(Book 1)
Kimball Lee
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Number of Pages: 50
Published: November 11th, 2013 by www.greenpasturesink.com
What if you had to
choose between a life of fame and luxury or finding your truest love
while restoring a house overflowing with magic and enchantment in the
Blue Ridge Mountains? Reagan Hart is the DeLuca Girl, hers is the world famous face of a generation. Her husband has directed five of the highest grossing movies of all time, and her ex is a hunky detective who can’t get her out of his heart. She has all that glitters, but it isn’t at all what she bargained for. Beguiled by the story of a mystical old house in the Blue Ridge Mountains, she walks out on her past and into her future.
In the village of Seven Devils, North Carolina she is drawn to and enchanted by The Mary’s House and comes face to face and heart to heart with breathtakingly handsome and reclusive Fletcher Green. Fletcher steals Reagan’s heart in an instant but there are secrets to be told and he hasn’t uttered a single word in twenty years. Only his brother Teddy has discovered the mysterious truth that sets Fletcher apart from all others. The two brothers will rebuild The Mary’s House for Reagan and along with a town full of eccentric’s she just might find her place among the charms and bits of magic, both good and evil. Fate, destiny, passion and a touch of the divine will change her forever as she becomes a part of all that exists on Temptation Road.
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Temptation Road
The New and Last Mary
Chapter 1
The house on
the bend of Temptation Road came to be Reagan’s quite by chance, or by destiny,
perhaps. If she hadn’t overheard a location scout telling her soon to be
ex-husband about the Victorian confection he just couldn’t get out of his head,
she might not ever have known about Seven Devils, North Carolina. But the young
man was captivated by the rambling, crumbling, curly-cued good witch’s house,
and he felt that it had to be immortalized on film. She was at a wrap party for
Carlo, the brilliant director’s latest movie, another block-buster without a
doubt. Carlo was her husband, and he wasn’t listening at all, he simply peered
over the young man’s head. His gaze lingered on his soon-to-be-next-wife lounging
poolside, wearing nothing more than a body-paint bikini and a desperate look.
But Reagan stepped up and listened to the story of the Mary’s house and packed
her Louis Vuitton luggage that very night. She introduced herself to the
location scout and asked about the house and the town with the frightful name.
“Oh, not
frightful at all!” he gushed, “entrancing, captivating!”
That was all
she needed to hear, she set out to find that ruin of a house as she left her
ruin of a marriage without shedding a single tear. She boarded a flight at LAX
and flew across the country, toward anything auspicious.
When she landed
in Knoxville it seemed she’d only just boarded the plane. Had she slept or even
blinked in so short a time? Maybe she’d entered a time warp or traveled through
a wormhole, it seemed she’d dreamed she was flying and suddenly she had
arrived. Such happenings would become commonplace once she inhabited the Mary’s
house, things that were beguiling and whispered of love and magic and
enchantment. But all of that was yet to come.
She called her
mother and then her best friend, Alana, from the Crowne Plaza, it wasn’t the
type of hotel she preferred, but it was the best the city had to offer. She
told them she was flushing her cell phone down the toilet along with the last
ten years of her life and she’d let them know her new number as soon as she had
one. She said she could no longer stand the sight of Carlo, or to be loved by
Sean, and that she didn’t want to be admired by the world. She was disappearing
into the mountains, to a different life, to something that was still hidden
from her but she was certain it would make itself known. She didn’t flush the
phone, she just let it swim for a while in the pristine white potty, then
fished it out and crushed it beneath the heel of her Hermes boot.
Both her mother and Alana were concerned over her abrupt flight from Los
Angeles, but they were glad she’d left Carlo. Reagan assured them she could
feel happiness and meaning beginning to grow and take shape in her soul by the
minute, so they were glad for her, in spite of their concern.
She bought a pearl white Yukon SUV the next morning and paid for it with
her titanium American Express card, then she drove into the Blue Ridge
Mountains. She wound up and around and into banks of fog that threatened to
engulf the SUV and her along with it, she was, it seemed, vanishing into
oblivion. The road was so narrow in some places and the visibility so poor,
that she wondered what on earth had possessed her to run away. Why had she wandered
into this remote part of the world, what had drawn her so urgently? Several
times she nearly slipped off the edge of the road, the car’s tires spinning and
sending small rocks tumbling down the mountainside.
When she came to a scenic overlook and pulled over, she stared ahead at
the most beautiful cloud-shrouded mountain vista she could ever have hoped for.
She started to get out then noticed a large black bear rustling through a trash
bin, it looked her way and made a mewling cry. She locked the doors as if the
creature might dare to climb in with her, she began to shake violently with
fear of wild things and her future, as she inched along the perilous road. She
pulled into the first motel whose sign caught her headlights and rested her
cheek against the steering wheel before going into the office. At the front
desk she asked how far she was from Seven Devils and if there had been any
incidence of bears wandering the motel property.
Housekeeping woke her early in the morning, banging on the cheap metal
door. She peeked out and told the maid to give her half an hour. When she
stepped into the world outside, it was dazzling sunlight with an electric blue
sky and a hundred shades of green and pine trees that pierced the roving clouds
then reached to heaven and beyond. The mountain world was sharply green, not
only as a color but as an all-encompassing smell. It inundated the senses, a
saturated aroma of pine bark and sap and needles and fallen cones, sprightly
and scintillating. It spoke to something locked inside her, something as old as
the beginning of the very particles she was made of. Whispering its secrets
softly, beckoning and calling wordlessly, “rest in me, here is where we all
began, come into me and exist.”
My Review
Kimball Lee has a direct and cut to the point type of writing style; she doesn't use "filler" sentences to get her descriptions across. I feel that this is the best approach to write a story meant to be short because you want to be able to squeeze your entire story into a set amount of pages. That being said however, sometimes I wish she would have elaborated more when it came to the paranormal and magical aspect in this book. (I honestly didn't realize this was meant to be a paranormal romance until I put together this post.) I like this type of writing but I can see why it would cause readers frustration... a type of balance needs to be practiced. Forgo details on things not so important but add in a bit more description with the crucial sections in the plot.
(PS: I would consider Temptation Road to be a novella series)
My Opinion:
BEWARE for the dreaded cliff-hanger... it comes right when things start to get exciting. Needless to say, I was a bit bummed. It will however urge you to get the second book because you NEED to know what happens. So, great move Miss Lee... kudos to you!
I was a bit concerned I wouldn't enjoy this book because I saw so many reviews that stated this book was confusing or lacking something. I'm glad I chose to ignore those reviews and proceed to give it a go because I found it quite satisfying. I'm curious on if the second book will showcase the paranormal aspect a bit more, so I will be checking it out ASAP.
Side note: I don't feel that this cover really fits what this book is about. It does have some smokin' hot male specimens but doesn't have hardcore steamy scenes. If you're expecting in-your-face and down-and-dirty sex...you should look elsewhere.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kimball Lee had break out success with Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles in the 2013 and hasn’t looked back. The topics of her novels and novella-series will vary, but her style of writing remains the same. Kimball doesn’t write 700 page books padded with useless words that take three pages to describe a doorknob. She does write funny, interesting, happy, sad, romantic, often titillating, and always thought provoking books that pack a lot good reading into just the right number of pages. Lee’s first novella, Legal Action, changed her life over night with more than 200,000 downloads in the first 90 days of publication. Kimball writes twelve to fifteen hours a day and she loves ALMOST every minute of it! Kimball Lee is represented by Joyce Holland at D4EO Literary Agency. Connect with Kimball via her social media networks, she actively engages her readers and shares some really great content!
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