Wednesday Books Presents: C.C. Hunter's "This Heart of Mine"

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Title:  This Heart Of Mine
Author:  C.C. Hunter
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Expected Date of Publication:  February 27, 2018
Genre:  YA, Mystery, Thriller, Romance
Rating:  5 Stars  

A new heart saved her life—but will it help her find out what really happened to its donor?

Seventeen-year-old Leah MacKenzie is heartless. An artificial heart in a backpack is keeping her alive. However, this route only offers her a few years. And with her rare blood type, a transplant isn’t likely. Living like you are dying isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But when a heart becomes available, she’s given a second chance at life. Except Leah discovers who the donor was — a boy from her school — and they’re saying he killed himself. Plagued with dreams since the transplant, she realizes she may hold the clues to what really happened.

Matt refuses to believe his twin killed himself. When Leah seeks him out, he learns they are both having similar dreams and he’s certain it means something. While unraveling the secrets of his brother’s final moments, Leah and Matt find each other, and a love they are terrified to lose. But life and even new hearts don’t come with guarantees. 
Who knew living, took more courage than dying? 





Put your stuff here“You lucky bitch!” I drop back down on my pink bedspread,
phone to ear, knowing Brandy is dancing on cloud nine and I’m
dancing with her. I glance at the door to make sure Mom isn’t
hovering and about to freak over my language. Again.
She isn’t there.
Lately, I can’t seem to control what comes out of my mouth.
Mom blames it on too much daytime who’s-the-baby-daddy
television. She could be right. But hey, a girl’s gotta have some
fun.
“Where he’s taking you?” I ask.
“Pablo’s Pizza.” Brandy’s tone lost the oh-God shriek qual-
ity. “Why . . . why don’t you come with us?”
“On your date? Are you freaking nuts?”

4 C. C.
HUNTER
“You go to the doctor’s office, you could—”
“No. That’s hell no!” I even hate going to the doctor’s office.
If people stare long enough they see the tube. But this isn’t even
about me. “I’d die before I get between you—”
“Don’t say that!” Brandy’s emotional reprimand rings too
loud. Too painful.
“It’s just a figure of speech,” I say, but in so many ways it’s
not. I’m dying. I’ve accepted that. The people in my life haven’t.
So, for them, I pretend. Or try to.
“But if you—”
“Stop. I’m not going.”
There’s a gulp of silence. That’s when I realize my “lucky
bitch” comment brought on the pity invite. Brandy’s worried I’m
jealous. And okay, maybe I am, a little. But my grandmother used
to say it was okay to see someone in a beautiful red dress and
think, I want a dress like hers. But it wasn’t okay to think, I want a
dress like hers and I want her to have a wart on her nose.
I don’t wish Brandy warts. She’s had the hots for Brian for
years. She deserves Brian.
Do I deserve something besides the lousy card fate dealt to
me? Hell yeah. But what am I going to do? Cry? I tried that. I’ve
moved on.
Now I’ve got my bucket list. And my books.
The books are part of my bucket list. I want to read a hun-
dred. At least a hundred. I started counting after I got out of the
hospital the first time I survived an infection from my arti- ficial
heart. I’m at book twenty-eight now. I won’t mention how many of
them were romance novels.
“Leah,” Brandy starts in again.
The chime of the doorbell has me glancing at the pink clock
on my bedside table.
It’s study time. Algebra. I hate it. But I kind of like hating

THIS HEART
OF MINE

7

it. Because I hated it before I got sick. Hating the same things as
before makes me feel more like the old me.
“Gotta go. Ms. Strong is here.” I bounce my heels on the
bed. The beaks on my Donald Duck slippers bob up and down.
Lately, I’ve been into cartoon-character slippers. They make
my feet look happy. Mom’s bought me three pairs: Mickey,
Donald, and Dumbo.
“But—” Brandy tries again.
“No. But you’re gonna tell me everything. All the sexy
details. How good he kisses. How good he smells. How many
times you catch him staring at your boobs.”
Yep, I’m jealous all right. But I’m not a heartless bitch. Well,
maybe I am. Heartless, really heartless, but not so much a bitch. I
carry an artificial heart around in a backpack. It’s keeping me
alive.
“I always tell you everything,” Brandy says.
No, but you used to. I stare up at my whirling polka-dot ceil-
ing fan. Even Brandy’s walking on eggshells, scared she’ll say
something to remind me that I got a raw deal, something that
will make me feel sorry for myself. I’m done doing that. But I
hate hearing that crunch as people tiptoe around the truth.
“Leah.” Mom calls me.
“Gotta go.” I hang up, grab my heart, and get ready to face
algebra.
I really hate it, but it’s number one on my bucket list—my
last hurrah. Well, not algebra, but graduating high school. And
I don’t want a diploma handed to me. I want to earn it.
I spot Mom standing in the entrance of the dining room
turned study. She’s rubbing her palms over her hips. A nervous
habit, though I have no idea what’s got her jittery now. I sur-
vived the last infection and the one before that. She hears
my footsteps, looks at me. Her brow puckers—another sign of
serious mama fret.

