Title: Love Edy
Series
Author: Shewanda Pugh
Genre: YA/NA Romance
Cover Designer: Regina Wamba
Editor: Stephanie Dagg
Publisher: Razor's Edge
Hosted by: Lady Amber's Reviews &
PR
Blurb:
When Edy Phelps falls hard for her best friend, she knows
nothing can come from it.
Forget
actual chemistry, or the fact that she cherishes his mother more than her own;
centuries of tradition say that Hassan will grow up, marry the girl his parents
pick, and forget his best friend: the dancer with the bursting smile. Except he
can't. In a world erupting with possibilities for the boy with a body of steel
and dreams of the NFL, everything seems promised while nothing at all is; when
he's denied the girl he wants most.
Two hearts. Two families devoted
through generations of friendship. Could Edy and Hassan really risk all that?
And yet ... how could they not?
Blurb:
In the aftermath of one tragic
and uncertain night, Edy and Hassan shut out the
chaos with a kiss. But when Hassan's traditionalist mother sees that kiss …
well, a nightmare of a different sort begins. After all, he still has an
arranged marriage on the
horizon.
Love attacks the glue of their
two bonded families; while the slow tug of success pulls Edy and Hassan in
opposite directions. After denying their feelings for so long, they now have
each other, but are forced to ask themselves if being together is worth
it.
Blurb:
When Edy arrives at Louisiana
State University, she soon discovers it takes more
than talent to stay in her fellow dancers’ good graces. Meanwhile, Hassan’s
status as a newbie freshman means that anytime not practicing is spent steering
clear of pranks, cramming every play into his skull, and changing his mind
again and again about whether to do that double major. Football, dance, and
classes keep him and Edy apart more than together, and in the freedom of a
thousand-mile distance from their parents, Edy discovers a wild, free
spirit…one that doesn’t sit well with Hassan. But there’s a moody, unapologetic
bad boy who likes it more than a little. He goes from irritating Edy to
intriguing her. Oh, and yes, he’s a dancer. Finally, there’s Wyatt, in Baton
Rouge without an explanation. Freshman year is ricocheting out of control fast
as obligations and accusations take their toll. In a world like this, one wrong
move is enough for everything Edy and Hassan have worked for to get
wrecked.
Shewanda Pugh's a tomboy who's
been writing romance since an inappropriate age. While she's been shortlisted
for a few awards and snagged a bestsellers list or two, there's nothing she
enjoys more than hearing from her readers.
In
another life, she earned a BA from Alabama A&M University and an MA in
Writing from Nova Southeastern University. Though a hardcore native of Boston,
MA, she now lives in Miami, FL, where she sulks in the sunshine, guzzles
coffee, and puzzles over her next
novel.
Author
Links:
Goodreads: http://bit.ly/goodedy
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShewandaP
Web: www.shewandapugh.com
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2lIkSvQ
Buy Links:
Love Edy Audiobook: http://bit.ly/LoveEdyAudio
Bittersweet: http://amzn.to/2kLevJS
Wrecked (Pre-Order): http://amzn.to/2kjREq3
Mason muscled the Land Rover
over a bed of shrubs and into the street, knocking his passengers left then
right with the hustle. Just as Matt yelled for him to head in the opposite
direction, Lawrence demanded to know if he could possibly hurry up. Hassan's
eyes kept to the street, desperate for a glimpse of a just-departed
Edy.
He supposed to an outsider their
panic looked silly. But none of them cared. Edy was one of them, and they
didn't need her father to remind
them.
"Why would she leave like
that?" Mason said, halting at a red light and chewing on the side of his
thumb.
"Maybe someone tried
something," Lawrence said.
"Tried something?"
Matt echoed.
Silence filled the
cabin.
Hassan's face tightened, teeth
sealing with the weight of wet cement. That image didn't work for him. It
didn't work for him one friggin'
bit.
"If someone had tried
something, Edy would've come to one of us," Mason
said.
