Sunday Spotlight: Steadfast by Sarina Bowen

Sunday Spotlight is a feature we’re running in 2016. Each week, we will spotlight a release we’re excited about. We’ll be posting exclusive excerpts and being total fangirls. You’ve been warned. 🙂

I can’t believe it’s only been a month since I read Bittersweet, the first book in Sarina Bowen’s new True North series because I’m so hot damn anxious for this book to come out and for everyone to enjoy it as much as I did. This book is good everyone. I promise. If this book isn’t on your TBB list…it will be for sure.

Title: Steadfast by Sarina Bowen
Series: True North #2
Releases on July 12, 2016 by Rennie Road Books

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She’s the only one who ever loved him—and the only one he can never have.

Jude lost everything one spring day when he crashed his car into an apple tree on the side of the road. A man is dead, and there’s no way he can ever right that wrong. He’d steer clear of Colebury, Vermont forever if he could. But an ex-con in recovery for his drug addiction can’t find a job just anywhere.

For Sophie Haines, coming face to face with the man who broke her heart is gut-wrenching. Suddenly, he’s everywhere she turns. It’s hard not to stare at how much he’s changed. The bad boy who used to love her didn’t have big biceps and sun-kissed hair. And he’d never turn up volunteer in the church kitchen.

She knows it’s foolish to yearn for the man who returned all the heartsick letters she wrote him in prison. But the looks he sends her now speak volumes.

No one wants to see Sophie and Jude back together, least of all Sophie’s police chief father. But it’s a small town. And forbidden love is a law unto itself.

Jude and Sophie were epic first loves so when Jude went to prison and cut her out of his life, Sophie was hurt and then she got mad. When she first sees him again after all of these years, she’s shocked as shit.

Excerpt

I put on my brakes for the stop sign at Harvey and Grove streets. In the corner of my eye, I saw movement just inside the open bay doors at the Nickel Auto Body Shop.

I looked. (Of course I looked. Anyone would.) But I didn’t really expect to see him there, standing beside a beat up Dodge which was up on the lift. And even when my throat seized up around the single, shocking word that flew to my lips — Jude — I still didn’t truly believe it.

Because he couldn’t possibly be standing there, right inside the garage, running a calm hand along the tattered bumper of that ugly car. But that arm stretching up to the car — I knew that arm. There was a bramble of roses tattooed on the bicep. And that hand had touched my body everywhere.

Forgetting myself, I just sat there, one foot planted squarely on the brake, staring at what could only be a Jude mirage. A few of the details weren’t right, either. Jude’s hair would never be that lightened, sun-kissed color. And he wouldn’t be caught dead in that flannel shirt. We used to mock the standard Vermont uniform. Mirage-Jude was too big, too, with a broad chest and visible muscles on his back when he moved his arm. My Jude had always been lean, and when he left my life he was downright skinny.

At the time, I hadn’t wanted to understand why.

Most crucially, Jude couldn’t possibly be standing twenty feet away from me on an ordinary November morning, right in the center of Colebury, inspecting a heap of a car. If he was here, I’d know it. I’d feel it deep inside, the way the bass line of a good song vibrates through your chest.

Behind me, a car tapped its horn, and I barely registered the sound. I was still taking in the shine of his too-light hair, and the muscled line of his forearm. The horn tap turned into a full blown blast, which finally brought me out of my dream state. Vermonters never honked, which could only mean that I’d been staring at Jude for quite some time. With a hasty glance in either direction, I let up on the brake and gunned it.

It’s a good one guys, I promise. This is me right now:

So stinkin’ good!

True North Series

Giveaway: We’re giving one lucky winner their choice of one of our Sunday Spotlight books. Use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter for one of this month’s features.

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Are you as excited for this release as we are? Let us know how excited you are and what other books you’re looking forward to this year! Check back next week to see our feature on Hell Breaks Loose by Sophie Jordan.

About the Author

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Sarina Bowen is the USA Today bestselling author of steamy, angsty Contemporary Romance and New Adult fiction. She lives in the wilds of Vermont.

She is the author of The Ivy Years, an award-winning series set amid the hockey team at an elite Connecticut college. Also, the The Gravity series.

With Elle Kennedy, Sarina is the author of HIM and US.

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