Title: Before You (Before & After, #1)
Author: Amber Hart
Publisher: K-Teen, 320 Pages (July 29th, 2014)
Add to: Goodreads
Order a copy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Kobo, iTunes

Synopsis: Some say love is deadly. Some say love is beautiful. I say it is both.

Faith Watters spent her junior year traveling the world, studying in exquisite places, before returning to Oviedo High School. From the outside her life is picture-perfect. Captain of the dance team. Popular. Happy. Too bad it’s all a lie.

It will haunt me. It will claim me. It will shatter me. And I don't care.

Eighteen-year-old Diego Alvarez hates his new life in the States, but staying in Cuba is not an option. Covered in tattoos and scars, Diego doesn't stand a chance of fitting in. Nor does he want to. His only concern is staying hidden from his past—a past, which if it were to surface, would cost him everything. Including his life.

At Oviedo High School, it seems that Faith Watters and Diego Alvarez do not belong together. But fate is as tricky as it is lovely. Freedom with no restraint is what they long for. What they get is something different entirely.

Love—it will ruin you and save you, both.

Excerpt:

          “So,” I say again, “did you miss me?”

          She blinks. Her breathing goes back to normal.

          “Yeah,” she answers. She stands. I stand as well.

          Did Faith just say that she misses me?

          She leans against a bookshelf and reaches a hand to my shirt, pulls me to her, our bodies almost touching.

          I look around to see if I’m being tricked, but there’s no one in sight.

          Faith presses one finger against my cheek and turns my head back to her. “Did you miss me too?” she asks in a soft voice.

          “What?”

          “I think you did—” she pauses to lick her bottom lip, “—Diego.”

          Those lips, ay, those lips.

          Hearing my name come out of her mouth like that messes me all up. This was not part of the plan. And now I can’t help myself. I can’t look away. My will has dissolved.

          “What’s going on?” I ask, unable to keep my eyes off her rosebud mouth.

         “I’m letting down my defenses,” she answers. “That’s what you want, right?”

          I inch closer.

          What is she doing to me?

          Of its own accord, my hand reaches for the sensitive spot at the base of her neck above her collarbone. I trace a finger along the dip and my heart thrums faster. Her skin is so soft. I imagine what it would be like to kiss her there.

          I drop my hand. I should not be thinking about kissing Faith.

          She doesn’t back away. Instead, she tilts her chin up, giving me a better view, almost like she wants me to touch her again. A small sigh escapes my lips.

          “Mami, you should stop,” I half suggest, half groan. But I’m not sure that I want her to stop.
          “What if I don’t want to?”

          She’s still clutching my shirt. I wrap my hand around her wrist and pull it down to her waist. Under my fingertips her blood pulses fast, a one-way train on a track bound for collision.

          I should walk away. This has gone too far. And yet, not far enough. It’s dangerous. I don’t trust the feelings surging through my veins. I try to reason that it’s no big deal, that she’s just like any other girl. Too bad I’m immune to my own lies.

          Do I really want to do this with Faith Watters?

          Surprisingly, the answer is clear.

          Yes.

About the Author:

Amber Hart grew up in Orlando, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia. She now resides on the Florida coastline with family. When unable to find a book, she can be found writing, daydreaming, or with her toes in the sand. She's the author of BEFORE YOU, AFTER US, UNTIL YOU FIND ME, and sequel to UNTIL YOU FIND ME (untitled as of yet). Represented by Beth Miller of Writers House.

Find Amber Online:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest | Goodreads

GIVEAWAY!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

NOTE: This is a REALLY long post, I've tried to use the read more feature, so if it doesn't work, please understand why I've used a smaller print. SORRY!

When I started writing the ALONE trilogy, I had in mind a couple of spooky movies: 28 DAYS LATER and SHAWN OF THE DEAD.  Two classics, right?  They kind of set the mood for the type of story that I wanted to develop (scary and plausible meets funny and moving) while writing in a zombie-type genre.  Having written a few serious "adult" thrillers, this was my first offering for young adults, and I was always wary of treading that thin line in YA Lit where I kept thinking: Am I writing an adult novel with a teenage character, or a novel for teens?  I kinda think it's both -- and with everyone reading YA these days, that distinction in old-school publishing categorization is probably void anyway.  So, while I wanted things to be realistic and scary for my readers, I also wanted to play around with a fun narrative trick... which is hard to talk about without completely giving away the ending to book 1, CHASERS.  That said, it's an ending that a small percentage of readers can't quite get their heads around, despite all the clues throughout the book.  The feel that I wanted the reader to have was "no matter how alone you feel, you're never really alone" and "who's to say that if people close to you die, every bit of them has to go".  I think those concepts came from my own childhood: I was an only child and grew up in a broken home, and lived my first 12 or so years with my dad and my grandpa, in the big old family home.  It was in central Melbourne, on a large avenue of towering Elm trees that would creak and moan their way through the night.  The house was a hundred years old, a five storey terrace, full of  dark rooms and steep stairs; it had a life of its own.  And ghosts!  While I never saw them, so many of the family and friends had.  That, along with a childhood full of books, developed my vivid imagination and love for storytelling.  Many of those memories I drew on when creating my protagonist, Jesse, and his experiences in ALONE.  So, in true Halloween spirit, here we have a short story featuring Jesse that takes place somewhere off the pages of the trilogy.  I wrote it for an anthology for high school students to study here in Australia and New Zealand, as a kind of taste of the ALONE world.  I guess if I had to say what it's about, it would be communication -- and what it's like when you can't communicate as easily we take for granted.  I hope you enjoy.

