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Three Reasons You Should Read This Contemporary Literary Fiction:
My Mother’s Gift by Steffanie Edward is the story of a family growing old together and apart – of generational changes and taking care of the ones you love.
Erica’s story is slowly told – her past, her present, her plans for the future – as she confronts the challenge of helping her mother, Ione, live with advanced Alzheimer’s Disease.
ione is very family-orented – and even on her worse days, you can still see this in her, and she wants nothing more than to live her last days among them.
What if going home was the only way to find out where you belonged?
When Erica gets a phone call to say her mother, Ione, is ill in St Lucia, she knows she must go to her, even though their relationship has always been difficult. The island – the place of her mother’s birth – is somewhere that Erica has never called home.
Even when the plane touches down in the tropical paradise, with its palm trees swaying in the island breeze, the sound of accents so like her mother’s own calling loud in the air, Erica doesn’t find herself wanting to stay a moment longer than she has to.
But stepping into her mother’s house, she is shocked by what she finds. Her mother’s memory is fading and she is having strange, erratic episodes. Erica knows the right thing to do is to stay with her, even if it means leaving everything in England behind.
Could you uproot your whole life for the person who raised you? Can a place you’ve never felt at home ever feel like where you belong? And – as you experience loss – is it ever possible to also find love and peace?
My Mother’s Gift by Steffanie Edward is the story of a family finding a new way, a family coming together and drifting apart, of past arguments and joys forgotten. And while there are some very sad and heart-breaking scenes, the story overall feels more like a love story between a mother and daughter.
Erica returns to St Lucia to visit her mom every year, but this year it’s a lot different. Ione’s Alzheimer’s has progressed quickly, and she doesn’t even seem to be the same person most of the time. There are wonderfully sweet moments for mother and daughter to share that quickly deteriorate into manic episodes of violence and rage. Author Steffanie Edward did an amazing job showing how this disease can tear families apart. She artfully showed the real trauma experienced by both Erica and Ione.
The family that lives in St Lucia didn’t always agree with Erica’s decisions, and sometimes I didn’t either. But they all shared one common goal – doing what was best for Ione. Did they make the right decision in the long run? Maybe. It’s hard to say, and the book makes sure that this is very clear. You never know what the best choice at the end will be, you can only choose what your heart is leading you to.
There’s life outside of being a carer for Alzheimer’s too, and this was something Erica had to learn, and her family helped her learn it. Being able to lean on and depend the people around her was such a blessing.
There were a couple of inconsistencies that jumped out at me. For example, a time when she drank wine at night, then complained about being tired after her third rum and coke from the night before. But they were pretty minor. There’s life outside of Alzheimer’s too, and this was something Erica had to learn, and her family helped her learn it.
**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**
Marrying a suitable Royal is a small price to pay for my father’s approval. My fiancé is a good man even if his touch doesn’t evoke my desire. We have science in common and that will have to be enough.
Just as I’ve resigned myself to a lifetime of ordinary, an incident on my fiancé’s science vessel throws me off course and into the arms of a beastly tornado of a male. With my heart pounding for the first time in my life, I’m suddenly not so sure that ordinary will do at all.
Ryker
The Royals have held me captive for too long. Experimenting on me. Shaping me into a monstrous beast. Not any longer. The time to be free is now, and my captors will pay. I have vengeance on my mind, and nothing can stand between me and my goal.
Then I turn a corner on the ship where I’ve been held captive and I see her. Suddenly it’s not vengeance I’m after, it’s her that I need to claim as mine. Kidnapping my tormentor’s fiancée would mean a lifetime of fugitivity for me and my men. Yet, one kiss from Ray and I know that I’m captive once more.
Her Captive Beast is the first in a science fiction romance series filled with Alpha beasts who are tamed by sassy beauties. Strap in for a fast-paced, intergalactic adventure full of hope, love, forgiveness, and redemption.
I burst into Bay Six. My only thought was to destroy Lord Garreth. There the skinny little prick was. He was in the cockpit of a pod.