Chloe, who sat wedged between
Hassan and Lawrence in the center backseat, cleared her throat. "Maybe she
didn't want to," she
offered.
That had everyone's
attention.
"And why wouldn't she want
to?" Matt snapped.
"I don't know," Chloe
said. "Maybe . . . if she liked it." She looked from one face to the
next, each cold, hard,
unappreciative.
"Maybe you oughta be
quiet," Lawrence muttered and turned to face the window.
Hassan rode with the company of
his thoughts, now violently intruded on by Chloe's assertion. Meanwhile, he
kept dialing Edy's cell and it went to voicemail each time. Tension hung like a
threat in the air.
"Who saw her last?"
Mason demanded.
"Oh, don't start that
again," Lawrence said. He turned to Hassan, eyed the cell in his hand.
"Keep trying. Keep calling."
Hassan
sighed. He pushed away a thousand crazy thoughts: that Lorenzo Carpenter had
been lying to them, that Chloe had been telling the truth, that Chloe had been
talking about Lorenzo when she told them the truth.
"We have to check her
house," Mason said. "It's the only place
left."
"Right," Matt sneered.
"We just walk into her living room and ask Nathan if he's seen the
daughter he left with us."
"Not us." Mason said.
"Sawn."
"How?" Hassan said. He
looked up from the phone.
"You've got a key,"
Matt pointed out. "Use it and walk up to her
room."
"Like Nathan isn't up?
Waiting?" Hassan said.
"Window," Lawrence
said. "Climb up. Look in. See if she's
there."
Her window. Their secret
rendezvous place since Hassan had learned to climb trees at six. It was a
decent idea. He could only hope that her father wasn't sitting on the bed,
waiting for his now-late
daughter.
They parked on the tail end of
Hassan's street, Dunberry, behind a cluster of oaks and a stop sign. All four
boys climbed out, hunched low, and scurried covertly to 2260, Edy's address,
while Chloe waited behind in the car. On arrival, the Dyson brothers clustered
around a sweeping, aged, and red-tipped chestnut, squinting upward as Hassan
scaled it. They watched with a nervous eye for Edy's parents, or his, next
door.
Hassan made it to the thick
"V" of limbs that split half toward Edy's house, half toward his. He
hoisted himself up, grabbed a gnarled branch for balance, and found a knot of
familiar footing to stand on. A square of darkness stared back at him. He
reached forward and yanked up Edy's window.
"Edy!" Hassan hissed.
"You in there?"
Silence.
"Ed--"
She emerged from the shadows,
hair in an oversized ponytail, pajamas ultra-pink and wrinkled, the epitome of
a been-sleeping girl. Only, he knew better. She stared back at him, evenly,
eyes wider in the night.
"What are you doing
here?" he said. "Why aren't you answering your phone? We've been
looking for you. We didn't know what to
think."
"I'm here because I live
here. You can go back to your party
now."
"What? I can go
back--" Hassan flared. "Why didn't you say you wanted to leave? Mason
would've taken you. Or Matt. I would have walked you, if nothing
else."
"I don't need anyone to
take me. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm
tired."
But he couldn't excuse her. Not
like that. Her anger, whenever he earned it, sat with him, needling like a shoe
that didn't quite fit.
"Cake?" he said
uncertainly.
His name for her. It had always
been his name for her. But she jerked as if the word itself
burned.
He
needed to do something. To fix whatever was happening. Only . . . he hadn't the
faintest idea what was
happening.
"Edy, please. If I did
something, just tell me. "
She ran fingers along the sill.
They were long, slender, curving beauties that had climbed trees with him, and
been laced with his a thousand
times.
He had an urge to make it a
thousand and one.
"Good night, Hassan,"
Edy said.
She looked up at him with puffy
eyes and closed the window between them.
"Night, Cake." He
whispered it to darkness.
Excerpted
from Love Edy by Shewanda Pugh.
Copyright © 2014 by Shewanda
Pugh. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or
reprinted without permission in writing.
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