🔥🔥 HOT NEW RELEASE 🔥🔥
The Affair by J.L Berg is LIVE!! #OneClick today!!
Blurb
There are some paths in your life you’re never meant to take.
Yet, by some twist of fate, you find yourself on the forbidden road all the same.
Those are the words I stumble upon when I unearth a hidden journal that once belonged to my grandmother.
A hidden journal that details a heartbreaking affair with her husband’s brother. It’s a family secret I’m unprepared to deal with, especially when my own life begins to parallel hers.
Sawyer Gallagher was never on my radar. The moment I met his younger brother, I was taken. Done for. Love-drunk.
But, some things aren’t meant to last and at the age of thirty-three, I find myself divorced, penniless and living with my parents. When Sawyer stops by our family’s antique store, asking for a job, I figure: Why the heck not? Life can’t get much worse.
It doesn’t take long to realize just how different the Gallagher brothers are. Sawyer is kind, supportive, and, oh, did I mention sexy as hell?
In a small town like ours, I can’t help but ask myself…
Can I fall for my former brother-in-law?
Or is this just history repeating itself?
My Review
Every J.L. Berg romance I’ve read has been an emotional journey – one that doesn’t offer many clear answers about the characters’ lives and their choices until they struggle through their bad decisions, their complicated past and the mistakes that were made due to fear or misjudgments.
In her newest release, The Affair, Berg fuses the past and the present together, weaving the journal entries of the heroine’s grandmother with what she herself is facing as she tries to move on from her father’s death and the dissolution of her marriage. And while her nana and she do not share the same experience, what Elle learns through her grandmother’s thoughts and revelations is much needed insight about making a choice and holding to it as well as letting go of the past and living in the present without dwelling on what could have been. But those lessons aren’t easily learned because as much as Elle wants to move forward, confusion and fear seem to have their grasp on her and until she can release their hold on her, she won’t be able to start her new life and hopefully find her way once more.
Elle’s struggles are many given what happened to her father as well as the dissolution of her marriage, but what she struggles with the most is letting go of the life she thought she would have because it’s clear that’s not how things played out and quite frankly, as much as it hurts, it definitely seems like she’s better off. And despite the fear and confusion she feels as her feelings for Sawyer grow, it doesn’t mean that her new chance at love will end up like it did with Reed, she just needs to have the courage to push through the self-doubt and the self-sabotage that will undoubtedly occur.
There is so much push and pull between Elle and Sawyer, which is expected given the nature of their past relationship and the feelings that Sawyer has always had for her, but I didn’t feel like what was building between them was forbidden, even if she was married to Sawyer’s brother. The choices that her ex-husband made led to their divorce, so moving forward with Sawyer, despite the fact that they’re brothers.
There are always lessons to be learned, teachings to be understood in every single one of Berg’s stories, and that’s one of the aspects of her writing and her storytelling that I love. She doesn’t simply write romance for romance sake…she writes to share her thoughts about the human spirit…about the human heart…about the ups and downs of life, of love, and of moving forward, even in the most difficult of situations. And I, for one, love her kind of romances.
4 Poison Apples
Amazon: https://amzn.to/34EUcBR
Universal: mybook.to/theaffair
iBooks: https://apple.co/33sDYeM
B&N: Coming Soon
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2Nv7XNR
Google Play: http://bit.ly/2rssbPF
Goodreads: http://bit.ly/2roej8V
Excerpt
You know the expression, sweating like a whore in church?
That was me exactly ten minutes after arriving home when it finally dawned on me that I was going on a real, legit date. My chest began to heave. Every inch of me was damp, and my mouth was dryer than the Sahara Desert.
This was it.
A date.
Sawyer wasn’t just casually popping over to bombard me with a flurry of questions or to help me with my grandmother’s journal. There would be no couches and blankets to hide behind, no dinner preparation to occupy us.
Nope.
Just the two of us. In a restaurant. With actual people.
“Holy crap on a cracker, what was I thinking?” I asked the dead plant in my living room.
It had no answers. Mostly because it was plant. And it was dead.
Okay, I just needed to keep calm.
I needed to keep calm and make a list.
To-do lists always kept me cool under pressure.
So, first things first.
What did one do to prepare for a date? It had been ages since I’d actually been on one, so my knowledge was rusty at best, but thanks to my heavy dose of Netflix bingeing, I’d watched just about every romantic comedy known to man in the last few months.
And if there was one thing rom-coms were known for, it was a glow-up montage—an opportunity for the heroine to go from zero to hottie in under a minute, making her downright irresistible to her potential mate.
The upside to this cheesy cliché was that it gave this rusty heroine the refresher she needed.
And the first thing I needed was makeup.
Lots of makeup. My dress was obviously already picked out. Hopefully, the weeks of pizza-eating wouldn’t cause me to bust the zipper. I guessed we’d soon find out.
Taking the steps two at a time, I marched my butt into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I wasn’t sure why; I didn’t particularly need a shower. I’d taken one that morning, and to be honest, I wasn’t that sweaty from my mini freak-out, but the idea of hot, running water soothed me.
And I needed some soothing.
Of course, I didn’t think about the fact that hot water on top of my hair would also constitute me having to restyle it.
“Shit!” I yelled the moment the water hit my nearly perfect curls.
Well, too late now. I guessed I should add a blow-dry and a curling session to my list of things to do.
Now that I’d basically doubled my to-do list, the soothing feeling of the shower did little for my stress relief. Finishing up quickly, I dried up, threw my now-sopping-wet hair into a towel, and found my way into my bedroom.
Plopping down on the bed, I let out a heavy sigh.
Why did people do this?
Was it worth it to get all dressed up, put on a crap-ton of makeup, and spend a fortune on dinner, only to have a few hours alone with someone?
Thinking about those few brief moments with Sawyer today—the way his eyes had lit up when we spoke, the heavenly feeling of his hands on my body—I couldn’t help but smile.
Yeah, it was worth it.
It was definitely worth it.
GIVEAWAY
To celebrate the release of The Affair, J.L. Berg is giving away a $25 Amazon gift card!
Head to her Facebook Page to Enter
https://www.facebook.com/authorjlberg/
J.L. Berg is the USA Today bestselling author of the Ready series, the Walls series, the Lost & Found series and more. She is a California native living in the beautiful state of historic Virginia. Married to her high school sweetheart, they have two beautiful girls and two pups. When she’s not writing, you will find her cuddled up, watching a movie with her family, obsessing over fandoms or devouring anything chocolate! J.L. Berg is represented by Jill Marsal of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency, LLC.
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