her parents have so carefully crafted, loyalties will be tested and secrets will be uncovered.

Giving in may cost her everything. But how do you resist the only thing you’ve ever really wanted?


Book Excerpt

Ethan pulls me in for a particularly lingering, public kiss, his fingers “accidentally” grazing my breast as I push away.  “I can’t go through a whole summer of this,” he says.  “I will literally combust if I have to spend an entire summer at second base with you dressed like that.”
“I think second base is optimistic,” I giggle. 
“I don’t care if grandma is sitting a foot away and we’re in church, I’m at least hitting second base,” he groans.
He walks me back to the house, refusing to let me carry my towel and backpack though it gets sand all over his suit.
I turn on the faucet to rinse off and he grabs the hose from me. “What are you doing?” I ask warily.
“Just being a gentleman, helping you hose off,” he says, all too innocently.  He gently sprays my feet.  “See?”
But then the hose rises.  “Your ankles are sandy, too,” he says.
“Ethan,” I warn. 
“And your calves.” The hose goes higher, and his smile grows devious.
“Enough.”
“And your thighs.”
“Okay, seriously, if my grandma’s watching you are never going to be welcome here again.”
“Your grandma loves me. Turn around.”
It seems safer, so I turn. 
“God you’ve got a great ass, Maura.”
Before I can even yell at him, I hear it.  The low thump of a car pulling into the driveway behind the house.  I turn, too quickly, and Ethan hits my stomach with the water.  I can’t even feel it, because I’m looking at Nate Sullivan for the first time in five years.
He has been the principal figure in every single fantasy I’ve had for my entire life, no matter how often I’ve tried to replace his face with someone else’s.  I thought when I saw him in person he’d finally lose some of that searing perfection he held in my mind.  But he doesn’t.  He is everything I remember, and more, and I stand stunned and frozen by it as our eyes meet.
He looks the same in some ways, radically different in others. He has those same cloudy gray eyes, that same smudge of dark lashes, that same mouth – his upper lip just full enough that it draws your eye. 
And yet he’s so different.  The last time I saw him, he was a lanky 19-year-old, with a sweet smile that crept over his face without hesitation, with adoring eyes that looked into mine like he knew things about us that no one else knew.  Which I guess he did.  
He’s an adult now, broader, his body a solid wall of muscle, but the most important difference is difficult to pinpoint.  The sweetness of his eyes, his smile – it’s gone, replaced with something that falls between anger and calculation.  What was once mischievous is now deadly serious, perhaps even a little dangerous.  I know what kind of person he is, and all the things I loved about him are gone, so I can’t account for the fact that I feel my chest dropping into my stomach at the sight of him, that my legs are rubbery.  That the things I always felt for him haven’t just lingered – they’ve doubled down.  Seeing him should fill me with rage, but instead it leaves me weak with thirst.  He says nothing to either of us. Ethan never even looks over at him.  And then he turns and walks away.
He is not the person I remember at all, so why am I leaning against the wall for support, letting Ethan spray my breasts without murmuring the slightest objection?

About the Author:

Elizabeth O’Roark lives in Washington, DC with her 3 children. After many years spent writing scintillating brochures about amniocentesis and heart surgery, she is thrilled to have found a job that allows her to just make s*** up.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


2 comments:

  1. This book sounds really good! I'm addin it to my list!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Loved the excerpt!

    Thanks for the giveaway too :]

    ReplyDelete

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