Title: Beautifully
Awake
Author: Riley
Mackenzie
Genre: Adult
Contemporary Romance
Release
Date: October 2, 2013
Synopsis
Diagnosis: Sleep-running
Treatment: Truth
Prognosis: Beautifully Awake
Lili Porter hates the rain. Bad things happen in the
rain. As a small town social worker dedicated to protecting children, she is
forced to start over to escape her rural disaster. Determined to follow her
father’s advice—head up and chin high—Lili finds herself in a new city, taking
on a new system, this time healthcare. In doing so, she gets something she
never expected, an intimate behind-the-scenes look at life in the hospital.
Lili learns that a surgeon’s hands have the power to
heal more than physical wounds. And a prescription for truth can cure three
years of sleep running and leave you beautifully awake.
Excerpt
He was already dressed for
the OR in his scrubs, looking ... amazing. The beat beneath my chest started
again and my mouth watered, as I not so subtly roamed his body with my hungry
eyes. All I wanted was to feel his body against mine, get lost in where I ended
and he began. It was all I’d ever want. Forever. I finally got what he meant
every time he said mine. He was mine.
“See
something you like?” He smirked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Baby, if you don’t stop looking at me like that I’m never gonna get out
of here.”
“Truth.
Sounds perfect to me.” Now I smirked.
“Ahh fuck,
you’re killing me. You know scrubs don’t hide a hard-on very well.”
I laughed.
He had a point there.
Leaning down, he kissed my nose. “Text you in a bit, see how your day is
going...”
“K.”
Review
My rating = 4 stars
*ARC provided by the authors in exchange for my honest review
This is a wonderful debut book and start to the Beautifully
Awake series by new writing duo, Riley Mackenzie. I must admit the blurb didn’t
grab me or the title (too many books called Beautiful something or other) but
once I started reading I was hooked. It was a fabulous contemporary/part erotic
romance with a smouldering and dominant sexy male and a feisty and sassy
female. But the smouldering and dominant sexy male was the winning factor for
me and the reason my nose kept pressed to my kindle for the duration. Oh and
what a duration!
Lili Porter left her hometown three years ago after a traumatic
experience and moved to Philadelphia where she works as a case manager. She’s,
as she calls it – sleep running – running from her past, her demons and
herself. She loves the hustle and bustle of the busy hospital workload and
changes of rotations each month brings her into contact with a different set of
doctors, surgeons and work colleagues. She likes to keep her mind active so she
won’t think back to that dark time. But then she meets the new Chief of
Neurosurgery – Dr Chase Colton and let’s just say he is a man of many personas –
my favourites being Dr Possessive, Dr Intense and Dr Sexy. She cannot believe
the attraction she feels for this domineering man but his touch set her love
button into overdrive! What was once so closed and securely shut, pushes her
into a mass of feelings she didn’t think she ever could feel.
Dr Chase Colton was smoking hot. He was a man who knew what
he wanted, how to go get it and he didn’t take no crap from anyone. He was the
ultimate mighty alpha male who made others quake in their boots with just one
look, one bark of an order. But underneath all this manliness and attitude was
a man so lost, and so desperately seeking redemption but which he feels he does
not deserve after what had happened in his past. But then he spots the case
manager, Lilli, who he was going to chastise for her tardiness and missing the
6am round when she turns to him and he spots the blue eyes. His Blue….
Oh I am so freaking out but I loved this character, Chase.
He was just perfect with his alpha aura and his tight ass in those scrubs. Rawr!
The secondary characters were also well developed such as
Sierra, Lili’s best friend, who was fun and the kind of BFF we all should have.
The way she just said as she saw it had me snorting into the kindle. I loved
Guy, one of the docs on Lili’s rotation and who she had at one time considered
having a fling with. He sounded delish and cracked me up with his flirtations
and his “Hey there doll”. Ash, Chase’s best bud, was so cool and …yes another
hottie! So glad to see he will be in the next book.
I liked that this was based in a hospital – yes we all like
to fantasise about the hot surgeons in their scrubs and those clever hands! I
think this was the first book in a long line for me that has featured a
surgeon, so I liked it was a little different.
So if I liked the storyline and loved the characters why not
a fantastic five rating? Well for me it was a little too long and a good claw
back could have packed a bigger punch. I also was gritting my teeth a little at
the epilogue which wasn’t really an epilogue for me and it felt a tad too rushed.
Other than that I loved reading this and would definitely
read it again. I need more Chase. Truth!
Buy links
Meet the Authors
Yep. That's an “s.” There are two of us!
We’re East coast girls separated by Long Island Sound who met in Physician
Assistant School and have been besties ever since. We can safely say that
thirteen miles of water does not get in the way because we talk or text, no exaggeration,
at least 150 times a day. No, really, we do—about everything and nothing.
Shockingly, we never (we mean never) run out of things to say. Umm, ever. We
definitely laugh A LOT and we’re a tad sarcastic. And if we’re being totally
honest, one or two people might have, on occasion, used our names and
‘dramatic’ in the same sentence. But it’s hard to trust the sources since they
married us.
It only took twelve years, two husbands, five kids,
two dogs, and a two-week vacation in Cape Cod later to decide the romance world
needed a splash of medicine. Write what you know.
So you can easily find us at 4 o'clock on Bank Street beach with a glass of
cold Prosecco brainstorming. And guaranteed if we bump into you, literally,
it’s only because our iPhones are glued to our hands (totally out of our
control) either writing or editing our next novel (and yes, it is possible to
do from your iPhone, we mastered it … damn those straight quotations).
When we are not working on our book or reading the
latest angsty romance on our kindles, you basically name it and we have it
going on. Soccer, lacrosse, golf, swimming, dance, gymnastics, football, chess,
baseball, basketball, skiing, ice skating, school, homework, and more
school.
Oh yeah, did we forget to mention our careers in medicine?
Needless to say, we realized fast that something had
to go, so we opted for sleep. It’s completely overrated (yet so AMAZING) and
delirium makes everything funnier. Good thing we share a brain and can pretty
much complete each other’s sentences (definitely weird, we know), otherwise it
might have taken us two years to write Beautifully Awake rather than one.
So that’s our story, who we are … just add AUTHORS to
the list!
Connect with the Authors
Giveaway
Grand Prize: Kindle
Paperwhite
(5) Signed Paperbacks of
Beautifully Awake (US Only)
(5) $5 Starbuck's Gift Cards
Thank you SO much for posting and for your awesome review! xo RM
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