BooksChatter: ☀ Claire Daly: Reluctant Soul Saver: The Soul Saver [1]

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Claire Daly: Reluctant Soul Saver, a Young Adult Paranormal Romance by Michele Brouder (20 September 2015,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
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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.

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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).
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