TITLE: Catching Serenity (Seeking Serenity Book 4) AUTHOR: Eden Butler GENRE: Contemporary Romance BLOG TOUR: April 1 - 9
This fourth and final story of The Serenity series is beautifully heartbreaking. Do not read this story without tissues handy. While this book can be read as a stand-alone, I truly believe that reading the series from the beginning will only enhance your reading experience. Each book is fantastic in its own right and you really get a feel for each character in this book. You get to know their dynamic and history and it just bring you into the story that much more.
Chasing Serenity is Sayo's story. She currently has her life on hold as her little cousin, Rhea, is hospitalized and dying from cancer. She is very close to her cousin and feels the impending end so, so deeply. I felt her love for Rhea. The emotions jumping off the page were so real, so tangible that they became my own. In the previous story, Sayo is outgoing, strong, and a rock for her friends. The Sayo in this story is broken, withdrawn, and trying to claw her way to the surface. The author takes us through the stages of grieving and reaching for that needed numbness.
She finds that blessed numbness in Quinn, Declan's troubled, jerky brother. However, there is so much more to Quinn than what meets the eye. He gets introduced to Rhea and falls in love with the little girl. He spends hours with her, which is starts off as a point of contention between him and Sayo. When Rhea takes a turn for the worse, she becomes the one thing that pushes them together. They find that much needed comfort in each other's touch.
Oh – my heart! What an excellent ending to one of my all time favorite series. When a series that I have fallen in love with is over a part of me hurts. I look back at all the books with a bittersweet fondness, not quite ready to let go. When I read the first book, Chasing Serenity, I had a bone deep knowing that Eden Butler was a special author. Her ability to pull you into her stories - the world that she creates, the characters that she molds, and immerse you into the emotions of those characters – is nothing short of spectacular.
“Sayo.”
It isn’t a question. It’s not a demand. Somewhere in the middle, something in his tone, there is truth. It reaches across the room, keeps me rooted in place. He’d warned me before, admitted he’d take and give and would offer no apologies. But in this tone of his is something that sounds an awful lot like need, a lot like possession.
I should walk away. No looks back. No second thoughts. Just leave him, leave this warehouse and forget that he ever touched me.
“Sayo,” he says again and this time that voice is closer. He’d moved like a whisper across the room and I hadn’t noticed.
Two steps more and Quinn is behind me. Three more and he rushes forward, forcing me to the wall, bracing myself with my palms flat. “Quinn…”
“No,” he says, leaning against me so I can’t move. “No, love, you stay still and answer a question for me.”
“Back off.”
He does, only to slip his hand to my chest, to slide his fingers under my bra and cup my breasts. “You’re so hot and cold with me, I never know who you’ll be when you come to me.”
Moving my head, I catch Quinn’s gaze over my shoulder. “You never give yourself to me, O’Malley. Never.”
He shifts, withdraws his hands to twist me around by the hips, not leaving much room between us, still holding me to the wall. “You might not like what you see in the real me. I don’t much like him myself…”
If I thought he’d continue his awkward interrogation, I was wrong. His grip lessens, his body relaxing into mine and suddenly he moves his forehead against mine, breath hot over my face, smelling of warm beer.
“You want him? The blonde? You want to be rid of me, Sayo?”
“Quinn…” I try, wishing he didn’t smell quite so good. Wishing that I didn’t remember how much I love the way his arms wrap around me, how the stubble from his face tickles my chest when he rubs it there. I wish I knew how to walk away, to take what had happened between us for the lesson it was.
I wish I didn’t want him so badly.
“Quinn…” I try again but he stands too close, feels too close and then our defenses weaken, they crumble and his mouth is on mine, his hands, mine, are everywhere, insisting, skilled, aching.
Bodies molding together.
Skin to skin, no room for regret.
There is only this sensation. This man. This moment.
Quinn touches me, takes me to floor, barely shoving my jeans off, hardly moving his pants down his hips before he hovers over me, sliding his hard dick against me.
“You don’t want this anymore?” he asks, his breath shaking, his hands sure as he guides himself over my pussy. “Can you walk away from this, love?” He slips inside me in one fluid thrust and I gasp, gripping hold of his shoulders as he kisses up my neck. “Because I damn well can’t.”
Words flit into my mind, defenses that are likely logical, seem reasonable, but I don’t speak them. Not with how well Quinn touches me, how he treats my body like a playground he’s only just discovered.
He is deep inside me, and I’m not sure how to be rid of him. I’m not sure I want to be. But Quinn is a man of few promises. As much as I crave this, he is a wild card I’m not sure I want to play.
Eden Butler is an editor and writer of Fantasy, Mystery and Contemporary Romance novels and the nine-times great-granddaughter of an honest-to-God English pirate. This could explain her affinity for rule breaking and rum.
When she’s not writing or wondering about her possibly Jack Sparrowesque ancestor, Eden patiently waits for her Hogwarts letter, edits, reads and spends way too much time watching rugby, Doctor Who and New Orleans Saints football.
She is currently living under teenage rule alongside her husband in southeast Louisiana.
Please send help.
The following goodies are up for grabs and are open internationally!
- (2) $15 gift cards from Amazon or B&N, winner’s choice
- (3) Signed print copy of CATCHING SERENITY
- (3) E-book copies of CATCHING SERENITY
