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Friday 13 November 2015

☀ Claire Daly: Reluctant Soul Saver: The Soul Saver [1] - Michele Brouder

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Claire Daly: Reluctant Soul Saver, a Young Adult Paranormal Romance by (,Michele Brouder, 204 pages).

This is the first book in The Soul Saver series.

**Grab your copy from Amazon for only 99 pence / cents until 19 November 2015!!!**

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and excerpt below, as well as our Q&A with author Michele Brouder. Read the first two chapters with Amazon Look Inside. Claire Daly: Reluctant Soul Saver is FREE on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner's Lending Library.

Author Michele Brouder will be awarding a Gift Pack (containing a $25 Amazon Gift Card, a copy of Claire Daly: Reluctant Soul Saver, a book mark, a coffee mug, and some other stuff for 'readers' from the author), and three (3) copies of Claire Daly: Reluctant Soul Saver by Michele Brouder to a randomly drawn winners via Rafflecopter during the tour.   Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other interviews (ℚ), reviews (✍) and guest blog posts (✉).

Synopsis | Teaser | Author Q&A | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops


Synopsis

When seventeen year-old librarian wannabe Claire Daly is dragged kicking, screaming and cursing from everything she loves—her mam, her cozy Irish village and the dreamy boy next door—to take up arms in the battle of good versus evil, she learns the hard way that sometimes you don’t get to choose your own destiny, destiny chooses you.

Claire’s life plan is simple: head off to university to get her degree in library studies, summon up the courage to tell her best friend Chas that she loves him and live happily ever after. She never once entertained the idea that she might possess divine powers, that she might be predestined to battle Hell’s demons, or, to complicate matters further, that another love of many lives past might turn up on her doorstep.

But life doesn’t always go as planned, and when a co-worker is viciously attacked by a demon and her own family threatened, Claire must face the truth: she is called to a higher purpose and has no choice but to answer. Claire sets aside her dreams and begins learning how to deal with the Unholy once and for all.

Armed with only a crash course in soul saving and her wits, she gears up for the ultimate show down in Hell. But will it be enough?

Teaser: Excerpt

1

A mixture of horror and disbelief washed over me as I stared down at my hands. I was helping Gran collect water from the holy well and some of it had splashed onto me, making my hands feel tingly and warm. Then, to my growing alarm, a bright white light began to radiate from my fingertips. Flippin’ hell! The plastic on the water bottles that I’d been filling began to melt and I dropped them. Holy water splashed everywhere, covering my legs and my feet. Soon they began to tingle, too, and the strange, brilliant light streamed from my lower extremities. It became so intense that I couldn’t look at it.
      “Gran!” I shrieked.
      I heard the familiar, put-upon sigh that was Gran’s trademark. She was in the middle of doing the pattern around the holy well. I knew, under penalty of death, that I was never to interrupt her when she was in the middle of her prayers. But I felt that this qualified under the heading ‘Exceptions,’ especially since I was beginning to look like one of the many paintings in her house of haloed saints with rays of light emanating from their bodies.
      She turned, took one look at me and declared, “Oh.” Her reaction was underwhelming, to say the least. Given my luminescence, I had expected something a little more hysterical, to match my own rising panic. An image of a skull and crossbones and the word poison floated before my eyes.
      The ground began to fizz and sizzle where the ray of light touched it and I unwittingly raised my hand in Gran’s direction. She ducked out of the way as the beam from my fingertips landed on the icon of our village, a centuries-old oak tree. The Crooked Tree of Saint Columba was massive in height and width and had guided travelers for as far back as anyone could remember. Like a laser, the stream of light sliced across the tree’s trunk, causing it to fall over in one great whoosh. It lay on its side, smoke rising in tendrils from its wound.
      Oh. My. God.
      “We’d better get home,” Gran said quietly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to go around knocking down ancient trees. She gathered up the empty bottles, abandoning the collection of the holy water. It took a good shove and a command from her to move me. “C’mon, Claire, we need to get out of here.”
      “But what about my hands?” I protested.
      “Never mind that,” she said, jamming her rosary into her pocket and scurrying toward the exit.
      It was easy for her to say. She wasn’t leaving a path of destruction in her wake.
      Gravel crunched beneath my feet as I followed her out through the wrought-iron gate. Despite her tiny frame— she was hardly wide enough to bless herself— Gran’s stride was one of purpose and expedience, like Cromwell marching through Ireland. I had more of a lumbering gait, being a six-footer with big feet.
      A quick glance back over my shoulder showed me that the holy well of Saint Columba looked as it always had: a simple affair of a weathered stone arch over a pool of water, said to have sprung up fifteen hundred years ago. In the alcove was a life-sized statue of the saint himself, who had converted a pagan chieftain at this very spot. It all looked so harmless and ordinary. After all, there were hundreds of these holy wells scattered all over Ireland, and I was pretty sure that Gran had dragged me to most of them.
      “Claire Mary Daly!” Gran called. “Let’s go!”
      By the time I reached the car, Gran was already buckling herself into the passenger seat of her ten-year-old teal-colored Toyota. I pulled open the other door and fell into the driver’s seat. Traffic zipped along the roadway but there were no other cars parked at the curb. Since Granddad’s death seven months earlier, it had been my job to drive Gran all over town, mostly to buy discounted items and go to Mass. Lots of Masses. I could think of a hundred better ways to spend my summer.
      I slumped forward until my head rested against the steering wheel.
      “Not now, we don’t have time for that,” Gran said sharply. Slowly, I lifted my head off the steering wheel and stared at her.
      “What about my hands?” I asked again.
      “They’re all right now,” she said simply. “Look.” I forced myself to look at them and was relieved to see that they were back to normal.
      Shaking, I turned to her in the seat next to me and asked, “What was that all about?”
      “Not here, Claire,” she said, looking around. “We need to leave before someone sees us. Can you drive?”
      I turned the key in the ignition, stepped on the clutch and threw the gear into Reverse, anxious to put distance between myself and the holy well. I didn’t know what bothered me more: the peculiar light that had emanated from my hands or the fact that Gran had remained so calm, as if it were an everyday occurrence.

