Tag: romance

Blog Tour/Excerpt: With or Without You by Shari Low

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I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for the latest novel by Shari Low, With or Without You.  It’s described as ‘a clever, captivating and bittersweet story of what might have been’, perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes and Marian Keyes.

You can read an excerpt from With or Without You below.  Do check out the other great bloggers taking part in the tour for reviews, interviews and more excerpts from the book.

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With or Without YouAbout the Book

Have you ever made a life-changing decision and then wondered if you made the right one…?

When Liv and Nate walked up the aisle, Liv knew she was marrying the one, her soul mate and her best friend. Six years later, it feels like routine and friendship is all they have left in common. What happened to the fun, the excitement, the lust, the love?

In the closing moments of 1999, Liv and Nate decide to go their separate ways, but at the last minute, Liv wavers. Should she stay or should she go? Over the next twenty years we follow the parallel stories to discover if Liv’s life, heart and future have been better with Nate… Or without him?

Format: ebook (pp.)            Publisher: Aria Fiction
Published: 1st June 2018    Genre: Fiction, Romance

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com ǀ Kobo | iBooks | Google Play
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find With or Without You on Goodreads

Excerpt from With or Without You by Shari Low

Prologue

The Last Minute of 1999

There were sixty seconds left of the twentieth century.

Hogmanay. The biggest night of the Scottish celebratory calendar, when we eat, we sing, we dance, and we welcome in the New Year with the people we love. The music was blaring, the revellers were dancing up a storm, and glasses were being topped up with champagne, as I leant close to my husband’s ear.

‘I wish you’d had an affair,’ I said, my voice cracking. ‘It would be so much easier to do this.’

Nate, smiled, leaned in and kissed me, but not with any grand passion. That was part of the problem. We’d been together since midway through uni, and then married the year after we graduated, and since the day we’d danced up the aisle we’d had five years of contentment.

Contentment.

I hated that word. Imagine the obituary. RIP Liv Jamieson – a contented life. Worse, who wanted to be content at the age of twenty-eight? I wanted passion and excitement and maybe the odd little bit of danger, but contentment? It was like a scarf of boredom that got tighter with each passing year, until I could barely breathe.

I loved Nate, but – clichéd as it was – I wasn’t in love with him anymore. There was no-one else, no drama, no big scandal or cataclysmic event. Just a gradual drifting apart. A disconnection. And, in a twisted demonstration of our compatibility, he had reluctantly admitted that – while he wasn’t as far along the road of acceptance as me – he knew there was something missing too.

I loved him. He loved me. It just wasn’t enough.

Nate pulled back and pushed a stray curl of my red hair back from my face. ‘An affair? What if I told you I’ve had Kylie Minogue living in the loft for the last year because we’re having a torrid fling and she can’t get enough of me?’

‘I’d say please tell her I’ll let her have you – as long as she’s willing to trade you for her entire wardrobe.’

Nate’s brown eyes creased at the side as he laughed. It was my very favourite thing about him.

We’d tried. We really had. The previous January, just a day into 1999, we’d talked, and we’d agreed to give it everything we had for a year, determined to reignite the spark between us. We’d had weekly date nights. Lazy Sunday sex. Weekend breaks to quiet country cottages and busy city hotels. A fantastic holiday to Bali where we’d taken long moonlit strolls along the sands. We’d hung out with our gang of mutual friends and we’d laughed, celebrated, partied, and discussed it long into many nights.

Yet, much as it destroyed us to admit it, we were still in that ‘best friends’ zone. My heart didn’t flutter when he entered a room. His gaze made me smile, but it didn’t make my libido throb with lust. And neither of us could shake the feeling that there was something – or someone – else out there for us.

So we’d decided to call it a day. To wish each other well, split the CD collection and move on. That makes it all sound so simple, when the truth was that a piece of my heart felt like it was being surgically removed by a jackhammer.

Nate wasn’t one hundred per cent sure. He didn’t like change. Preferred familiarity and stability to the unknown. But he said he loved me too much to make me stay in a marriage that didn’t make me happy. And if he were honest, our marriage wasn’t making him happy either, not like he should have been. I wanted more for me, for him, for both of us.

Tonight was our last night together. It seemed apt. Fitting. The final day of the century, a chapter closing, and a whole new world out there for us to explore.  And if I kept telling myself that this was a positive move; the right thing to do, it squashed the part of me that was terrified.

I saw his lips move again. ‘Liv, are you…?’

I missed the last bit. It got carried away on the wave of noise that suddenly engulfed the room.

Ten…

The lead singer of the band was counting down the seconds to midnight. Every year we headed to The Lomond Grange, a gorgeous stately manor hotel on the edge of Loch Lomond, about forty minutes from home, to bring in the coming year. Despite our sadness, we hadn’t wanted to bail out on the people who shared our lives, so here we were. One last hurrah. On the dance floor, our closest friends, Sasha and Justin stood next to Chloe and Rob, all of them with their champagne glasses in hand, party poppers at the ready, expressions oozing excitement, braced for the big moment.

Nine… Nine seconds until my marriage was over.

A wave of sorrow.

Eight… ‘What did you say?’ I asked him.

Seven… Seven seconds until my marriage was over.

He had to lean right into my ear so I could hear him. ‘I said are you absolutely sure?’

Six… A stomach flip of doubt. We’d discussed this to death. Yes, I was sure. Of course I was. So was he. We’d agreed.

Five… Five seconds until my marriage was over.

‘Yes. Why are you asking now?’

