Blog Tour: The Debt by Karina Hale

       
#Review by Crystal
4 stars

I throughly enjoying reading The Debt. From the very beginning of Jessica and Keir's story I got pulled in. My heart was well invested into Jessica's life. Emotions were involved well before Jessica meets Keir. As their stories unfold I became more and more aware that these two needed one another. They grew together as a couple and over came so many hurdles together and individually. 

Also, I became attached to this stories supporting characters. I enjoyed reading what made each character tick. Their individual interactions and support is so real of your everyday family at times I could definitely relate to the characters. 

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Blurb
 Her life changed in an instant. And he's the
only one who could have prevented it. From the New York Times bestselling author of The Pact and The Lie comes a new standalone contemporary romance about those McGregor men. Jessica Charles shouldn't have even been in London when the unthinkable happened. She should have been back at home in Edinburgh, perhaps hanging with her boyfriend, having drinks with her sister or doing yoga with her group of friends. She should have been going on in her normal, dependable life as always. But on that fateful day in August, when a mentally-ill ex-soldier opened fire in public, Jessica's world changed forever. Now single and crippled from the gunshot wounds, Jessica finds herself scared and alone, losing faith in herself and humanity with each agonizing moment that passes. That is until a stranger enters her life. A stranger who makes her live again. Keir McGregor has always been the strong, silent type. Throw in tall, dark, and handsome and you've got pretty much the perfect Scotsman. Except Keir is anything but perfect. He's got a past he's running away from and a guilty conscience he can't seem to shed. But the more time he spends with Jessica, the more he falls in love with her. And the more his secret threatens to tear them apart. He may have been a stranger to her. But she’s never been a stranger to him.    

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      “You’re not going anywhere,” he says. “Sit. I’ll get you another drink.”   “It’s getting late,” I say feebly but I sit down anyway, my leg giving a protest of pain.   “You need something for that?” he says, noticing my wince.   “The scotch will do fine,” I tell him quickly, not wanting him to make a fuss. “But really, I should go.”   “Why?” he asks from the kitchen. I hear the top pop off the bottle, the slosh of liquid in the glass. “Where do you have to be?”   I have to think about that for a moment. He comes over and holds out the glass. “I won’t keep you here if you don’t want to be here. But if you do want to be here, you don’t need to make any excuses.”   I take the glass from him, holding it delicately in my fingers. He stands over me, a massive wall, waiting for some kind of response.   “I just…” I begin. “I…” I take a sip for bravery. Swallow. “I’m not very good at this.”   “Good at what?”   “At…this. Being with a man.”   When he doesn’t say anything to that, I look up at him. He’s got a peculiar smile on his face, his brows raised. “You call this being with a man?”   I clear my throat, feeling my cheeks grow hot. “I mean. I’ve told you before –”   “Yes, how you don’t do relationships, how you don’t do sex.”   “I never said I don’t do sex,” I remind him quickly.   