GUARDIAN is a YA Paranormal Romance, and a book close to author Courtney Cole’s heart. And, it’s Courtney’s birthday! To celebrate all of the awesome, she is making a few select titles only .99 TODAY ONLY! Grab them all!
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Review:
Synopsis: Sometimes, things that go bump in the night are real.
My name is Whitney Lane. I’m sixteen years old and at first, I thought I was crazy.
I kept seeing shadows move along walls, and hearing whispers around corners, but whenever I looked, there was never anything there.
Until one day, there was.
Our world isn’t what we think. There are things around us, good things, bad things, scary things.
Things that we tell ourselves aren’t real, but they are.
They’re very real, and they’re terrifying.
I’ve been swept up now, in a battle of good and evil, confused about love and what is supposed to be love, but isn’t. I don’t know what to think anymore. I can’t trust my emotions and I don’t know what is true.
There’s only one thing I know for sure.
Nothing is what it seems.
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The idea of a guardian angel is one that I’ve always been curious about. What if everything bad that happens to me happened because something worse was trying to get to me, and the bad is actually a saving grace? What if the losses in my life are the result of a bigger, grander scheme where all the pieces fit neatly together? These questions have been something I’ve found myself thinking about a lot over the past few years, and it really has helped me see the positive in even the most dire situations, and so when I read the title and synopsis for Courtney Cole’s Guardian, I knew I wanted to read the novel.
This is a very well written story that I enjoyed very much, though I will admit that I personally didn’t connect with Whitney as much as I’d like to, but I believe that’s because Whitney and I are actually in completely different places in our lives, and that’s okay. Whitney is struggling—her life began to fall apart the moment her father died, and her mother’s inattention to both Whitney and her little sister, as well as the frustration and sadness that accompanies a sudden death, are eating Whitney alive. Tasked with taking care of her sister, attending school, and trying to keep a lid on her mother’s spiraling depression, Whitney is full of fear and anger. I feel like these emotions are completely just, but at the same time, as an outsider looking in, knowing that relatives are just a phone call away, I had some issues with how Whitney handled some situations. And this is what I mean about being in different places in our lives. What Whitney does, and what I would do, are two completely different entities, and that’s reality. Yet while I didn’t really agree with some of Whitney’s choices, they are realistic and valid, especially as she’s dealing with some terrible situations no teenager should have to deal with, and I really liked the believability of this portion of the novel.
I loved the idea of Whitney’s Guardian showing himself, and his explanations of the way guardians work was awesome and really got me thinking. It was fun learning about his duties and though frustrating for both Whitney and me, I enjoyed being kept in the dark as well, since the Guardian was only allowed to divulge so much to Whitney as the story progressed. These is a decent amount of foreshadowing within the novel as well, so I was easily able to predict what would happen next, and seeing it all unfold was fun, though I wouldn’t have minded just a bit more mystery. Overall, this is a good read; if you’re interested in the lore behind guardian angels, I suggest you give it a read. Three and a half stars.
I received this novel from InkSlinger PR in exchange for an honest review.
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Excerpt:
Sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real.
Happy birthday to me.
I close my eyes and burrow into my pillow as I try to sleep, as I try to escape this life.
It’s a life I never thought I’d have, a life I most certainly don’t want.
I’m still feeling sorry for myself as the blackness of sleep finally overtakes me.
I don’t know what time it is when I shoot straight upward like a rocket. Something had yanked me from the oblivion of sleep, something loud and shrill scraping my window.
My room is completely dark and I glanceat my clock in confusion.
3:00 a.m.
As my heart pounds hard against my ribcage, I quickly scan every corner of the room.
In the last few hours, dark shadows had migrated onto my pink walls, but they’re familiar, nothing out of the ordinary, although in the night, they seem twisted and scary.
I remain motionless as I allow the sleep-induced fog to clear from my brain.
As I sit, I feel common sense and logic slowly returning.
Of course nothing had touched my window because my bedroom is on the second floor. Nothing can reach it. And there are no trees near enough to brush against it. It was just a dream.
It was only a dream.
I chant it silently to myself like a mantra as I consciously slow my breathing down, hoping that my racing pulse will soon follow. It was only a dream.
But just as I’m calming down, I hear it again.
A high-pitched shrill shriek, reminiscent of fingernails on a chalkboard, scraping down my window. I gasp and pull my feet up to my chest, which is when I notice the temperature.
I notice because I can see my breath.
Timidly, I blow a puff out again, watching the way my breath turns white in the air.
Holy crap. Oh my God.
What the hell?
The sound stops and stillness surrounds me once again, the silence so loud that it echoes in my ear.
Nothing moves around me, the shadows are perfectly still as they twist across my wall. They look like mangled fingers and arms and legs, but they don’t move.
My legs are weak and shaking, but I know I have to move. I have to move off my bed because it feels like something is under it. Something terrifying.
With a leap, I bound across the room, my feet hitting the floor several feet away from the edge of my bed.
The floor is ice cold, as though it had been covered in a blanket of snow.
I’m trembling as I race to the far wall and check the thermostat. Because that’s the only explanation. I must’ve bumped it earlier, I must’ve turned the AC way down.
But the luminous numbers stare at me in contradiction.
74 degrees.
It must be broken. It has to be broken.
My breath is coming in pants now, terrified, anxious pants.
My fear isn’t logical. I know there’s nothing here. I’m the only one in this room.
Or am I?
The air seems to push at me from all around, something dark, something heavy, something real. Something unseen.
My fingers shake, my legs tremble, and then all of a sudden, they can no longer support my weight. I go down like a pile of bricks, collapsing onto the floor. I lie still because I can’t move, because something seems to sit on my chest, holding me down.
The shadows start to move, to slither across the walls, to reach and pull and dance.
I struggle to focus, to see what it is.
But all I can see are the numbers on the thermostat suddenly moving, rapidly counting down from 74 to 20.
Twenty degrees?
The air is frigid as I suck it in, as I try to pull the ice crystals into my mouth so I can breathe.
All of a sudden, there’s a blackness in front of me. It hovers over me, a shapeless mass, sucking in the cells of the air, the atoms and the molecules. It’s darker than the blackness of my room, blacker than the blackest black.
Something is here.
With me.
“Dad?” I whisper in a white puff. Because what else could it be?
I reach out a finger to touch it, and then I can’t see anything else, because the darkness of it surrounds me, bleeding into everything else, even my vision. The shriek is back, screaming into my ears, bleeding into my brain.
Then there’s nothing.
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To celebrate the release of GUARDIAN and Courtney’s birthday the following books are on sale for .99, today only!
GUARDIAN
Confessions of an Alli Cat
Dante’s Girl
Mia’s Heart
The Minaldi Legacy
Soul Kissed
Soul Bound
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Books: The Cheapest Vacation You Can Buy 