Four… ‘I think…’ I could feel his breath on the side of my face. ‘I think I want to give it one more try.’

Three… Three seconds until my marriage was over.

A sick feeling of panic rising to my throat.

Two… ‘But Nate, we both know it’s time to move on.’ We did. Didn’t we?

One… ‘One more try, Liv. We owe it to each other to give it more time.’

Noooooo. This wasn’t the deal. We’d tried. It hadn’t worked. We weren’t right for each other. It was time to move on, to take different paths.

A deafening cacophony of sound erupted in the room. Happy New Year. Streamers shot in the air. Bagpipes bellowed out a chorus of Auld Lang Syne to say goodbye to the past and welcome the twenty first century.

We were entering a new millennium.

But was I going to spend it with Nate…

…Or without him?

ShariLowAbout the Author

Shari Low has published twenty novels over the last two decades. She also writes for newspapers, magazines and television. Once upon a time, she got engaged to a guy she’d known for a week, and twenty-something years later, they live in Glasgow with their two teenage sons and a labradoodle.

Connect with Shari

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Blog Tour/Book Review: That Summer in Puglia by Valeria Vescina

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That Summer in Puglia Blog Tour

I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for That Summer in Puglia by Valeria Vescina and sharing my review of this intense and powerful love story.

Thank you to Aimee at Bookollective for inviting me to join the tour.

That Summer in PugliaAbout the Book

Tommaso has escaped discovery for thirty years but a young private investigator, Will, has tracked him down.

Tommaso asks him to pretend never to have found him. To persuade Will, Tommaso recounts the story of his life and his great love. In the process, he comes to recognise his true role in the events which unfolded, and the legacy of unresolved grief.

Now he’s being presented with a second chance – but is he ready to pay the price it exacts?

Format: Paperback (303 pp.)    Publisher: Eyewear Publishing
Published: 1st March 2018        Genre: Fiction, Romance

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find That Summer in Puglia on Goodreads

My Review

That Summer in Puglia tells the story of a love affair between two young people – Tommaso and Anna – that is as intense as the heat of an Italian summer.  Tommaso is clever, introspective and solitary with just a small circle of friends.  He’s never had a girlfriend because he’s never come across anyone with whom he feels a real connection.  That all changes when he meets Anna, the result of a chance encounter – or perhaps it’s fate? ‘Extraordinary, how the course of lives can depend on trivia.’

I loved the way Tommaso and Anna bond over a shared love of books and thoughtful, earnest conversation.  One of the great strengths of the book is the way it conveys the plethora of feelings associated with first love – and not just desire or wanting to be with the other person all the time.  Tommaso finds his outlook on the world has suddenly changed since meeting Anna.  ‘Places, people and objects outside school took on new meaning whenever – and it was often – they confirmed something she had said and which had never occurred to me… Everyday actions triggered musings as to what Anna might say or do: whether she took the same pleasure as me in the blossoming almond trees at this time of year…whether she ate her focaccia alla cipolla – oozing from every side with its succulent filling of sautéed onions, capers, tiny black olives and fresh tomato chunks – with fork and knife like my mother, or with bare hands like most of us.’   

As Tommaso and Anna roam the maze of narrow streets that make up the Old Town of Ostuni, taking delight in small things and shared places, there are beautiful descriptions of the ancient town, full of light and shade. ‘We turned into the narrower stretch of the street.  Over the centuries, carts had carved smooth grooves into the white flagstones.  The further we climbed, the more closely huddled together the houses became.  Arched alleyways opened up alongside us and snaked their way towards partially-seen buildings and hidden corners… The orange-tinted street lights bounced off the whiteness of walls and flagstones, adding to the labyrinth’s air of mystery and magic.’  I also have to include at this point another example of the simply luscious description of Italian food that had my stomach rumbling, in this case tajedda, an ‘amalgam of fresh mussels, potatoes, perini tomatoes, rice and olive oil, all baked together to perfection.’

Tommaso’s relationship with his father is also wonderfully rendered – heartfelt and touching.  In contrast, Tommaso’s relationship with his mother is a picture of complexity.  Both seem unable to express their true feelings and this inability will prove to have unimagined consequences as the story unfolds.

That Summer in Puglia provides a devastating portrait of how love can, in a moment, turn to hate if fuelled by insecurity, jealousy and an inability to trust.  And how what often follows just as quickly is regret, guilt, despair and hopelessness.   It also shows how a single action, even if done for what is thought are the right reasons, can have unintended and long-lasting consequences.   But that sometimes there may be the opportunity to make reparation.

I’ll confess I wasn’t completely convinced by the device of the private investigator as the recipient of Tommaso’s memories or that Tommaso could have remained undiscovered and undocumented for so many years.  However, the emotional power of Tommaso’s story and the effortless, flowing writing of Valeria Vescina is what will stay with me about That Summer in Puglia.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, Eyewear Publishing, and Aimee at Bookollective in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Intense, emotional, intimate

Try something similar… Flesh and Bone and Water by Luiza Sauma (click here for my review)

Valeria VescinaAbout the Author

Valeria Vescina is from Puglia, was educated in Switzerland and the UK, and has lived for years in London with her family. After a successful career in management, she gained an MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths (University of London). That Summer In Puglia is her debut novel. Her activity as a critic includes reviews for Seen And Heard International, Talking Humanities and the European Literature Network. She has taught creative writing workshops on the narrative potential of various art forms. Valeria also holds a degree in International Studies (University of Birmingham) and a Sloan Msc. in Management (London Business School).

Connect with Valeria

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