Claire Daly: Reluctant Soul Saver
Available NOW!

UK: purchase from Amazon.co.uk US: purchase from Amazon.com purchase from Barnes & Noble find on Goodreads

About the Author

I was born in western New York, the oldest of 5. I've loved reading since I was very little. From the age of 9, I've wanted to be a writer. In high school, I wrote a lot of angst-ridden civil war dramas ala Gone With The Wind, knowing more about the Battle of the Bull Run than a normal teenager should know. I dabbled in writing after that but didn't get serious about it until 2006, when I decided that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I've had many interesting jobs but my passion has always been writing.
I lived in Ireland from 2006-2013 with my husband and 2 boys. We moved back to the US and settled in Florida briefly (2 years) before returning back to Ireland in August 2015.

Follow Michele Brouder:

Visit the author's blog Visit the author's website Visit the author on Facebook Visit the author on Twitter Visit the author on GoodReads Visit the author on Pinterest

Giveaway and Tour Stops

Enter to win a Gift Pack (containing a $25 Amazon Gift Card, a copy of Claire Daly: Reluctant Soul Saver, a book mark, a coffee mug, and some other stuff for 'readers' from the author (INT)), OR one of three (3) copies of Claire Daly: Reluctant Soul Saver by Michele Brouder (INT).
Remember to comment to win!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow Claire Daly: Reluctant Soul Saver's tour at:

Nov 9 A Book Addict’s Bookshelves
Nov 9 Bibliobibuli YA
Nov 10 Lisa T Cresswell
Nov 10 Hope to Read
Nov 10 Opinionated Cupcakes
Nov 11 Booklovercircumspect4
Nov 11 Driftless
Nov 12 Crystal’s Chaotic Confessions
Nov 12 Books and Ladders
Nov 12 Diana’s Book Reviews
Nov 12 Cover2Cover
Nov 13 BooksChatter
Nov 13 Bemused Bookworm
Nov 13 A Dream Within A Dream
Nov 13 125Pages
Nov 16 Becca’s Book Affair
Nov 16 Her Book Thoughts!
Nov 16 Cassandra M’s Place
Nov 16 Dani Reviews Things
Nov 16 Reading Addict
Nov 17 Rockin’ Book Reviews
Nov 17 Mama Reads Hazel Sleeps
Nov 17 Chapter by Chapter ✍ ℚ
Nov 17 Wonderland Novels
Nov 18 Painted Words Reviews
Nov 18 Writer’s Alley
Nov 18 Kelly P’s Blog
Nov 18 Books, Cats, and Caffeine
Nov 18 Realm of the Sapphired Dragon
Nov 19 Jorie Loves A Story
Nov 19 Books of Love
Nov 19 Reading is Better With Cupcakes
Nov 19 Savings in Seconds
Nov 19 WS Momma Readers Nook
Nov 20 The Avid Book Collector
Nov 20 Illuminite Caliginosus
Nov 20 Katie’s Stories
Nov 20 jennifermeaton.com
Nov 20 OriginiquEquanimity
Nov 20 I’m Shelfish

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for having me here today! Good Luck to all the entrants!

Ben said...

Thank you for sharing, great post! I like the sound of this book