I Am Alone By: James Phelan

        The last fire went out today. It was early morning and I was looking at the city through binoculars. Central Park was shrouded with mist or fog. The tops of tall buildings sparkled with the first rays of sunlight that caught on shiny surfaces down below. The streets were still clear of movement. Slushy snow remained in situ until the sun would come or the heat of humanity might return.
        I’m sixty-five storeys up in 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The whole building is mine but things like ownership are now vague notions.
        I sat and I watched the morning arrive and I wondered if I’d ever see fire like that again. Smoke remained, rising from the crumbled ruins of a thirty-storey apartment block that had come down in the first week. This place needed saving, and after three weeks of being alone, I knew I couldn’t do it all  by myself.
        ‘Don’t go there alone,’ I said.
        There was a person alone down there in the street and I’m not sure if they were infected or not, but they were alone and walking and it seemed like they had no idea about the chase that was about to go down.
        It was a woman, I think. She was chased and they disappeared out of sight and whether she was infected or not, it was too late for her either way.
        That was this morning.
        Now, I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of a New York City police car.
        I’ve got the engine switched off. I’m hiding. There are at least six people after me. Chasing me. If you could call ‘chasers’ people—but why not, they were, once, and there’s every possibility that they will be again. The windows are fogged over and not for the first time I’m wondering if that’s a dead giveaway, like surely the empty cars don’t look like this. I try to breathe less.
        There’s a loud bang on the car next to mine, like a cricket ball’s hit the metal sheeting. There’s a scream, close by,  then gunfire.
        The long, staccato, machine-gun fire of an assault rifle. I watch the passenger windows to my right then something bumps against my car, slides down to the ground, wiping part of the frost and snow cover from the glass and replacing it with two even streaks of blood. They’re almost perfectly mirrored forms, like a Rorschach ink blot. I see a beautiful face there in that pattern, talking to me.
        There’s silence. Four minutes later there’s a single gunshot, a block away at least, this time the hollow sound of a pistol instead of the sharper crack-crack of an assault rifle. Twelve minutes later I wonder when I figured out the different sounds of firearms. Not the type of information that a sixteen year old from Melbourne is especially savvy with. I will wait until it’s been dead quiet for an hour before I make my move.
        I sink lower in the seat, my hand on the key in the ignition. The car’s in gear and the handbrake is off, so all I have to do is turn the key and floor the accelerator and I’ll be out of here. Not that driving away in the snow will particularly help against someone firing an assault rifle at me. Pity cop cars aren’t bullet proof, but things like that don’t worry me—if I could change anything, and believe me there’s a long list—something like
the defensive capabilities of a place or vehicle are right at the bottom.
        I hear voices outside the car. I’m still, hardly breathing. I listen to my heart, its rapid beat familiar to me now, and I can’t convince it to settle. I close my eyes and when I open them snow is falling hard. More time passes before I rub my index finger on my side window to make a little circle of clear glass to see through. I
can’t see anyone. I can’t hear anyone. I give it five minutes before I get out of the car and run north up Fifth Avenue.
        I turn right onto East 54th Street and go into a grocery store—dark, lit only by my torchlight. There are a dozen or so cell phones on the counter and floor, their boxes and packaging ripped open and scattered around, like someone has been  here searching for some measure of salvation. All the batteries are dead.
        I begin to fill two large canvas bags with a mix of canned goods. There’s a noise from the back of the shop and I stay still, my torch beam steady on the ground at my feet. I hear a shuffling noise, coming towards me. I want to run.
        It’s a dog. His big eyes shine back at me and his face looks friendly. I reach out to him but he growls, shows his teeth. He’s lean but not skeletal—he’s been scavenging something. I look through the isle of tinned food, take a couple of cans of frankfurts, pop them near him and tip them on the floor. He edges closer, sniffing the air, his eyes never leaving mine as I back away and get out of the store.
        The fire may be out but I carry something just as significant: radio handsets. Not just any—these operate on some special band that, unlike all other radio frequencies, does not have that woodpecker sound. For three weeks I’ve heard nothing but static and interference and silence on every radio and telephone that I’ve tried, and now these are…they’re a salvation of sorts. I found the two of them in the NBC security offices in 30 Rock. I wish I had three but it’s a start and I know better than anyone that wishes don’t come true in a hurry. I imagine what it would be like to hear another person’s voice over that radio.
        It’s time to go.