Somehow he was escaping me!
I charged towards the small craft. But I was too late. It was already lifting off.
Refusing to admit defeat, I leapt for it. My right hand glanced off the belly of the pod. The smooth metal protested as I dug into it with my claws.
I tried to hold on, but my grip wasn’t enough. He was getting away. I landed in a crouch on the metal floors with a sickening thud. Throwing my head back, I roared my disbelief, my fury, my hatred at the man.
There was a part of my brain, likely the part he tinkered with to make stronger, faster, indestructible, that told me I could follow him out the airlock and into space. The sane part of me knew I wouldn’t survive. That sane part listened to the vengeance in me that said my death would be worth it if I could take him down with me.
But the airlock was already closing. Not even my altered strength could open it in time. He got away. I had failed. Again.
A deafening roar rose within me. When I let it loose, it shattered the room. The high pitched squeal of glass breaking filled my ears. But something in the shriek stole my voice from me.
Looking down, I saw that there was something at my feet. Something trying to scuttle away like a crab. It was a small female, or maybe she just looked small compared to me. Most humans did. For several long seconds I took her in.
The long brown hair had escaped its braid. The soft tendrils that framed a delicate face. The shapely legs that ended in small feet. The narrow waist that flared out into ample hips.
My gaze went up and down, left and right. I roamed her body in exactly the way I wanted to touch her, needed to touch her. Everywhere at once.
Mine.
The word rang loud in my head. It silenced the red hot rage that had been there only a moment before. I gave my head a shake. I must be going mad. Or madder than I had already been.
Mine, my altered mind insisted. Something inside me clawed at my guts, and the cage of my heart, insisting it was true.
Her blue eyes looked up at me wide and terrified. That’s when I knew I must have said the word out loud.
She tried to scramble away. But she was trapped. The stem of the impractical shoes on her feet were caught in the metal grate. If she kept struggling and kicking out, she would hurt herself further.
Without thinking, I crouched down. She didn’t scream this time. No, she did something far worse.
Her lips began to tremble. Wetness pooled at her eyes. Tears began to spill as the sobs broke from her heart-shaped mouth.
I had faced down armies of cyborgs. I had killed men with my own bare hands. I had watched and listened as my brothers and friends were tortured and tormented. None of that compared to the gut-wrenching feeling that tied me up in knots at the sound of her cries.
How could she not know that I would never hurt her?
How could she not know that even her cries caused pain in my heart?
How could she not know that my hands would do anything, everything, to keep her safe and warm?
I reached out for her, and that’s when I remembered why she could not know these things.
My hands were scarred. Scaled. Monstrous.
I didn’t know what I was capable of. Only because the old me wouldn’t have harmed her; it didn’t mean the new beastly me wouldn’t.
Starla Fleet is three BFF author friends who spent so much time watching Amos in The Expanse and Hot Spock in Star Trek Discovery, that they decided to write their own science fiction romances, but with a lot more kissing! Their Alien Beasts are genetically modified warrior monsters with a deadly swing for the villains and a soft heart for their heroines. Visit Starla’s website to download a free prequel novella at www.starlafleet.com
An All About the Diamond Romance: Season One includes the first three books in the An All About the Diamond Romance Series: The Sweet Spot, King of Diamonds, and Diamonds in Paradise.
Meet catcher extraordinaire Rick Seno and loyal baseball fan Sherry. What happens when an older woman ends up on a date with her fantasy baseball boyfriend? Download this set now to find out.
USA Today Bestselling Author Naomi Springthorp is a born and raised Southern California girl. She’s a baseball freak who supports her team all season long and blatantly admires the athletes in those pants. Music has always been part of her life and she believes everything has a soundtrack. She loves her two feline fur babies, though they’re not quite sure what to do with her.
She writes Baseball Romance, Romantic Comedies, 90s Throwback, and Contemporary Romance–all with heat and sometimes a little sweet. https://linktr.ee/naomispringthorp
