Thursday 21 November 2013

Blog Tour, Excerpts and Review - Beautifully Awake by Riley Mackenzie


Title: Beautifully Awake
Author: Riley Mackenzie
Genre: Adult Contemporary Romance
Release Date: October 2, 2013

Synopsis

Diagnosis: Sleep-running
Treatment: Truth
Prognosis: Beautifully Awake

Lili Porter hates the rain. Bad things happen in the rain. As a small town social worker dedicated to protecting children, she is forced to start over to escape her rural disaster. Determined to follow her father’s advice—head up and chin high—Lili finds herself in a new city, taking on a new system, this time healthcare. In doing so, she gets something she never expected, an intimate behind-the-scenes look at life in the hospital.

Lili learns that a surgeon’s hands have the power to heal more than physical wounds. And a prescription for truth can cure three years of sleep running and leave you beautifully awake.



Excerpt
He was already dressed for the OR in his scrubs, looking ... amazing. The beat beneath my chest started again and my mouth watered, as I not so subtly roamed his body with my hungry eyes. All I wanted was to feel his body against mine, get lost in where I ended and he began. It was all I’d ever want. Forever. I finally got what he meant every time he said mine. He was mine.
“See something you like?” He smirked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Baby, if you don’t stop looking at me like that I’m never gonna get out of here.”

“Truth. Sounds perfect to me.” Now I smirked.
“Ahh fuck, you’re killing me. You know scrubs don’t hide a hard-on very well.”
I laughed. He had a point there.
Leaning down, he kissed my nose. “Text you in a bit, see how your day is going...” 

“K.”


Review

My rating = 4 stars

*ARC provided by the authors in exchange for my honest review

This is a wonderful debut book and start to the Beautifully Awake series by new writing duo, Riley Mackenzie. I must admit the blurb didn’t grab me or the title (too many books called Beautiful something or other) but once I started reading I was hooked. It was a fabulous contemporary/part erotic romance with a smouldering and dominant sexy male and a feisty and sassy female. But the smouldering and dominant sexy male was the winning factor for me and the reason my nose kept pressed to my kindle for the duration. Oh and what a duration!

Lili Porter left her hometown three years ago after a traumatic experience and moved to Philadelphia where she works as a case manager. She’s, as she calls it – sleep running – running from her past, her demons and herself. She loves the hustle and bustle of the busy hospital workload and changes of rotations each month brings her into contact with a different set of doctors, surgeons and work colleagues. She likes to keep her mind active so she won’t think back to that dark time. But then she meets the new Chief of Neurosurgery – Dr Chase Colton and let’s just say he is a man of many personas – my favourites being Dr Possessive, Dr Intense and Dr Sexy. She cannot believe the attraction she feels for this domineering man but his touch set her love button into overdrive! What was once so closed and securely shut, pushes her into a mass of feelings she didn’t think she ever could feel.

Dr Chase Colton was smoking hot. He was a man who knew what he wanted, how to go get it and he didn’t take no crap from anyone. He was the ultimate mighty alpha male who made others quake in their boots with just one look, one bark of an order. But underneath all this manliness and attitude was a man so lost, and so desperately seeking redemption but which he feels he does not deserve after what had happened in his past. But then he spots the case manager, Lilli, who he was going to chastise for her tardiness and missing the 6am round when she turns to him and he spots the blue eyes. His Blue….

Oh I am so freaking out but I loved this character, Chase. He was just perfect with his alpha aura and his tight ass in those scrubs. Rawr!

The secondary characters were also well developed such as Sierra, Lili’s best friend, who was fun and the kind of BFF we all should have. The way she just said as she saw it had me snorting into the kindle. I loved Guy, one of the docs on Lili’s rotation and who she had at one time considered having a fling with. He sounded delish and cracked me up with his flirtations and his “Hey there doll”. Ash, Chase’s best bud, was so cool and …yes another hottie! So glad to see he will be in the next book.

I liked that this was based in a hospital – yes we all like to fantasise about the hot surgeons in their scrubs and those clever hands! I think this was the first book in a long line for me that has featured a surgeon, so I liked it was a little different.

So if I liked the storyline and loved the characters why not a fantastic five rating? Well for me it was a little too long and a good claw back could have packed a bigger punch. I also was gritting my teeth a little at the epilogue which wasn’t really an epilogue for me and it felt a tad too rushed.

Other than that I loved reading this and would definitely read it again. I need more Chase. Truth!  





Buy links




Meet the Authors


Yep. That's an “s.” There are two of us!
We’re East coast girls separated by Long Island Sound who met in Physician Assistant School and have been besties ever since. We can safely say that thirteen miles of water does not get in the way because we talk or text, no exaggeration, at least 150 times a day. No, really, we do—about everything and nothing. Shockingly, we never (we mean never) run out of things to say. Umm, ever. We definitely laugh A LOT and we’re a tad sarcastic. And if we’re being totally honest, one or two people might have, on occasion, used our names and ‘dramatic’ in the same sentence. But it’s hard to trust the sources since they married us.


It only took twelve years, two husbands, five kids, two dogs, and a two-week vacation in Cape Cod later to decide the romance world needed a splash of medicine. Write what you know.

So you can easily find us at 4 o'clock on Bank Street beach with a glass of cold Prosecco brainstorming. And guaranteed if we bump into you, literally, it’s only because our iPhones are glued to our hands (totally out of our control) either writing or editing our next novel (and yes, it is possible to do from your iPhone, we mastered it … damn those straight quotations).


When we are not working on our book or reading the latest angsty romance on our kindles, you basically name it and we have it going on. Soccer, lacrosse, golf, swimming, dance, gymnastics, football, chess, baseball, basketball, skiing, ice skating, school, homework, and more school. 

Oh yeah, did we forget to mention our careers in medicine?

Needless to say, we realized fast that something had to go, so we opted for sleep. It’s completely overrated (yet so AMAZING) and delirium makes everything funnier. Good thing we share a brain and can pretty much complete each other’s sentences (definitely weird, we know), otherwise it might have taken us two years to write Beautifully Awake rather than one.

So that’s our story, who we are … just add AUTHORS to the list!

Connect with the Authors



Giveaway
Grand Prize: Kindle Paperwhite
(5) Signed Paperbacks of Beautifully Awake (US Only)
(5) $5 Starbuck's Gift Cards


1 comment:

  1. Thank you SO much for posting and for your awesome review! xo RM

    ReplyDelete