Title:
Burning Moon
Author: Jo
Waston
Series:
Destination Love, #1
On Sale:
August 2, 2016
Publisher:
Forever
Formats:
eBook
Price:
$4.99 USD (eBook)
Newly
revised and expanded, Jo Watson's Wattpad sensation Burning Moon is
now available in print for the first time!
There's a
very fine line between blushing bride and mascara-streaked sobbing
mess. #beenthere
Lily
Swanson has been planning her perfect life since she was twelve years
old: Meet Mr. Right, have the big white wedding, buy a house in the
'burbs and raise 2.5 picture-perfect kids. However, when her fiancé
bails, leaving Lily alone at the altar to face 500 gossipy guests,
her dream turns into a nightmare. But then Lily makes an impulsive
decision—she ditches the dress, grabs her passport, and heads off
to Thailand to spend her honeymoon alone.
Or so she
thinks...
Because
Lilly quickly learns that everything in Thailand is very hot-the
weather, the merchandise, and especially Damien—the sexy,
spontaneous man she meets before her feet even hit the sand. Now with
no plan, and nothing holding her back, Lily lets Damien lead her on a
wild, unpredictable ride to the world's most exclusive party, Burning
Moon. But after a week of letting go, indulging her every impulse and
desire, Lily must go back to the girl she used to be. Or can Damien
convince her that their party doesn't have to end?
EXCERPT: Michael
Edwards—fiancé of one year, perfect boyfriend of two—had left
me, Lilly Swanson, just ten minutes before I was scheduled to walk
down the aisle. The bottle of perfume that he’d wanted me to wear
today, insisted I wear, because “it was his favorite,” mocked me
from the dressing table. So I picked it up and threw it against the
wall, watching it shatter into a million pieces, just like my life. I
was hit by the sickly sweet smell of jasmine and felt sick to my
stomach.
What was I going to
tell the five-hundred guests who were sitting in the church waiting
for me? Some had even flown here to South Africa all the way from
Australia.
Hi everyone.
Thanks for coming. Guess what? SURPRISE! No wedding!
A wedding that my
father had spent a small fortune on.
A wedding that was
going to be perfect.
Perfect,
dammit. Perfect!
I’d made sure of
that. I had painstakingly handled every single tiny detail. It had
taken months and months of meticulous planning to create this day,
and now what?
Things went very
blurry all of a sudden. I vaguely remember my brother James bursting
into the room, screaming insults and then vowing to kill him. He even
punched the best man when he claimed to have no knowledge of
Michael’s whereabouts. My rational, logical father tried to find a
legitimate motive for Michael’s behavior, insisting we speak to him
before jumping to any rash conclusions. Hundreds of phone calls
followed: where was he? Who had seen him? Where did he go?
At some stage the
guests were told, and the rumor mill went into full swing…
He’d had
an affair.
He’d eloped
with someone else.
He was a criminal
on the run.
He was gay.
He’d been
beamed up by aliens and was being experimented on. (Hopefully it was
painful.)
People threw around
bad words like bastard,
asshole and liar. They
also threw around words like shame,
sorry and pity. They
wondered whether they should take their wedding gifts back, or leave
them. What was the correct protocol in a situation like this?
While the world
around me was going mad, I felt a strange calm descend. Nothing
seemed real anymore, and I began to feel like a voyeur looking at my
life from a distance. I didn’t care that I was sitting on the floor
in my bra and panties. I didn’t care that my mascara and lipstick
were so smudged I looked like Batman’s Joker. I just didn’t care.
Some minutes later
my other brother Adam, the doctor, burst in and insisted I drink a
Coke and swallow the little white pill he was forcing down my throat.
It would calm me, he said.
Shortly after that,
my overly dramatic, theater-actress mother rushed in to give the
performance of her life.
“Why, why, why?”
She placed her hand across her heart.
“What is this, a
madness most discreet? A stench most foul?” She held her head and
cried out, “Whyyy?!”
“For heaven’s
sake, Ida, this isn’t some Shakespearean bloody play.” I could
hear the anger in my father’s voice. Even after 18 years of
divorce, they still couldn’t be civil to each other.
“Lest I remind you
that all the world is a stage.” My mother shouted back, the deep
timbre in her voice quivering for added dramatic tension as she
tilted her head upward and clenched her jaw.
“There you go
again with your crap! Clearly you still haven’t learned to separate
fantasy from reality!”
“Well, I managed
to do that with our marriage!”
My brother jumped
between them. “Stop it. This isn’t the time!”
And then all
pandemonium broke out.
The priest came
around to offer some kind of spiritual guidance but exited quickly,
and very red-faced, when he saw my state of undress. Some inquisitive
relatives stuck their heads through the door, painted with sad, sorry
puppy-dog looks, but they, too, left when they saw me spread-eagled
on the floor.
An enormous ruckus
ensued when the photographer burst in and started talking photos of
me—no one had told him. The ruckus became a total freak show when
my favorite cousin Annie, who had designed my dress for free as a
wedding gift, saw the state of her “best creation” lying crumpled
and torn on the floor. She looked like she was about to cry.
Then everything went
very blurry and the noises around me combined into one strange drone.
I closed my eyes and
everything went black.
THE
SERIES
Burning
Moon, #1
Almost A
Bride, #2
BUY
THE BOOK HERE
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Jo Watson
is an award-winning writer of romantic comedies. Burning Moon won a
Watty Award in 2014. Jo is an Adidas addict and a Depeche Mode
devotee. She lives in South Africa with her family.
FOLLOW
FOREVER ONLINE
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