Against All Odds Tour Stop!

 Our lives shattered... Our hearts broken... Our souls torn to pieces...

He was my world, my whole life. My reason for breathing. I had a perfect marriage, a baby on the way, and I felt fulfilled—almost invincible.

Until the day life hit, leaving me broken, vulnerable, and alone.

She was my life. My ray of hope on the cloudiest day. With her, I thought I had the ultimate safety. A love that would never hurt or betray me. I gave her my heart, my body, and my soul.

Until she broke me, destroying every dream and illusion I had about life, love, and marriage.

In our grief, we made a mistake. A mistake I'm not sure we can come back from.

*A Contemporary Adult Romance novel coming Spring 2014*

With the standards that I have for books that I fall in love with, this one should not be on the list, but it is.  I do not enjoy books about love triangles or cheating spouses, I figure there it too much of that in the real world, why would I want to read about it for entertainment, but this book took those two things and layered it with a thought provoking message and a heart break that left me in tears more than once.  I had been looking forward to reading this book and I started it yesterday and found I lost too much sleep last night because I just couldn’t put it down. 

 Kylie and Cooper were meant to be, married, running a successful business and expecting their first daughter Kayla, what more could they want?  Life throws them a devastating curve ball when they leave the hospital after giving birth to Kayla empty handed.  Kylie shut down emotionally while Cooper needed his wife more than ever as they try to recover from the loss of their beautiful daughter. 

After trying to repair the damage to their marriage, they decided that an open marriage would help.  It wouldn’t help bring them back together but it would ease the loneliness each felt for human affection and connection.  I felt Cooper was punishing Kylie for abandoning him right after Kayla’s death, but as we go through the story we see they both did love each other, they were just lost as to how to come back together. Did they have a right to be a family when Kayla was dead?  How do they reach out to each other when they are walled off by their own pain?

Grayson was Cooper’s best friend for years and he had developed a friendship with Kylie.  Even though it was against the open marriage rule, to sleep with friends, Kylie and Gray’s friendship began to move closer to a love relationship. Grayson wasn’t thrilled with the way Cooper was treating Kylie but Grayson had the luck of being on the outside of the pain looking in.  Once he realized he would never be able to convince Cooper that his approach to healing was only tearing them farther apart he focused his attention on keeping Kylie safe. Cooper after seeing what Grayson was doing, had to make a choice and make it quickly if he was going to win Kylie back.

Through tears and pleas of forgiveness we see how the three of them end up and by this time as a reader there wasn’t going to be a happy ending for me.  The author let us into the hearts of each character and while I don’t agree with their choices, I can see how lost they were at the time they were making them.  I think this alone is what made me love the book even though I hate stories about cheating and triangles. She painted a taboo picture and allowed us to live in the fog that the characters were living in when they made those taboo decisions.  

There are so many pivotal moments in this book that left me crying for each of them, twists and turns that left me cheering for Grayson or wishing Cooper would come rescue Kylie sooner.  I wanted to shake Kylie and tell her she deserved better than this, to wise up and make better choices but then I wanted to just hold her and let her cry her pain out.  She had become an empty vessel in life after losing her daughter and Cooper.  To know that the only person who hated her more than Cooper was herself, how could I fault her for not caring about herself and her life more? 

I so recommend this book, it is a story that left me still to this moment trying to figure all of the pieces out and recover from the emotions it brought out in me.  I don’t think this was meant to be a quick read and the only thing quick about it was I couldn’t put it down because I was quickly sucked into this mess during the first chapter.  Make sure you grab your copy of this book, the author did a great job of giving us an emotional roller coaster that I will be thinking about for a very long time. 

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I step back and release a shaky breath. “I don’t know what to say. You know that we...” I flick my eyes to the other side of the room to collect my scattered thoughts.

Erasing the distance I just tried to put between us, he lifts my face to his. Our eyes connect, and my pulse—already wild—intensifies.

He looks straight through to the heart of me. “You don’t have to say anything right now. You don’t have to say anything ever. Just think about what I’m saying.” Gaze locked on mine, he places a tender kiss on my lips.

 When he pulls back, he clears his throat and pulls out his phone. “All right, get packed. I’ll call the pilot and let him know we’re ready to leave.”

I nod numbly as he walks out of the room. I want to go home to my empty house. My empty bed. My empty life. I need some time away from everyone. I need to figure out what’s wrong with me. What happened to the girl with morals?

I close my eyes as all energy drains from my body. I slip to the ground, hugging my knees. I miss my life before Kayla died. Before all I felt was pain and hopelessness. Before all I saw was a nightmare. Before I shut down and started doing stupid things.

I need to find the girl I used to be, but I’m not sure she’s in there anymore. I’m not sure she’s strong enough to come back. Because coming back means feeling the loss of her baby and confronting the problems in her marriage. It means facing pain, fear, and guilt. That is so terrifying that living in a state of numbness and denial might just be easier.

All rights reserved. Against All Odds © 2014 Copyright, Angie McKeon.

A multi-tasker from birth—and now proudly able to add 'writer' to my resume—I'm a mother, wife and blogger. I love to read, write and drink copious amounts of iced coffee.

All three aforementioned addictions are detrimental to my sanity.

I have a voracious appetite for dark, painful and twisted reads. I'm enamored with the concept of love and heart break. I believe life is a journey, a tale in its own for each of us. The road to happiness is sometimes paved with stones from hell, or glitters of satisfaction graced from the heavens above.

In my upcoming debut novel, 'Against All Odds,' I strive to make you feel. I believe any emotion—whether painful or happy—is good. To me, the key to living is to go through life feeling its ups and downs. Love is dark and it can be painful but, at the end of the day, it can save the most lost of souls and the most broken of hearts

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