His eyes never stop searching my face. “Then what is it? What are you afraid to say?”   I have the sudden urge to flee and I know it must show because he suddenly points at me and says, “Don’t you dare say you have to go again. I want you to go back to what you said, that you’re not good at this. What is this? Us? You and me? There’s nothing mystifying about you and me, Jessica. You know quite well how I feel.”   I stare at him in shock. I do? “How?”   He looks off with an air of impatience. “I invited you to dinner, you turned me down.”   “But then you said just as friends.”   “And I meant it. But there are different types of friends. It’s up to you to decide what kind we are.”   I put my drink down with a clunk. “Holy pressure.” And now it’s not just my face going hot but my entire body, flushed from head to toe.   “You’re on fire, little red,” he says, his gaze skirting over my limbs in such a hungry way I can almost feel them on my skin. “I have to say, I like this look on you. Hot and bothered.”   “Back with the innuendos again,” I comment but my voice is weak.   “No, no innuendos this time. You came looking for me tonight not because you wanted to confess but because you want something from me. What is it? What do you want from me? What do you think I can give you?”   Jesus. This is so utterly unnerving. His words slice right through me, his eyes still peeling under the layers, trying to get at something I’m not even sure of myself.   If I lie, he’ll know. I can only be honest with him.   “I want…” I take in a deep breath, my eyes breaking away. “I want…company.”   “Company?” He sounds surprised.   I nod. “That’s the truth. I’m lonely. And I’m afraid. And I’m tired of being both those things. I want to be with someone who makes me forget who I am. You make me feel fearless in a way I didn’t think possible.”   There. That’s the truth. Most of it. It hangs in the air, thickening the tension like flour to stock.   He sits down next to me, has a mouthful of Scotch. “Wow,” he says, running his hand over the beard on his jaw. “And here I was thinking you wanted my cock.”   I burst out laughing. So does he, a big wonderful bellow. The tension in the room eases up a notch.   “Sorry,” I tell him when I catch my breath. “I guess they can both mean the same thing.”   He sucks in his lip briefly, his eyes taking a lustful turn. “If you want it to.” We stare at each other for a few heavy beats. Then his focus trails back to my gaze and he says, “Why don’t you stay over?”   And there I have it. The chance to know what those full lips would feel like on mine, what his skin would taste like. I swallow hard.                       Karina Halle is a former travel writer and music journalist and The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling author of The Pact, Racing the Sun, Sins & Needles and over 25 other wild and romantic reads. She lives on an island off the coast of British Columbia with her husband and her rescue pup, where she drinks a lot of wine, hikes a lot of trails and devours a lot of books. Halle is represented by the Waxman Leavell Agency and is both self-published and published by Simon & Schuster and Hachette in North America and in the UK. Hit her up on Instagram at @authorHalle, on Twitter at @MetalBlonde and on Facebook. You can also visit www.authorkarinahalle.com and sign up for the newsletter for news, excerpts, previews, private book signing sales and more. FACEBOOK TWITTER GOODREADS AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE

