Self-Published
Purchase: Amazon
**This story was inspired by true events. If you liked the movie "Sleeping With the Enemy", then you might like this story too. CONTENT WARNING: Violence, foul language, and adult situations. Not meant for younger readers.**
ANTIC SUSPENSE NOVEL. No one knew a woman lived there or that she even existed. A monster, living in darkness...
At twenty-six, Nicole doesn't even look human anymore. The beast made sure of that. So she hides. A monster consigned to a life of fear and solitude. This is all she deserves, she is quite sure of that.
And then one day out of the blue, the autographed baseball caught by Brian Jensen at the latest Marlins game enters her prison and manages to turn her world completely upside down.
Temptation comes in the form of pity at first, and then perhaps something more.
Does she dare to believe the things she's told, that this is not the life she was meant to live? That being a monster is not her forever-fate? And will she be willing to risk everything, to reach out and accept the helping hands around her? She knows only too well that hands can hurt. Finding out whether they can also heal is a risky proposition, especially when the beast is still out there. Looking for her.
Review
Nicole was a prisoner for 3 years and she was sexually and physically abused by John (I hate him) her lover.She thought that John is good man and she trusted in him to make her happy but he was a monster.She hate him but she was afraid of him and she couldn't run away from him because she was afraid that the people don't believe her and she doesn't have anyone to ask for help.
She is ugly because John beated her so many timan that her body couldn't heal well and her face was destroyed.
She was saved by Brian and his son Liam.Brian after he found out that she was beated by John he decided that he want to protect her and to hide her from John so he let her to stay in his house.He helped her to have a new life and a chance to live again and to be safe.
Brian has a son a 8 years Liam and he was proud to be his dad because Liam is a loving and mature for his age. After the divorce Liam lives with Brian because his mother travels for his job. For Brian Liam is his world and he is happy to have him.Liam loves Nicole and he wants her to be in his life and to live with them.
Brian is perfect.Brian is friend with his ex-wife Helen and they talk everyday and they respect each other. Brian is patient ad loving with Nicole and he wants to make her believe again in love and in man.Nicole learned again to be happy and to be free and safe.She loves to live with Brian and Liam because thay are good with her and they loves her. For her they are his home.
She fall in love with Brian because he is saved her and he made her feel beautiful and special and desired.Brian fall in love with her because she is funny and sweet and loving with his child and she is strong and they want the same thing a family.
I'm happy for her because she finally is happy with his family.I love this book and Brian is my perfect man.I want to believe that exist man like Brian in this world.
Thank you Elle for this arc.
Welcome to my blog Elle Casey!
Writing for an audience
Authors are faced with a choice when they’re contemplating what to write: Do I write the book that readers want or the book that’s in my heart (or head, as the case may be)? I think it’s similar to the question faced by musicians. Every day we see pop singers churning out the same kind of music, done by the same producers, wrapped up in a very similar package. They sell the heck out of these songs. The word “popstar” is part of our everyday language for a reason. Then there are the musicians who just do their own thing. Sometimes they catch the attention of listeners and gain a huge fan following; other times they toil away for years in relative anonymity, despite being enormously talented.
Obviously, writing what readers are hooked on at the moment means that if you do it well, there should be a ready market for your work. The promotion and sales should, in theory, be easier, and if you write for a living, that stuff is important.
I know as a reader when I find a book I love, I finish it and then go buy the next ten books I can find that seem very similar to it. I want to recreate the experience. I search for similar covers, similar blurbs, similar characters, even similar writing styles. Once I read my first vampire book, I went on a binge. I think I read thirty of them before I found Twilight, and then I was seriously hooked for life. I still read that genre, fifteen years after my first find.
As a writer, I want to write what readers are addicted to. I want to dive into that pool of talent and rise to the top, letting my writing set me apart from my peers while at the same time knowing that I’m writing for the masses. The problem is, my characters have a very hard time following my direction. I tell my male lead, “You need to be a bad boy with very few redeeming qualities! How about if you’re belligerent or a womanizer? Can we go with that?” But so far, despite having said it to several characters, they never listen and I’m left with what they want to do and who they want to be.
My first attempt at popular NA fiction was Shine Not Burn. The main male character, Mack MacKenzie, is about as far from a belligerent bad boy as a man can get. He’s strong, he knows who he is, and he’s unapologetically in love. What can I say? I guess I’m one of those people who writes what’s in her head and heart, not what she thinks most readers want. Lucky for me, readers ended up liking what Mack and Andie had to say, even though the book was a little different than mainstream NA romance today.
My next book is definitely not mainstream either. Don’t Make Me Beautiful was inspired by a girl I read about in a magazine over twenty years ago. I remember nothing about her personally, but her story never left me. It’s as if for the last twenty years, she’s been sitting in her living room waiting for me to set her free.
As I wrote the book, I was driven to finish it because I kept getting the impression that Nicole, the main character and victim of domestic violence, was sitting there, frozen in time, trapped until I gave her the means to escape. It was, hands down, the hardest book I’ve written to date. It’s tough to completely separate myself from my work, so I went through some of the characters’ pain right along with them. It was exhausting.
I have several more books planned before the end of the year. I publish about a book per month, so that gives me lots of opportunities to explore what’s in my head. Maybe one of these days I’ll get that bad boy down on paper. I have a feeling he’s in there somewhere. And I have the book all ready for him too. The name of it is Rebel.
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