Blog Tour - Excerpt & Giveaway - Keeping Claudia by Suzanne McKenna Link




Keeping Claudia 

Suzanne McKenna Link

(Toby & Claudia #2)
Publication date: June 1st 2017
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance



How do you love someone whose past goes against everything you’ve ever known or trust in a future you’ve yet to believe in?
Back home in a town she once fled, headstrong Claudia Chiametti returns to the arms of the only guy ever to awaken her heart. Everything about Toby contradicts her family’s traditions and values, but she’s ready to take a chance on love.
Toby Faye is a new man, and the girl he’s long dreamed of is finally within his reach. With Claudia’s help, he’s put the past behind him. But one last secret hides in the dark corner of his past. The one that could undermine it all.
Can Claudia love him unconditionally … or will the truth cost Toby what he wants most?
Keeping Claudia is the emotional finale to the love story that began in Saving Toby, an unforgettable journey of a couple who discover the only way to love someone is with an open heart.
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love is hard.

Full length, Contemporary Love Story.

Recommended Reading Age 18+

Though part of a series, may be read as standalone.

“Keeping Claudia” excerpt, Toby POV

I was born in the fall, an October baby. Julia used to retell the story each year of how she’d sweltered through the heat, her belly swollen with me, through an unbearably hot Indian summer twenty-four years ago. How happy she’d been when the cooling weather of October finally came, and I entered the world. She’d said anyone born at that time of year was destined to bring harmony and peace. She said she’d known it the moment I was born.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
The new porch I’d finished last month was like a clean shirt on a dirty child. The house cried out for attention, but over the years, like a quiet child used to being ignored, it rarely got any. My family had been too busy hiding behind its closed doors to pay it much mind. My father with his drinking and heavy-handed rule, my brother with his violent outbursts, and my mother ambling through her grief and sickness, had used the house as a refuge from the rest of the world.
I’d spent years feeling alone inside the worn walls of the house before me, but I hadn’t really understood what it was to be truly alone until Julia died. It’d been two years since her death. Gone were the demoralizing smackdowns and a widow who had all but given up her will to live.
Nothing left behind but empty solitude.
Except now, there was another car parked out front, and like the other houses on the block on those quickly darkening fall evenings, my house was warmly illuminated.
Claudia was inside, waiting for me. For the first time, I wanted to go home—couldn’t wait to get there.
The weather had cooled as it did every year, the typical precursor to my birthday.
Twenty-four put me halfway between leaving high school and hitting the big three-oh, the land of adulthood where fuck-ups were less tolerated.
From the outside, things looked good. I had a house and a good job and was in a solid relationship with a girl I loved. In a few months, we’d celebrate the holidays—our first together. However, I had this phantom feeling there was supposed to be more; that something was missing. I just didn’t know what it was.


Author Bio:
Suzanne McKenna Link works for a family of newspapers that cover events in and around the South Shore of Long Island, New York. She lives in the town of Sayville with her husband and two children.
SAVING TOBY is her debut novel. The literary love story follows the moving journey of a damaged young man and his love for a girl who might just save him. An avid interest in psychology has Suzanne digging deep into the reasons for her characters’ behaviors. The native Long Islander is fascinated by the how and why of people’s actions. As a result, her characters come to life on the pages.

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5 comments:

  1. Thanks for being on the tour! :)

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  2. Thanks for hosting me on Silence is Read. Such a cool blog — so high tech!

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  3. Keeping Claudia was an amazing read. The characters grab you and don't let go. This one is a keeper- Deborah Garland

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