New Release: SMUT by Karina Halle

   

What happens when the kink between the pages leads to heat between the sheets?

All Blake Crawford wants is to pass his creative writing course, get his university degree and take over his dad’s ailing family business. What Amanda Newland wants is to graduate at the top of her class, as well as finally finish her novel and prove to her family that writing is a respectful career.

What Blake and Amanda don’t want is to be paired up with each other for their final project but that’s exactly what they both get when they’re forced to collaborate on a writing piece. Since Amanda thinks Blake is a pushy asshole (with a panty-melting smirk and British accent) and Blake thinks Amanda has a stick up her ass (though it’s brilliant ass), they fight tooth and nail until they discover they write well together. They also might find each other really attractive, but that’s neither here nor there.

When their writing project turns out to be a success, the two of them decide to start up a secret partnership together using a pen name, infiltrating the self-publishing market in the lucrative genre of erotica. Naturally, with so much heat and passion between the pages, it’s not long before their dirty words become a dirty reality. Sure, they still fight a lot but at least there’s make-up sex now.

But even as they start to fall hard for each other, will their burgeoning relationship survive if their scandalous secret is exposed or are happily-ever-afters just a work of fiction?

   

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  She holds my gaze for a moment and something passes over her. Regret, maybe. Then she nods. “Sit down. Let’s work.” And so we do. And for the first time in a long time, it’s strained. I’m about to suggest maybe we need the Estonian vodka anyway when she lets out an exasperated sigh over something she’s reading. It happens to be something I wrote. “What?” I ask, wondering what I did wrong. She gives me the the 'are you kidding me?'look. “Okay, I was ignoring it earlier but I think you need to get a grip on some of this shit. This simply does not happen.” “Explain, please.” “I just think it’s unrealistic for there to be so much talking, let alone the fact that the first time they do it it’s in a public place.” “Too much talking?” “Yeah.” she scans over the document. “You know, give me your cock, oh you feel so good, harder, harder, you’re so big, fuck me harder big boy.” “Have you even had good sex?” I ask incredulously. She flinches. “Of course I have. And it’s none of your business.” “We’re writing about sex. It’s completely my business. I’m not letting you interject your edits based on your personal experiences about sex because believe me, if the sex is good, you’re moaning my name.” She raises her chin. “Maybe all those girls were faking it.” Oh, brilliant. “Excuse me?” I say, hands pressed against the table, nearly getting out of my chair. “You have no idea. I pride myself in giving a girl as many bloody orgasms as she can handle.” “Bloody orgasms don’t sound like fun,” she jokes softly. “They can be if you’re into knife play,” I tell her, even though that’s not exactly what I meant. Still, she scrunches up her nose. “Don’t knock it until you try it, but that’s neither here nor there. When you were with Alan, he must have made you come at least a few times.” If he didn’t, I feel like finding the guy and showing him a thing or two for wasting four years of her life. “Yeah,” she says flatly. “And in the middle of that orgasm, didn’t you want to yell a few things?” “Sometimes.” “And why didn’t you?” She looks at her nails as if they’re suddenly fascinating. “It didn’t seem right. It was…too intimate. I would have felt dumb. He didn’t like any of that stuff.” The plot thickens. “Any of what stuff?” “Sex that didn’t involve the missionary position or the bed.” My mouth drops open. My brain and penis can’t compute this. “I feel so sorry for you.” We must remedy this. She glares at me. “It’s not like I didn’t want to do it. I did. And he did try it. Most of it. But it always went back to the same old.” I knew it. She’s a nerd on the streets and a freak in the sheets. “I don’t mean to brag,” I tell her in all seriousness. “But you do realize that I could give you an orgasm in thirty seconds.” Her eyes widen. I can’t tell if she’s horrified or intrigued. “I don’t believe you and I don’t want you to try.” She’s not getting it. I frown, trying to explain. “If you’re having good sex and it’s with someone you’re comfortable with, you won’t worry about holding back. You’ll cry out all the nonsense you want, you’ll make noises like a pig and scream like you’re on fire because you truly can’t have a good orgasm unless you’re letting go on all accounts.” I lean back in my chair and study her, running my fingers along my jaw. “I would venture that every time you came with your ex, you were only experiencing half of what you should have been. How is it with your vibrators?” I expect her to tell me to fuck off, that I’m getting too personal but to my surprise she gives me a small smile. “It’s better. But I do have a roommate with exceptionally good hearing.” She clears her throat. “Anyway, so I guess I’m wrong. The heroine can make all the noise she wants.” “And have first time sex in public.” “I don’t know…” “Believe me, when you finally get a chance to fuck, you don’t care where it is. That’s why I always have a condom in my pocket. And the more public the sex, the sneakier you have to be, the hotter it is.” “But in the book you would never get caught.” “You don’t always get caught in real life too.” I can see she wants to ask me where I’ve done it but she loses her nerve. “Okay.” She looks back to the document. “I accept defeat.” But I don’t want her to. I want to prove to her I’m right and not have her take my word. Is there a non-creepy way to show her just how amazing good sex can feel? I’m thinking not. Or…maybe there is.         Karina Halle is a former travel writer and music journalist and The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling author of The Pact, Racing the Sun, Sins & Needles and over 25 other wild and romantic reads. She lives on an island off the coast of British Columbia with her husband and her rescue pup, where she drinks a lot of wine, hikes a lot of trails and devours a lot of books. Halle is represented by the Waxman Leavell Agency and is both self-published and published by Simon & Schuster and Hachette in North America and in the UK. Hit her up on Instagram at @authorHalle, on Twitter at @MetalBlonde and on Facebook. You can also visit www.authorkarinahalle.com and sign up for the newsletter for news, excerpts, previews, private book signing sales and more. FACEBOOK TWITTER GOODREADS AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE