Monday 1 February 2016

Release Day Blitz, Excerpt, Review & Giveaway ~ Low (Low #1) by Mary Elizabeth

 

RELEASE BLITZ
Title: Low
Series: Low #1
Author: Mary Elizabeth
Genre: Romantic Suspense

Release Date: February 1, 2016



Book Description:


 
It’s hard living on the wrong side of the tracks.

Lowen Seely has a criminal record to prove it. Determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps, he fights instinct and tries honesty. But hunger becomes painful, and bills are due. Forced to choose between what is right and wrong, the boy from the hood learns abiding by the rules is nearly impossible when corruption is in your blood.

Falling for an outlaw has changed everything.

Poesy Ashby is the definition of ride or die, even when it means turning her back on freedom. The girl from the suburbs gives conformity the middle finger. Bonnie and Clyde have nothing on her love story.

On the run with consequences in the rearview mirror, Lowen and Poesy accept the truth: they are the bad guys.

But can they get away with their crimes?

 Add it to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25359437-low

 
 
 
Buy Links – 99c:
 Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1RkVetT
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1OC4jvM
Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/1Z8rc0r
Kobo: http://bit.ly/1ONOUnP
iBooks: http://apple.co/1IQHLae

Excerpt:


“Keep the engine running,” I say. “If I’m not out in five minutes, leave.” 

Poe nods her head, but doesn’t argue. 

When the nine o’clock hour comes, both she and I watch the clock on the dashboard turn to one minute after. 

“You’ll need to keep your mask on, Poesy. Make sure none of your hair is showing,” I say. “Keep your head down the entire time.”  

“Okay,” she answers in a small voice.

 “If you see cops—”

 “I know what to do, Lowen. I know you want me to leave you.” She sighs. “But I don’t know if I can.” 

Despite our circumstances, I smirk. “Hopefully you won’t have to.” 

At nine thirty, Poe and I switch seats, and she gets behind the wheel while I load the pistol. With hands that shake uncontrollably, I place the ski mask over my head but don’t pull it down my face. I help Poesy with hers, tucking in every stray strand of hair so they remain unseen.

She grabs my wrist, and our eyes meet. I see fear combined with love and loyalty in her stare. 

I kiss her knuckles and promise with the chance of lying, “We’re going to be okay.” 

Unlike when we drove into the garage, the streets are alive and filled with a variety of automobiles, and dirty sidewalks carry several pedestrians. The forty-second drive to the bank feels like forty years. Thick blood courses through my veins, and I feel it flow through arteries and vessels, nourishing muscle and bone. My head echoes with the thump, thump, thump of my hard heartbeat. Every breath is shallower than the one before it.

 “Pull down your mask,” I say, but my voice sounds foreign and feels a million miles away.

As Poe drives into California Credit Union’s parking lot, I grip the cold steel in my hand. 

The edges of my vision blur; I’m blinded by adrenaline. 

My skin crawls like I’m covered in spiders; I’m delirious with edginess. 

“Your ski mask,” Poesy shrieks. “Cover your fucking face, Lowen.” 

My girl reaches over and pulls it down for me. The car stops to a screeching halt, and reality crashes into me in a brutal rush, stripping me of air and voice. 

“If we’re in this, you need to go,” Poesy says in a calm but stern tone, hidden behind her black mask.

 There’s peace in her eyes. 

There’s strength in the girl who stayed with me when I was locked up.

The one who’s remained by my side, believing and starving all at the same time. 

With the gun in my hand and determination in my heart, I leave Poesy in the car and push open the glass double doors into the bank. 

As I step foot onto the burgundy carpet, I yell, “Everyone down on the fucking floor!”

 
 
 
Our Review:
 
 
Reviewed by Donna ~ 4 stars
***ARC received for an honest review***
 

“Chaos is our marriage certificate. Mayhem is the bond that keeps us together.”


This was one of those books where I read the majority of the book with my heart in my mouth and on the edge of my seat so kudos to Mary Elizabeth for delivering an intense read that I couldn’t put down. To keep a reader’s attention for that long in such a heightened level of anticipation and dread is no mean feat. I literally have no fingernails left at all!!

Another aspect that Mary Elizabeth delivered is a situation whereby you find yourself rooting for the bad guys…the criminals. You become so attached to them and they embed themselves so deep within your heart that even though you do not condone what they do you find yourself wanting them to get away with it. Sometimes though, desperate times call for desperate measures.


“Guilty of my father’s crimes and culpable for being born underprivileged on the wrong side of the tracks, I was a criminal before I ever broke a law.”



This is a modern adaptation of Bonnie and Clyde, a couple on a crime spree and evading the law. But these two are by no means evil people, they mean no malice and they really don’t have a bad bone in their body but they find themselves a victim of circumstance, victims of the ever increasing poverty line in America.

Low had to grow up at an early age, his family lived in poverty in a run down, destitute area where criminals and druggies were rife and you could easily succumb to the depressive, drug induced state of everyone else around you. But Low had a sense of responsibility, after his father was imprisoned he had to look after his mum and his little sister and he took his responsibility to them incredibly seriously.

 
“I tried to live the right way, but with a record like mine, I’m fated to live a life of crime and poverty. Once a felon, always a felon.”


Poesy was a beautiful character, but underneath that girl next door charm was quite a feisty, strong woman. Low was their lawn boy, to earn money to support his mum and sister, but Low and Poesy fall in love and while some may say it was that puppy love, an infatuation with the bad boy, for these two it was serious, is was the be all and end all and I felt it.

I adored the relationship that Low and Poesy had. They loved each other, supported each other and would do anything for the other, even if that meant bending the rules or totally smashing them to smithereens. They tried their hardest to survive, to better themselves, to make something of themselves but prejudices and the economic climate had other ideas and so Bonnie and Clyde or the “44 Bandits” were born.


“I don’t fuck the criminal out of her. I fuck it into her.”


Mary Elizabeth certainly has a flair for writing and it was this that totally captivated me with Low and Poesy’s story. That visceral feeling I had throughout while reading, that deep seated sense of dread within my guts and my emotional well-being hanging on by a thread are all testament to Mary Elizabeth’s written words. The flow was perfect, the drama and angst kept those pages turning while the battle of love and survival had your heart melting too. I have to admit I am still a bit confused by the ending but at the end of the day it was the end of the road…
 

About the Author:


 Mary Elizabeth is an up and coming author who finds words in chaos, writing stories about the skeletons hanging in your closets.

Known as The Realist, Mary was born and raised in Southern California. She is a wife, mother of four beautiful children, and dog tamer to one enthusiastic Pit Bull and a prissy Chihuahua. She's a hairstylist by day but contemporary fiction, new adult author by night. Mary can often be found finger twirling her hair and chewing on a stick of licorice while writing and rewriting a sentence over and over until it's perfect. She discovered her talent for tale-telling accidentally, but literature is in her chokehold. And she's not letting go until every story is told.  
Author Links:


Giveaway:

There is a giveaway for a signed paperback + 2 ebooks of Low (3 winners)
 

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