Sunday, 11 June 2017

Release Day Blitz, Review, Excerpt & Giveaway ~ The Story of Us by Tara Sivec

 

The Story of Us is LIVE!!!


Book Description:

How much can a man take before he breaks?

1,843 days. That's how long I survived in that hellhole. They tried to break me, but I resisted. And I owe it all to the memory of warm summer nights, the scent of peaches, and the one woman who loved me more than I ever deserved to be loved. Now, I'll do anything to get back to her.

Only Shelby Eubanks isn't the girl I left behind all those years ago. She's someone else, a stranger. My Shelby-my little green-eyed firecracker-would never give up her dreams, would never disappear into her mother's ambitions. But I won't give up on her. On us. I may be broken, and scarred, and not the man I used to be, but I will do whatever it takes to remind her of the story of us.

Buy Links:

Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/2otrp2C


Our Review:

Reviewed by Donna ~ 4 stars
***ARC received for an honest review***


“I’m dying.
I’m alive.
I can’t breathe.
I’m whole.”


I have loved this author from the very beginning and as much as I love her rom-coms, my most favourite books of hers to this day remain her more serious, emotional and angsty reads and The Story of Us is one of them. The Story of Us is a second chance romance between a soldier and the woman he left behind. Shelby and Eli didn’t part ways how they wanted, or how they expected but through a forced circumstance that perpetually led to heartbreak, for both of them. Misunderstandings and coercion at the root of their separation leads to one intense, epic romance and one that Tara Sivec delivered with emotion, intense character connection and a few shocking twists along the way.


““Go away! Take your lies and your fucking Ryan Gosling references and shove them up your ass!” she finishes, rounding the doorway and moving out of sight.”


Shelby and Eli were chalk and cheese. Shelby the rich girl living on her parent’s estate and Eli the stable boy. But the heart wants who the heart wants and these two only wanted each other. Class divides aside, the time that these two spent together was everything and something neither would forget. Meddling people who do not want these two together intervene and then everything goes to shit in more ways than one. Now six years later when Eli returns, he sees the damage his absence has done, but he is far from over, he will not give up, he will fight for her and there is only one way he can do, make her see “The Story of Us.”


“She makes the bad all go away, and that’s exactly where it needs to stay.”


Shelby was a woman that was well and truly under her mother’s thumb, blackmail and coercion are par for the course and the life that Shelby always believed that she would lead was a long and far and distant memory. Shelby was stuck between being herself or keeping those that she loved safe. Shelby was going to be a dancer until everything was taken away, now she needed to find her backbone and there was only one person who could help her find it.


“The walls have officially crumbled on this house of lies and I’m finished. I’m done being taken advantage of and used for everyone else’s agendas. This is my life and it’s about damn time I start living it again and making my own damn decisions.”


Eli had been through so much, struggled for most of his life and it seems those struggles are far from over. Shelby had been the one constant, the memories of what they had and shared are what kept him going when it would have been all too easy to give up. Scarred both physically and mentally, Eli is a far cry from the man that left. But, at the end of the day, he knows that the only one that can save him is his Shelby and he will stop at nothing to get her.


“Life’s too short to fight a war you can’t win, son, no matter how wrong it is or how angry you are. Pick one you can win.”


Tara Sivec delivers one poignant, heart breaking, emotional and totally gut-wrenching story. This is where I feel Tara Sivec excels. With all her “serious” books she never fails to tug at every single heart string while firmly implanting her characters into my heart and soul. It is this side of her writing that I wanted a little more from in this book. The outside interferences all got a little crazy at times and detracted from the crux of the story, hence the four stars. But, none the less, despite the crazy of the incredibly wealthy, the heart of this book is what made me love it. Those desperate second chances, that heart and soul connection and the belief in a love that transcends time. Once again, another winner from Tara Sivec.


“Two broken pieces don’t make a whole. They just make a bigger fucking mess for someone to clean up. You don’t need any more messes in your life and all the time in the world isn’t going to fix mine.”

Excerpt:

I just need a moment alone, to remember how to breathe and to remember how to push the hurt away so I can go back out there and do my job. Hold my head high with a smile on my face and pretend like dancing with Eli, being close to Eli, and letting him rain insults down on me, didn’t cut me in half.
As soon as I turn the handle and push open the office door, I feel something solid slam into me from behind, moving me faster into the dark room. I trip over my feet and an arm slides around my waist to steady me before whirling me around. I smell his soap and recognize his firm hold on me before the moonlight shining in the floor-to-ceiling windows behind me illuminates the shadow of his face, but that doesn’t stop the rapid thumping of my heart as the door is kicked shut with a slam and my body is turned and pushed roughly against the wall next to it. With the first touch of his hands, the first feel of the heat from his skin against me, I’m lost. I’m drowning in a pool of desire I’ve only ever felt with him, and I never want to come up for air. Every inch of my body is on fire, begging for more, needing everything I’ve been missing, but knowing everything about this moment is wrong. This can’t happen. I can’t want this and I certainly can’t act on what I’m feeling.
Before I can shove him away, shout at him, and tell him to let me go, his mouth is on mine. His chest pins my arms between us and I clutch a fistful of his dress shirt in my hands when my lips automatically part for him. His tongue quickly pushes into my mouth and I feel tears prickling behind my eyelids when I taste him, so familiar and so beautiful it breaks off yet another piece of my heart. One of his hands moves from around my waist and I feel the heat from his palm as it slides against the side of my neck to the back, his fingers gripping tightly to the hair at the base of my skull to hold my head in place. His kiss is punishing and hard and I can do nothing but hold tightly to the front of his shirt as our tongues battle together and I try to remember how to breathe.

About the Author:


Tara Sivec is a USA Today best-selling author, wife, mother, chauffeur, maid, short-order cook, baby-sitter, and sarcasm expert. She lives in Ohio with her husband and two children and looks forward to the day when they all three of them become adults and move out.

After working in the brokerage business for fourteen years, Tara decided to pick up a pen and write instead of shoving it in her eye out of boredom. Her novel Seduction and Snacks won first place in the Indie Romance Convention Reader's Choice Awards 2013 for Best Indie First Book and she was voted as Best Author in the Indie Romance Convention Reader's Choice Awards for 2014.

In her spare time, Tara loves to dream about all of the baking she'll do and naps she'll take when she ever gets spare time.

Social Media Links


Add The Story of Us to your shelf on Goodreads: http://bit.ly/2otDc0R

Follow Tara Sivec on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2rEiOus
Follow Tara Sivec on BookBub: http://bit.ly/2qkXVkk

Giveaway:

Enter to win 1 of 15 free ebook downloads of The Story of Us! http://bit.ly/2qoDIcz


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