We're celebrating the release of Secondhand Heart by Kristen Strassel! Check out the review, excerpt and giveaway below!
Title: Secondhand Heart
Author: Kristen Strassel
Age: NA
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Blurb:
Daisy Mangold thought she had her life figured out until a roadside bomb in Afghanistan changed everything. Now a twenty-one-year-old military widow, Daisy moves back home to start over.
Cam Hunter won the reality show The Spotlight, and thought he was on his way to becoming the next big country star. But when whispers of how he won begin to surface, Nashville is less than welcoming. After he loses his record deal, Cam heads back home to open a country bar.
When Daisy meets Cam, she isn’t sure she’s ready to let go of the ghosts from her past. Cam’s ex-wife isn’t ready to move on either, and the tragedy she causes will expose Cam’s secrets and shatter Daisy’s family.
Will Daisy be able to follow her heart into a future with Cam, or will her grief keep her trapped in a past that no longer exists?
REVIEW- 5 STARS
EXCERPT
I was not familiar with this author before reading this
novel. I will certainly be hunting down the rest of her books!
This story is heartwarming. There are so many emotions floating
through the narrative, that I didn’t know which to grasp onto the hardest. This
is the way real life is! There is no happy all the time, sad all the time…the
dynamics are always changing.
Daisy and Cam have both seen tragedy in their own way. They
have retreated to a safe haven to heal their wounds. They find themselves becoming
the balm for the other’s broken soul. Their lives are not getting any easier, thwarted
by an overbearing, critical mother and a crazy (seriously, she’s nuts!)
ex-wife. But, both Cam and Daisy are peacemakers, looking for a smooth path to
walk, tired from jumping over hurdles.
Just when you think they might have found their happily ever
after, Cam’s ex-wife sets an incident into motion that destroys the bubble the
reader has built around these two. In one scene, the world comes crashing down
around them. The author took me completely by surprise! In no way did I see
this coming, and I never expected to have tears come to my eyes as my heart
broke over the situation.
Cam and Daisy are not what I would consider complex
characters. Yet they have a depth that is uniquely their own. I definitely
found myself swooning for the smooth talking cowboy that is Cam. The passion…
It’s delicious!
I very much wnjoyed this book and I look forward to reading
more from Kristen Strassel.
EXCERPT
Cam came out on stage to the hoots and hollers of the crowd, of course, the loudest from the table of old broads. He motioned with his hands for everyone to shut the fuck up. “Thanks for coming out tonight.” His eyes scanned the crowd, but then locked on mine. I sat up straighter, the memory of how he looked at me last night when there was no audience burning me everywhere his mark lingered on my body. “Tell your friends, let’s support local music and make this a thing.”
Another roar of the crowd before the lights darkened just enough for Cam to jog off the stage, and a scruffy duo with blazers and harmonicas took his place. He pulled out the chair next to mine and put his head down on the table. I could hear the gasp rise out of the audience, even over the acoustic guitars from the stage.
I raked my fingers through his hair, then pulled his head up playfully.
“I’m dying,” Cam said when he looked up at me.
“Yeah, me too.” The waitress delivered a fresh beer. By the time I got to the bottom of it, I was going to feel like I was having an out of body experience. “But I love every minute of it.”
Crooked smile. Dead. “Me too.” His hand landed on my thigh, caressing my skin and working his way upward. Wait until he realized I was wearing a skirt. “I had a great time last night, Daisy.”
My skin was on fire, and I just looked at him with a dopey smile on my face. If I even tried to say anything, I’d just giggle like an idiot. So I just fixed his hair from where I messed it up before.
“I was wondering,” he looked down, tracing the outline of his drink coaster, shy. It was adorable. “If you actually wanted to see the bedroom tonight.”
“Tonight?” So this was an actual thing? He didn’t think last night was some mistake? Oh my god. Talk about jumping off of a cliff into shark infested waters.
He looked up at me, eyes sparkling. “Why not?”
He posed an excellent question. Although I could think of a million reasons why not, right now it was all just blah, blah, blah in my brain. Fear and excitement numbed my body, I felt like I was floating in the middle of the bar room.
“Okay,” I said, and he visibly relaxed. Holy shit, was he nervous about asking me to stay? This was not the position I ever expected to be in. “But I can’t stay all night.”
His jaw dropped. “Why?”
“Because I ran smack into my dad this morning. Horrifying.”
He closed his eyes and groaned. “Yeah, that’s so bad. You’re going to have to move out.”
What was he saying? Don’t read too much into this, Daisy. He wasn’t saying anything. He was just pointing out what I already knew, what my mother was so delicately hinting at earlier today. Time to move on. “Tell me about it.”
Anyway, I was just the rebound chick. I knew that.
We didn’t even make it out of his truck this time. I don’t know what it said about his neighborhood that no one called the police. We thrashed around on that tiny backseat, holding nothing back, even as cars came in and out of the lot. Hands sliding down steamed up glass, Titantic style. Loud, aggressive, and just the thing I needed to remind me why I was alive.
About Kristen Strassel
Kristen shares a birthday with Steven Tyler and Diana Ross. She spends each day striving to be half as fabulous as they are. She’s worn many hats, none as flattering as her cowboy hat: banker, retail manager, fledgling web designer, world’s worst cocktail waitress, panty slinger, now makeup artist and author. She loves sunshine, live music, the middle of nowhere, and finding new things to put in her house.
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