New Military Romance!
Hallowed Ground by Rebecca Yarros is Now Available!
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1OVPJ0w
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1Y05StF
Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/1NeMPn1
iBooks: http://apple.co/1lywj8A
Kobo: http://bit.ly/1QhPU9O
Blurb
There are some debts you can’t repay.
Josh Walker is loyal, reckless, and every girl’s dream. But he only has eyes for December Howard, the girl he’s craved since his high school hockey days. Together they have survived grief, the military, distance, and time as they’ve fought for stolen weekends between his post at Ft. Rucker and her college at Vanderbilt. Now that Josh is a medevac pilot and Ember is headed toward graduation, they’re moving on—and in—together.
Ember never wanted the Army life, but loving Josh means accepting whatever the army dictates—even when that means saying goodbye as Josh heads to Afghanistan, a country that nearly killed him once before and that took her father. But filling their last days together with love, passion, and plans for their future doesn’t temper Ember’s fear, and if there’s one thing she’s learned from her father’s death, it’s that there are some obstacles even love can’t conquer.
Flight school is over.
This is war.
Review
Hallowed Ground is a breathtakingly emotional and poignant read that illustrates the profound effect of the casualties of war – on both sides – those who live it and those who experience it through their loved ones who are injured or killed. What makes this book as well as the series as a whole so soul bearing is the fact that Rebecca Yarros, her husband, and her family live the solider’s life, so the transparency that exists in the words…in the mental anguish…in the depiction of what Josh and Ember experience throughout the course of their story has an even bigger effect on the reader as I’m sure it did on Yarros as she wrote it.
It’s hard to put into words the emotions that Hallowed Ground pulled from me as I read it, especially with how it began. Because readers are given both Josh and Ember’s perspectives as they struggle with their lives during Josh’s deployment, it forces us to understand both sides regardless of how our personal feelings are swayed by witnessing their individual suffering and anguish. Intellectually, duty and honor are traits that we want all soldiers to have, but emotionally, the risks, the what ifs, and the broken promises prevent reason from dominating, lending way to emotional reactions that could force Josh and Ember to lose more than they ever thought possible.
It was supposed to be Josh and Ember against the world because after fighting to stay together despite having a long distance relationship for the past two years, it was finally their chance to be in the same location, starting their life side by side. But when duty calls, Josh must answer and despite Ember’s fears, she can’t force him to stay home because then he wouldn’t be the man she fell in love with even though she doesn’t want to lose another man she loves.
Ember and Josh’s story will consume readers and the fact that the author has first hand experience adds so much more to the story because I feel Yarros’ emotions through Ember’s reactions…I feel her worry and her fears. I feel everything that Yarros wants readers to feel because it’s so vividly described, and to also have Josh’s perspective allows the full view to be presented because I don’t think it would have been fair to only have one side of it because there’s two people involved who love each other so deeply but also have their own careers that mean so much to them. I love how Yarros illustrates all sides to the story – the intellectual and the emotional. Ember and Josh’s situation is not one of right or wrong…it’s so much deeper than that…so much more personal and that idea is expressed so well in Hallowed Ground.
“…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion…”
On a side note, I’m a high school AP English teacher and the Gettysburg Address is one of my favorites to teach because it seems so simplistic due to its length, but it is so rhetorically powerful due to its message, and Yarros alludes to the speech at the best possible place in the story, and it helps Josh to move forward…to understand that while there’s definitely a debt to be paid to those who died, it doesn’t mean those who are living have to stop…it doesn’t mean that paying the fallen back requires giving up everything else because the guilt cannot be laid to rest so easily – it just means fighting past the pain, working through the hurt, and taking every measure to make one’s life count because that’s the best possible way to give back to those who laid down their lives so that he could live.
Hallowed Ground is an amazing conclusion to an emotionally driven series that forces readers to realize the full measures that soldiers and their families go through in order to protect and serve and that the biggest fight for glory that they have is making their family’s proud and coming home safely.
A complimentary copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.
5 Poison Apples
Excerpt
I pulled her onto my lap, gently squeezing the sweet curves of her hips.
“Behave,” she whispered into my ear, but ran her tongue along the edge.
My fingers flexed, teasing under the edges of the black skirt that had slid higher on her thighs as she sat. I couldn’t help it—her skin was a magnet for my hands. “You like it better when I don’t,” I answered.
She locked those blue eyes on mine, and for that second, I wanted everyone to go the fuck away so I could get my remarkable girlfriend out of her clothes. Not a girlfriend for long. Not if I found the perfect moment for that little velvet box hidden upstairs.
Mrs. Walker. December-fucking-Walker. Sounded perfect to me.
“Earth to Josh and Ember,” Jagger called, waving his hand like he’d been at it a while.
“Yeah, yeah, a toast,” Ember said, wiggling against my now-hard lap. I locked her down with my hands, and she threw me a smug grin, well aware of what she’d done.
Jagger raised his beer. “To friends. Hell, that doesn’t even cut it. You guys, all of you…I wouldn’t be here”—he looked over to Paisley—“or even the man I am, without you. So more than friends…to family.”
We glanced around the fire at the family we’d made, and I felt it—one of those moments you can’t forget, the kind that stay with you when it’s long past, so you try to memorize everything. It was a deep peace, a contentment laced with the silent knowledge that we wouldn’t be together again for far too long. “To family,” we all said in scattered rhythm, and I kissed the underside of Ember’s jaw.
**VIEW THE Hallowed Ground TRAILER HERE: https://vimeo.com/148520997 **
Giveaway
About the Author
Rebecca Yarros is a hopeless romantic and lover of all things chocolate, coffee, and Paleo. In addition to being a mom, military wife, and blogger, she can never choose between Young Adult and New Adult fiction, so she writes both. She’s a graduate of Troy University, where she studied European history and English, but still holds out hope for an acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Her blog, The Only Girl Among Boys, has been voted the Top Military Mom Blog the last two years, and celebrates the complex issues surrounding the military life she adores.
When she’s not writing, she’s tying on hockey skates for her kids, or sneaking in some guitar time. She is madly in love with her army-aviator husband of eleven years. They finally can call Colorado home along with their gaggle of rambunctious kiddos and snoring English Bulldog.
Stalk Rebecca here
Website: http://www.rebeccaelizabethyarros.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RebeccaElizabethYarros
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/327562767450842/
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Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7539785.Rebecca_Yarros
Amazon Page: http://www.amazon.com/Rebecca-Yarros/e/B00HYKBU1W/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1449029619&sr=8-2-ent
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