[151] Stages of Grace by Carey Heywood REVIEW, EXCERPT, GIVEAWAY

Stages of Graceby Carey Heywood 

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance... 

When facing death a mourning period is to be expected. But what if it's not a person but a relationship that dies? Grace and her boyfriend Jon have been together for three years. They live together and have shared many beautiful memories. Those memories are what keep Grace from admitting Jon has changed and is no longer the man she fell in love with.

Afraid of being alone and holding on to something that no longer exists Grace is a shadow of her former self. Her daily objective is to hide her pain from the world. Then, an unexpected letter sets off a whirlwind of potential life changes. In life sometimes the hardest thing to do is let go.

 MY REVIEW

5/5

Stages of grace catched my eye with a beautiful cover. It gives me kind of calm feeling and I felt it while reading the book, in spite of all the emotions that were going through me. It was the weirdest feeling ever.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance are stages after loss of someone important. Grace is going though them, but she's missing feelings she had rather than a person. She's ending a long-time relationship that was happy at the beginning but then got toxic.

I didn't only like Grace. I felt her. I felt like going through all of the stages with her, sharing all of the emotions. She and her psychology are pictured perfectly, but the rest of characters sometimes felt... Flat.

There are no big surprises in Stages of grace, no big plot twists, but a lot of emotions. I would recommend it to every contemporary-lover, even one like me - who doesn't enjoy romances really. This one is different.

I think a lot of people, me too, can relate to what Grace has gone through.
And everyone likes to read about things that happened to them too.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carey Heywood lives in Richmond Va with her husband, three children and nine pound attack Yorkie. Unabashedly silly, she spends her free time bonding with candy loving strangers on Twitter. Right now she is probably eating Swedish fish.

Links: 

http://www.facebook.com/CareyHeywoodAuthor

@careylolo (not a link but I tweet so...)

EXCERPT

Once we are back at Kate's house, she takes a nap while I return the car to Ryan's garage. Ryan is pulling into his driveway as I'm letting myself out of his house.

"We took Kate's car out," I explain, feeling my face get hot.

"Sorry, my place is a mess."

"What? It seemed clean, but I only saw the front room and the kitchen."

"No peeking at my boxers?"

"No, not that I would admit it if I had" I joke.

He rubs his chin and smiles "I will now assume you did."

"Don’t!"

"But it's more fun that way. So what do you ladies have planned for lunch?"

"Kate's resting right now. I was just going to make myself a sandwich. Want one?"

Ryan follows me back to Kate's house and keeps me company in the kitchen while I make our lunch. He rambles on about his day. I like the sound of his chatter. We take our plates out by the pool. I'm really going to miss the weather. I'll not be outside like this until well into spring back home. Ryan pours us some lemonade and asks me how I like Kate's car. I tell him it’s longer than any car I've ever driven so other than being nervous when I was parking I think it is a great car. Ryan loves that car, telling me how he would put the top down and drive Kate around town. It makes me wonder why Ryan seems content to spend his time with Kate instead of people closer to his own age.

I have been so distracted I miss what he asks me. "Sorry?"

"Want to go out with me tonight?"

"I don’t know. What about Kate?"

"No worries. I cleared this with the boss lady last night."

"I guess."

"You don’t have to if you don’t want to."

"No. I didn’t' mean—what I meant to say was you don’t have to."

"I know I don’t have to, Grace. I'm asking you because I'd like to."

GIVEAWAY (click!)