4 C. C.
HUNTER
I stop. Why’s she so nervous? “What?”
“Ms. Strong couldn’t make it.” She’s rushes off faster than
her hurried words.
I hear someone shuffling in the dining room. I’m leery. Hes-
itant. I move in. My Donald Duck slippers skid to a quick stop
when I see the dark-haired boy at the table.
“Shit.” I suck my lips into my mouth in hopes I didn’t say it
loud enough for him to hear.
He grins. He heard me. That smile is as good as the ones I
read about in romance novels. Smiles described as crooked,
mind-stopping, or coming with a melt-me- now quality. I swear
my artificial heart skips two beats.
He’s one of the Kenner twins, either Eric or Matt, the two
hottest boys in school. I used to be able to tell them apart, but
now I’m not sure of anything. If I combed my hair today. If I
brushed my teeth. If I have on a bra?
I close my mouth, run my tongue over my fuzzy-feeling
teeth, trying to quietly suck them clean.
Glancing down, away from his eyes, I rock back and forth
on my heels, my Donald Ducks’ bills rocking with me. Should I
run back to my room? But how pathetic will I look then? And if I
do, he’ll leave. Lifting my gaze, I realize I’m not sure I want him to
go. I kinda like looking at him.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I mimic and realize I’m hiding the backpack behind my
leg. I give my bright red tank top a tug down to cover the tube
that extends from the backpack and pokes into me under my left
ribcage. A hole that kinda looks like a second belly but- ton. Yup,
I’m hiding the very thing that’s keeping me alive.
“Ms. Strong couldn’t make it,” he says as if reading my
mood and realizing he needs to justify his being here. “She
asked me to sub.”
“For how many extra credit points?” I wait for him to tell me
he did it just out of kindness. And, if true, it would mean

THIS HEART
OF MINE

7

he did it out of pity. I’m not sure I’d enjoy looking at him
anymore. I’d rather be someone’s means to a better grade.
Brandy told me that everyone in school knows about my dead
heart.
“Fifteen. I got lazy and didn’t turn in some homework.
You’ll pump me up to a B.”
“You should have held out for twenty.”
He smiles again. “I don’t think it was negotiable.”
Moving in, I try to guess which twin he is. I try to figure out
how to ask, but everything I think of sounds lame. Let him be
Matt.
I had a thing for Matt since seventh grade. It might have
been wishful thinking, but in tenth grade I thought he liked me
too. Not that it ever went anywhere. He was football, I was book
club. He was popular, I was . . . not. Then I started dating Trent. A
guy in book club. A guy I let off the hook as soon as I found out
my heart was dying.
“Your books?” he asks.
I don’t understand the question, until I see he’s pointing to
my backpack.
Crap! I freak a little. I have several pat answers in my head
that I came up with when Mom, afraid I was turning into an
agoraphobe, insisted I get out of the house. But I can’t remem-
ber them. The silence reeks of awkwardness.
So I go with the truth. “No. It’s my . . . heart.” “Shit.”
He spills my favorite word.
I laugh.
His eyes meet mine and he smiles again. Yup, it’s kinda
crooked. My mind’s not working. And I’m melting.
“Oh, you’re joking,” he says. “Right?”
I nod yes then shake my head no as if I don’t know the
answer.
His smile fades like a light on a dimmer switch. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.” I move to the desk in the corner. One-handed,
My Thoughts
Authoress extraordinaire, C.C. Hunter has done it again.  Bringing readers to the edge of their seats with a story that is equal parts mystery, thriller, and romance.
Leading lady Leah McKenzie, and her twin co-stars, Matt and Eric Kenner, are given extremely compelling backstories; that while only first linked by the tenuousness that is "high school hierarchy".  Soon become something so much, in a word...
More.

As with any story, there are going to be those moments that are just a little too convenient.  For this story, that honor falls to the whole matching blood type, Eric dying, Leah getting said heart thing.


