Blog Tour: Love Surfaced: Michelle Lynn
Love Surfaced
Michelle Lynn
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The equations are
simple.
Piper Ashby + Brad
Ashby = Twin Siblings
Brad Ashby +
Tanner McCain = Best Friends
Piper Ashby +
Tanner McCain = Off limits
Tanner and I
abided by the rules. We stayed on our designated sides of the relationship
circle.
Ignoring swarming
butterflies.
Settling on
lingering stares.
Here’s the secret … a hand extended over that
invisible line once, exponentially changing the equation. I was convinced we
could make our relationship work until Tanner broke the trust he embedded in me
from the age of seven.
One deceit of mega proportions and the relationship we
built for that short month vanished. I swore never to speak to him again and
it’s worked. Until now—two years later, when my brother’s wedding places me face-to-face
with the best man—Tanner McCain.
Leaving one equation to be solved. Can love surface
twice?
Soon, I’m unable to focus, and I have no choice but to take a break to recoup some energy. Gripping the side of the pool, I toss my goggles on the cement and lay my head on top of my hands, leaning over the edge of the pool. Mentally tormenting myself on my recent obsession with Tanner McCain, I’m surprised when the echo of someone else in the pool alerts me.
There goes my therapy for today, I think to myself.
I hastily grab my goggles and rest them on my head. My eyes glance up to see if the person is one of my teammates, but what I find halts my breathing. Tanner snakes into the water, gracefully picking up each plastic rope and ducking underneath, until he reaches the lane right next to me. I gulp down the last of my saliva when he casually swings back and forth on the lane separator closest to me.
He’s breathtaking with his goggles resting on the top of his head and his strong biceps holding his body up in the water. “I thought I’d find you here.” His classic smirk from last night is back in place.
“You did?” Immediately, I hate my timid and unsure voice. Even worse, the hopefulness it’s laced with.
“Want to race? Loser chooses Truth or Dare?” He doesn’t make eye contact with me. Rather, he peers across the empty pool.
“So I can lose?”
Every swimmer from here to California beats themselves up on their workouts, imagining their fingertips on that tile wall before Tanner’s.
He chuckles. “You know I only use half of my energy when I go against you.”
I cup my hand and drag it across the pool, splashing his face. He shakes his head, water droplets spraying off his divine features.
“Jackass,” I say, my back against the tile wall. I purposely don’t allow my body to win the fight to break the distance between us.
“I’m kidding. Come on.” His head nods toward the other end of the pool. “One lap.”
Then, out of nowhere, a confident creature rises within me. I want to pick his brain and dig through the layers to discover exactly why he sought me out in this pool so early in the morning and why his hands roamed places on my body they never ventured before last night. Most of all, I want to know how he left me without even a good-bye.
“What do I get if I win?” I raise my eyebrows at him a few times for competition.
When the attraction between them grows to be too much to ignore, they take a chance on each other. But after a whirlwind, secret month, Tanner breaks Piper’s trust and sends Piper’s world into a tailspin filled with hurt and massive life changes.
Bam. The major twist hit fast and hard. Because readers only hear Piper’s point of view, the break happened quickly and left me spinning, wondering what in the world had happened. All I knew was things were looking good. Really good. And then suddenly they were so horrible I couldn’t even imagine what had changed.
I loved both characters. Piper is one of those girls who knows what she wants, knows her limits, and works to make those two as compatible as possible. Though her ability to hold a grudge was epic and only forced proximity allowed Tanner a chance to clear the air between them. Or attempt to anyway.
Tanner is one of those guys who just fits. Athlete, protective, loyal, and hardworking, he was the perfect match for Piper, even after their fallout.
This had a great pace. There was always something going on, and when things went bad the need to know what happened would have kept me reading even if I wasn’t already fully involved with the characters.
The side characters brought a lot of extra depth to the story as well. Brad, Piper’s twin, was a mess in his own love life the whole way through. Though this is a standalone, the amount of detail that was given to Brad’s relationships left me wondering if eventually there wouldn’t be a follow up book for him. I had similar thoughts with a couple other side characters that seemed to hit it off very well in their brief encounters.
This was a great college/new adult story filled with so much emotion. While I haven’t read many books with swimming as the sport of choice, it worked perfectly for these two characters. The pressure of practice and meet schedules and graduation looming only added to what these characters were dealing with in their personal lives.
I was gifted a copy in exchange for an honest review.
I was gifted a copy in exchange for an honest review.
Michelle Lynn
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Michelle moved around the Midwest most of her life, transferring from
school to school before settling down in the outskirts of Chicago ten years
ago, where she now resides with her husband and two kids. She developed a love of reading at a young
age, which helped lay the foundation for her passion to write. With the encouragement of her family, she
finally sat down and wrote one of the many stories that have been floating
around in her head. When she isn’t reading or writing, she can be found playing
with her kids, talking to her mom on the phone, or hanging out with her family
and friends. But after chasing around
twin preschoolers all day, she always cherishes her relaxation time after
putting the kids to bed.
1 comments
Thank you for participating in the blog tour for Love Surfaced! I loved your review, it was beautifully written! <3
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