Saturday, January 24, 2015

Book Review, Giveaway: Withering Hope by Layla Hagen



Withering Hope by Layla Hagen 

Publication date: January 19, 2015

Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance





Synopsis:

*This will be a STANDALONE CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE.*

Aimee’s wedding is supposed to turn out perfect. Her dress, her fiancé and the location—the idyllic holiday ranch in Brazil—are perfect.

But all Aimee’s plans come crashing down when the private jet that’s taking her from the U.S. to the ranch—where her fiancé awaits her—defects mid-flight and the pilot is forced to perform an emergency landing in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.

With no way to reach civilisation, being rescued is Aimee and Tristan’s—the pilot—only hope. A slim one that slowly withers away, desperation taking its place. Because death wanders in the jungle under many forms: starvation, diseases. Beasts.

As Aimee and Tristan fight to find ways to survive, they grow closer. Together they discover that facing old, inner agonies carved by painful pasts takes just as much courage, if not even more, than facing the rainforest.


Despite her devotion to her fiancé, Aimee can’t hide her feelings for Tristan—the man for whom she’s slowly becoming everything. You can hide many things in the rainforest. But not lies. Or love.
Withering Hope is the story of a man who desperately needs forgiveness and the woman who brings him hope. It is a story in which hope births wings and blooms into a love that is as beautiful and intense as it is forbidden.

Purchase: 

My Rating:
4.5

Favorite Quotes:

“His face has beautiful features, with black eyes and high cheekbones.  Though for all their beauty, his features are peppered with a harshness I can’t place.  Like tiny shards of glass in the sun – shimmering bright and beautiful, like diamonds, but cutting at the touch.”


“I need you in a way I never thought I could need anything.  It’s like air.  You don’t notice how much you need it until you don’t have it.”

“If there something I learned in war, it’s that no one is unimportant.  Every person means the world to someone.  That makes us vulnerable, but it also makes life a gift.  I had no one who could give me that gift.  Now I do.” 

“Death has its beauty.  It makes you see the eternity in every second; it makes you see every moment’s perfection instead of searching an eternity for the perfect moment.”


My Review:


I adore Layla Hagen’s work, she makes me appreciate NA.  And this was sort of like a NA version of Lost, but without the smoke monster or Others.  A pilot and his female passenger, who is on her way home to marry the pilot’s boss, are doing their best to stay alive after crashing in the Amazon rainforest.  Living on a thread and in survivalist mode, they ultimately find themselves and each other in the process.   Of course they try to fight their growing attraction, but as their situation grows more and more desperate, maintaining their emotional distance from each other becomes increasingly difficult.  Add in some entertaining and interesting story twists like PTSD, survivor’s guilt, driven personalities, nightmares, snakes, jaguars, tropical sicknesses, and a few steamy loves scenes between two highly likeable and fully fleshed out characters, and there you have it.  And even a hardened old cougar like me had to tear up at the touching and sweet ending.  Ms. Hagen is a talented wordsmith, her writing is insightful and can be deeply profound, all while making it rather effortless for the  reader to grasp.  She also has an exceptional flair for descriptive writing - she paints pictures with her words, and I truly enjoy her form of art.  

Empress DJ



AUTHOR BIO

My name is Layla Hagen and I am a New Adult Contemporary Romance author. I fell in love with books when I was nine years old, and my love affair with stories continues even now, many years later.
I write romantic stories and can’t wait to share them with the world. And I drink coffee. Lots of it, in case the photo didn’t make it obvious enough

Author links:


Giveaway: Tour-wide giveaway (INTL) $20 Amazon Gift Card

No comments:

Post a Comment