"Without said convenience, there would be no story."
But I do understand...
"Without said convenience, there would be no story."
So, onward to the juicier bits, shall we?

The building of the mystery of Eric's death and Leah's ability to piggyback on the entire "twin bond" is just gold to read.
The lightening pace at which everything happens, and the way that said speed works to strengthen the bond between Leah, Eric, and Matt.
Priceless!
The anticipatory buildup around the who's what's and why's of every situation.
Incredible!
The tear-jerking, "my heart just grew ten sizes," awwwwwwe inspiring romance.
Just allow me to say, "Awwwwwwe!"
This in short, is a book that once picked up,
simply CAN'T be put down.   

About C.C.

C. C. Hunter is the New York Times bestselling author of over thirty-five books, including her wildly popular Shadow Falls and Shadow Falls: After Dark series. In addition to winning numerous awards and rave reviews for her novels, C.C. is also a photojournalist, motivational speaker, and writing coach. In February 2018, Wednesday Books will publish her contemporary young adult and hardcover debut, This Heart of Mine. And the first book of her new paranormal young adult series, The Mortician's Daughter: One Foot in the Grave was released on October 31st 2017. C. C. currently resides in Texas with her husband, junkyard dog, Lady, and whatever wild creatures that meander out from woods surrounding home.

C.C. Hunter is a pseudonym. Her real name is Christie Craig and she also writes humorous romantic suspense romance novels. www.christie-craig.com


C.C. would love to hear from you. Because of deadlines, it may take her a day or so to get back with you, but she will reply. cc@cchunterbooks.com
 


Sex, Secrets, and Scifi, Pack Quite The Story Making Punch In "Dangerous Promise"

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Title:  Dangerous Promise
(The Protector Series #1)
Author:  Megan Hart
Publisher:  Swerve
Release Date:  January 2, 2018
Rating: 5 Stars

