Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Excerpt & Tour: High Hopes by Sue Lilley


Title: High Hopes
Author: Sue Lilley
Genre/Age: Contemporary Romance/Adult
Series: None
Publisher: Self-published
Links: Goodreads
Synopsis: “It was one stolen night. He was my soulmate and I’d never felt more alive. I couldn’t tell him I got pregnant. It would’ve ruined everything. But now his daughter wants to meet him and I need to make things right.” Another tear escaped down her cheek. “Everybody’s going to hate me.”

Three friends are rocked when a 20-year secret blows their world apart. Steamy, passionate, and unpredictable. If you like sizzling love triangles you won’t want to miss it.

Grace has kept her heart-breaking secret for twenty years – a love child she gave up for adoption. She was a penniless student - how could she raise a baby alone? Then she receives a letter out of the blue. Her long-lost daughter is searching for answers. 

Her two best friends are married and don’t know one of them is the girl’s father. If Grace confesses now, the marriage will be destroyed and it will surely be the end of their lifelong friendship. But what choice does Grace have?

Set in the wilds of Poldark-country – the stormy cliffs and windswept beaches of picturesque Cornwall – an engrossing saga filled with suspense, simmering jealousy and heartbreak. Can a future be built on the quicksand of secrets and lies? Surely there can be no second chances when three friends discover they don’t know each other at all.

Danny found her in the cobbled lane, outside the higgledy-piggledy house she’d been drawn to the other day. Tanned and fit in scuffed Levis and a fresh grey T-shirt, he kissed her on the cheek. Apart from the desire to bury her face in the dried-on-the-line smell of his shoulder, even he couldn’t distract her.
“There’s something about this house,” she said.
“Something spooky, if you ask me. Reminds me of secret passages and scary ghosts of dead smugglers.”
Yet she found it so compelling. Long abandoned, it was downright gloomy, facing away from the harbour and the morning sun. The green paint on the tiny windows in the three narrow storeys of weather-beaten stone, was now blistered with age and neglect. Even the gate had rotted from its hinges. But she pushed it open anyway.
“You’re not going up there? Have you seen the state of those steps?”
Granted, they were a bit uneven, the edges crumbling and slimy with moss. But she wasn’t stupid. She’d be careful.
“Maybe you’d better come with me and hold my hand.”
The steep flight of steps was wildly impractical but led round the house to a tiny walled square at the back.
“An actual courtyard,” she sighed.
“An actual rubbish tip!”
“But it’s west facing. It’ll be a perfect sun-trap in the afternoons. And look, there’s a view of the harbour over the rooftops.”
“That’s not a view, it’s a sliver! What are you doing?”
“Ringing the estate agent to get an appointment. I want to see inside.”
“You’re not thinking of buying this dump?”
“It has massive potential, either to do up and flip, or maybe as a holiday rental. I wouldn’t have to live in it.”
Yet she was thinking about it. She couldn’t explain it. Nobody in their right mind would take on a place like this. And she wasn’t even in the market for a house in Cornwall.
“I can get the keys tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll be surprised if they can find them under all the layers of dust.”
They negotiated the steps back down and sat on the wall outside. She noticed something carved in the stone and scratched the moss with her nail.
“How wonderful! The house is called High Hopes.”
“Are you sure?” Crouching in front of the carving, he scraped more moss away. “The High House. That’s more like it.”
“Shame. I love the idea of a house full of hope. It’s sad to see it abandoned like this.”
“Getting romantic about a house? Is that an age thing or a girl thing, in general? Maybe I’d better come with you tomorrow to stop you throwing away your money…”
Described as an exciting new voice in Women’s Fiction, Sue Lilley lives in the north east of England, when she isn’t escaping somewhere else in her imagination. She is often found eavesdropping for inspiration. Her first two novels were well received. Another Summer is “an alluring example of its genre”. High Hopes is “a story that holds immense appeal for readers who like plots containing sizzling love triangles.” She is hard at work on her third novel.

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