The Romance Reviews

The Romance Reviews

Saturday 26 October 2013

Devil In A New Dress




And look what I woke up to this cold and frosty morn! A brand spanking new sequel to where all my apparent issues stem from! You can find the book, Angel's Baby, right here: http://www.amazon.com/Angels-Baby-ebook


Blurb:

Eva Mensah isn’t happy. To the outside world, she has the perfect life; a gorgeous musically talented husband and a beautiful little boy. But Gabriel Walker happens to be half way across the world on tour in Australia. And her five month old baby boy is evidently displeased by her parenting skills. She can’t do anything right by little Elijah. A world of emotion keeps her from admitting to her husband and her family that past events of two years ago are threatening to swallow her sanity whole. Eva can’t help but feel overwhelmed by being a new mother and inadequate to cope alone. 

Especially when she can still see bad things. 

Really bad things. 

Definitely not when they happen to her and certainly not when they start happening to her son. Unable to decide what’s real and what’s imagined, Eva struggles to keep the life she so desperately wanted, from dissolving into hell.



Excerpt:




The phone rang in the house. She needed to go now. No, to having another argument with her husband and definitely no, to having an argument with her husband in front of his parents. Malgosia stood up to answer it, and Eva collected all of their belongings. 
“Evangeline, it’s your husband. Come and talk to him.”
“I’ll call him later. I need to get Elijah home.” At the car, she tucked her baby into the car seat. “Thank you for today. I appreciate it.”
“Evangeline,” Isaak said softly. “You can trust us. With anything.”
“I know,” she lied.
The seat fit perfectly into the car for once and she and Elijah made their way back to Maida Vale. Feeling little more than super-efficient, she marched Elijah back into the house and gave him a brisk but thorough bath. The phone rang and rang. Infuriated, she put Elijah into his crib and snatched it up. “You are disturbing my child.”
“You’re disturbing me, Evangeline. What the hell is going on?”
“Look, everyone, every single person is weighing in on what I do. If it wasn’t that my arse had the audacity to marry you, it’s that I had the temerity to get pregnant. And now I have a child, I’m not looking after him right. He’s too thin. I’m not feeding him enough. I’m not showing him that I love him. And there’s you, halfway across the fucking world again when you’re needed. I know, it’s a contract and if you don’t honour it we lose everything, we can’t support our child. But I really, really could have done without the accusation of you cheating on me and if I don’t joke about it, I will cry. That’s all I do these days. Cry. And not fucking sleep.”
Silence ruled the telephone line for so long, Eva called out “hello” down the line.
“I’m still here.”
“That’s what’s up, honestly.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
“You should know,” Eva said, her voice breaking. “I shouldn’t have to tell you.”
“Yeah, you get that you’re the only empath in this relationship, right? So, you need to talk to me.” He exhaled heavily. “Look. Let me sort out some nannies on my side for you at least. And maybe...”
“What?”
“See a doctor.”
“To tell me that I’m what? Depressed? I know I am. How do I breastfeed on antidepressants?”
Gabriel sucked in a breath. “Angel, if you can’t look after yourself, you can’t look after Elijah. I’ll book an appointment for you.”
“Then what happens if I’m too depressed to look after Elijah at all?”
“He’ll be with me, until you’re better. Small steps, Angel.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
“I love you, so much. You know that, don’t you?”
It took her several swallows to push back the tears clogging her throat. “I do. And I’m sorry for yelling at you.”
“Try and sleep. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
“Night.”
Not feeling much more reassured by the talk, she returned to her son’s room. She turned on his crib mobile and “Rock-a-Bye Baby” played in delicate notes above him. He watched her action and reached out to her. She kissed both his starfished hands and left the room, to feel anything other than the weight of her responsibility to that child. Fuck. There definitely was something wrong with her.

Tuesday 15 October 2013

Father Figure


This was a difficult tale to pen, it did go in contradiction to my moral centre. I don't know what it is, but me and single fathers do not mix. Normally because I regularly witness some of the most pathetic excuses for parental care in the history of man. Shudder.

So to make my hero a single father caused me trauma. Even now, I don't feel entirely comfortable about it. Normally because it all comes with an insane amount of drama and really, truthfully, what about the children? Won't somebody please think of the children? But then, I have been and am still surrounded by towering examples of paternal saintliness - some of them single fathers themselves.

There's a difference between a man being a father and a man being a dad. And the dad part is what I focused on. The more I did, the more I found my hero sexy. His dedication to his daughter, how much he puts up from her, the way he convinces the heroine to give him the chance to show him fatherhood is only one side of him. I still side eye the hell out of him, but he and I understand each other a bit better. Okay, so he distracts me with general hotness. I'm weak, what can I say?

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Addicted




Remember how I mentioned that I have WIPs started and abandoned a while ago? Well Addicted to Witch was one of them. I read it again recently, with the distance of one who isn't questioning every single word under the cloak of edits and proofs. It's er... it's pretty intense. Witches and doctors and musicians and forestry and weirdness in Kent... Intense covers most of what goes on.

My publisher once told me, all of my stories have a strand of survival running through them all. But none more than in Addicted to Witch. Both the hero and heroine (polar opposites in the career and familial stage) have been through damaging, traumatising events and managed somehow to struggle through their issues to the other side where the grass is decidedly more green and less tragic.

While it's a paranormal tale, it's as real as any other story I've written. I was kinda shocked by what came out of my head. You think I wouldn't be any more, but I was. The story will be out this month and I hope you can identify with Auden and Helena. Two messed up people who find each other in a world of magic. There really is hope for us all.