A female bodyguard with enhanced abilities. A billionaire playboy committed to destroying people like her. A romance they didn’t expect…
Dive into the first book in the fantastic new Protector series set in the near future from New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart!
Nina Bronson used to be all human -- until the experimental surgeries and internal technology that saved her life and enhanced her as a soldier also forced her to leave the army for private service. Now she and her peers are facing slow, painful deaths unless their technology is upgraded, and the one man keeping those upgrades illegal and unavailable is an obnoxious billionaire. A man too gorgeous for his own good.
A man she’s supposed to guard with her life.
Ewan Donahue is the public voice speaking out against the enhancement procedures of injured soldiers. But when his lobbying leads to death threats, he needs someone to protect him around the clock. He doesn’t want to rely on an enhanced soldier—Nina’s tech goes against everything he stands for. But he really doesn’t want her to be beautiful like she is. Doesn’t want her to suffer like she will.
Doesn’t want to succumb to the searing desire he feels for her.
As a series of attacks on his life send them to a remote cabin, their close proximity brings them together in ways they never imagined. They know they must prevent the need simmering between them, resist each other at all costs. But when tensions are high and danger is close, passion burns hottest of all…
Nina Bronson was a fantasy, all right, but one Ewan could no longer allow himself to imagine.
He turned from the toilet, half-expecting to see her smirking, but she was looking carefully uninterested, her gaze settled somewhere to his left. “I need to take a shower. Sure you don’t want to climb in there with me?”
He’d been aiming for sarcasm, but the second the words came out of his mouth, he realized they sounded less like a threat and more like a sexual come-on. The way her sleek black eyebrows rose made it obvious that she’d thought so, too, but scratch it, that was the last thing in the world he’d meant. Maybe not the last thing, he admitted as Nina gave him another of those frustratingly chilly smiles. At about five-four, she stood close to a foot shorter than him. Her body beneath the simple black uniform of leggings and a long-sleeved top was fit and firm and still curvy in all the places a man needed a woman to curve. She studied him like she could ferret out every scrap of a secret he’d ever tried to keep.
“I could, but in the event of a rising threat”—her gaze dropped for the barest second to the front of his pajamas, he was sure of it, though it happened so fast he couldn’t have proven it—“I’ll need to be able to take care of it with my clothes on.”
“Don’t like to fight naked, huh?”
She smiled. “I like to do a lot of things naked, Mr. Donahue, but fighting isn’t one of them.”
He’d always been a sucker for a woman with a sense of humor and a sharp wit. This particular woman, though, represented everything he was working so hard against. He’d hired her for the job in spite of his personal beliefs, not to support them. And not for any other reasons, either, her ripe mouth and quick comebacks notwithstanding.
Besides, Ewan told himself with scorn, he preferred blondes.
He reached into the glass shower enclosure to start the water running. “How can I be sure you’re using that selective sight like you say you are?”
Her smile vanished immediately. Her back straightened, shoulders squared. Her voice, which previously had been slightly husky and tinged with amusement, went subzero.
“Because to ogle you inappropriately in the shower or in any other way would be a direct violation of my standards, both those set by the company I work for, and also my own personal set of morals and ethics. Because I do what I say I’m going to do, Mr. Donahue, and for you to assume or believe anything less is a direct affront on my character.”
Before he could say anything else, glass shattered. The bathroom window above the deep soaking tub burst inward. A long metal tube hurtled through the open space and hit the tile floor, bouncing hard enough to chip the porcelain before rolling to a stop near his feet. The slow hissing of gas came first, followed next by the eye-watering sting.
“Get in the shower!” Nina shoved him, hard, into the glass enclosure, and shut the door behind him. “Turn the water on high!”
Another metal tube hurtled through the window, but this one didn’t have time to hit the floor. She grabbed it in midair, crossing the distance between where she’d been and leaping into the tub in a mere two or three strides. She knocked over a display of decorative soaps and stupid seashells one of his exes had put there, but Nina didn’t pay a second’s attention to the crash. Nor to the glass still sticking out in shards in the window frame.
One, two, three, she kicked out the glass and leaned out the empty window space. She threw the metal tube outside. All of this happened so fast Ewan barely had time to register the scalding water on his bare chest. He stepped out of the spray with a hiss as Nina drew her stun weapon from the holster at her waist.
She aimed.
She fired.
From outside came a faint scream. A moment later, alarms began to bleat. Not the ones that announced a breach of the house itself; those should’ve gone off the second the window broke. Instead, the perimeter alarms went off. Whoever had managed to get past them the first time without setting them off wasn’t so lucky this time.
Steam had barely had time to fill the shower and spill over the top of the glass enclosure into the rest of the bathroom when Nina turned and stepped out of the bathtub. The tube on the ground was still hissing gas with an acrid stink. Inside the shower with the water blasting, the smog was dissipating enough to make him cough, but not enough to knock him down.
Grabbing up the tube, Nina took another of those amazing three-four step leaps and tossed that tube out the window as well. She snagged one of the tidily rolled towels from the basket between the tub and sink. Yanked open the shower enclosure, stepping inside just enough to thrust the plush cloth beneath the water.
Then she threw it over his head and face.
The next thing Ewan knew, he was on the floor of his bedroom, sopping wet, with a puddle ruining his fourteen-hundred-credit rug. Nina lay on her back beside him, her eyes closed. Chest rising and falling rapidly. When he sat up, she turned her head to look at him.
The whites of her eyes had gone threaded with crimson, but she was grinning. “Well. How’s that for a good start?”

My Thoughts
This futuristic story of an ex-super soldier whose very tech puts her on borrowed time, and the billionaire that tech has made her able to protect.  Is one that holds so much more for readers than its romantic trappings would lead readers to allow.

Both leading lady, Nina Bronson, and leading man, Ewan Donahue, are alphas in their own right.  But Ewan's appreciation for, and attraction to, Nina's fighting prowess, speed, strength, and beauty is a refreshing twist; that one never tires of.
Said appreciation goes a long way towards ushering in the heated femdom romance that transforms this read from scifi chic to futuristic sexual fantasy of the most readable kind.

Balancing the heat, are the elements of danger presented by Ewan's predicament as a hunted man, Nina's personal war with the failing tech in her head, and the secret that lies between them.

Secrets it seems, are an underlying theme of this book.  Because it's secrets, or more to the point.  The need for keeping the secrets of the rich and powerful clients that Nina, and others like her serve.  That are at the heart of the war for the rights of "the enhanced".
Rights that Ewan is doing everything in his power to strip away.
Until...
He comes face to face with the one person charged with saving both his life and his heart.
Knowing that everything that he stands for could mean the end of hers.
This is a book that will turn you on while making you think.
It gives rise to questions like:

Who or what defines "humanity"?
If technology advances to the point of "enhanced humans", who has a say over how that tech is used?
Do our memories really belong to us?

This book is one that is well written, thought provoking, heart stopping, and sexy as all HELL!
An excellent start to a wonderful series.

Buy The Book Here!

All About Megan Hart
Megan Hart has written in almost every genre of romantic fiction, including historical, contemporary, romantic suspense, romantic comedy, futuristic, fantasy and perhaps most notably, erotic. She also writes non-erotic fantasy and science fiction, as well as continuing to occasionally dabble in horror.

For Megan Hart, the nutritionist, click here

Find Megan here:  Web / Twitter / Facebook

Ink Slinger Book Tours Presents: The Wonder Of You

BOOK INFORMATION: 

THE WONDER OF YOU by Harper Kincaid is LIVE!

Special Release Week Price - $1.99
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2Eko3XE 
Amazon AU: http://amzn.to/2EkKnQJ 


BOOK DESCRIPTION:
What if Alice didn’t fall down the rabbit hole, but instead, traveled through
Lincoln Tunnel into another kind of Wonderland:
New York City.
The best day of twenty-five year old Alice Leighton’s life was the day she got to put her nothing special, lil Southern town in her rear-view mirror. Good-bye to phony ‘bless your hearts’ and ‘I’ll pray for you’ crap, all while talking trash behind her back. She’s New York City’s latest addition and she’s going to work her ass off proving she earned her spot in the country’s top grad program.
Never again will she let some jerk derail her future and break her heart. Oh, and no more players. She’s D.O.N.E with the ‘cool guys’.
Getting caught up in Dare Grangeworth, the art world’s resident bad boy, was not part of her Alice 2.0 plan, even if he is just her type, with his beard, tats sleeves and intense green eyes. When he’s not dodging the press or his cultish fan base, Dare’s making art that makes a statement. Women seem to lose their heads around him – all the more reason why he finds Alice’s candor refreshing. He’s used to women giving in – not giving attitude.
He has to get to know this girl, even if it means allowing himself to be the subject of her research. Before too long, he becomes more than a simple outlier she can explain away. And for him everything starts to feel larger than life and upside down, like a heady rush, all while desperately trying not to lose his heart.
Become lost and found in this re-imagined story of Alice and her cast of characters, in a world where Wonderland meets Sex-and-the-City.

My Thoughts
The Wonder Of You is a book that causes one to be of two minds while reading it.
The reason for this being that it starts off, feet firmly planted in the world of romance.  But when our Alice meets her Mad Hatter; in the very attractive and rich form of one Dare Grangeworth.  Romance seems to take a very decided detour into the erotic.  Or at least, it starts to.

Sadly, at least for this reader.  The foray into what could have been a very titillating exploration of the sexual freedom that our "vibe in the purse" carrying, sex therapist in training, seems to trumpet from the rooftops in the book's opening pages.  Falls very flat later in the book. When it is learned that she knows about as much about her own sexuality as a Golden Retriever knows about a goldfish.

Really Anastasia????

She is strong and assured in every other aspect of her life. A real joy to read.  But when we are faced with what turns out to be a focal point of the book.  Her chance to claim her sexuality in a meaningful and personal way.
We get run of the mill sex, and "I don't have any fantasies."

I say again...
Really Anastasia????

Just a hint...
It doesn't bode well for your sex life or your career in sex therapy, when your tech wiz best friend knows more about fantasy and fetish play than you do.
Not to mention that fact that when our Alice finally does place one tentative toe into the wide world of fantasy.  We get a "been there...done that" scenario. that serves as little more than a gateway to a dramatic story ending.

Please don't misunderstand.
This is a very well written and enjoyable read.  But what serves time and time as this read's fatal flaw, is the fact that the author seems to go out of her way to make every aspect of "Wonderland" normal and relatable.
Dare goes out of his way to prove that in spite of his wealth...
Sex, been there done that...
No exploration of New York...etc

In short.
This book lives not in Wonderland, but in the Land of Could Have Been.


AUTHOR BIO:


Born in California and raised in South Florida, Harper Kincaid has moved around like a gypsy with a bounty on her head ever since. For years, she was a jill of all trades and a master of none, but is now tickled hot pink to pen stories that break and mend people's hearts for a living. Kincaid believes seduction occurs from the neck up, which is why her characters are smart, sexy, and slightly quirky - and definitely worthy to be your next hard-core book crush.
When not writing, she adores listening to indie, lo-fi, complaint rock played on vinyl,  the theater, well-informed optimism, happy endings (both kinds), and making those close to her laugh 'til they snort. She is a self-admitted change junkie, loving new experiences and places, but has now happily settled in the cutest lil' town, Vienna, Virginia.

AUTHOR LINKS: