Harlequin E New Adult Romance Box Set Volume 1: Burning Moon\Girls' Guide to Getting It Together\Rookie in Love
Authors: Jo Watson
Three determined heroines, three wildly different men, all at one incredible price—$4.99. Share their joys, their frustrations, their adventures in these delicious new books:
Burning Moon
by Jo Watson—When her fiancé dumps her ten minutes before she’s supposed to walk down the aisle, Lilly goes a little…crazy. She also goes to Thailand. On the trip that was supposed to be her honeymoon, Lilly gets arrested, sets herself on fire, and maybe—just maybe—finds new love.
Girls’ Guide to Getting It Together
by Amber Lindley—Inspired by a confidence-boosting guide she finds in a magazine, Megan decides it’s time to transform her life. But she can’t even manage to buy a bra that fits or cook a real meal. What are the chances that number six—“Ask a guy who you think is way out of your league out on a date”—is going to lead to anything but disaster?
Rookie in Love
by Sarah White—Madeline’s family has her whole life mapped out for her. She’ll forget about her youthful dreams, marry a junior executive at her father’s company and produce some photogenic grandchildren. But, on the night of her twenty-first birthday, she meets Jackson. And Jackson changes everything….
Harlequin E New Adult Romance Box Set Volume 1
Burning Moon
by Jo Watson
Girls’ Guide to Getting It Together
by Amber Lindley
Rookie in Love
by Sarah White
Dear Reader,
We are very excited to introduce you to three bright new talents in our first New Adult Romance Box Set: Jo Watson, Amber Lindley and Sarah White. These three writers, along with the three writers we are publishing next month, are the winners of the Harlequin and Wattpad contest for new-adult romance series authors.
How did this come about? Wattpad (
www.wattpad.com
) is the world’s largest community for discovering and sharing stories. We teamed together with them to find authors writing new-adult romances. Entrants uploaded chapters online and were able to receive immediate feedback from Wattpad’s community of 24 million avid readers. Four winners were to be selected, but we were so impressed by the quality of the material that six writers were offered book deals with Harlequin’s new-adult digital romance series.
The winners are a diverse group from five different countries and four continents: Jo Watson of Johannesburg, South Africa, for
Burning Moon;
Amber Lindley of the United Kingdom for
Girls’ Guide to Getting It Together;
Sarah White of California, USA, for
Rookie in Love;
Melinda Di Lorenzo of British Columbia, Canada, for
Bad Reputation;
Claire Chilton of York, England, for
Hustle;
and Avril Tremayne of Sydney, Australia, for
The Contract
. In fact, Avril Tremayne, in a remarkable display of talent, was also a finalist in Harlequin’s So You Think You Can Write contest.
Needless to say we were thrilled by the talent, skill and imagination of the winners. I hope you enjoy the first collection and come back next month for the second round of winners!.
And if you are inspired to craft your own new-adult romance novel, we would love to see it. You can find our writing guidelines at
Harlequin.com
.
Happy reading!
Malle Vallik
Director, Digital Editorial Initiatives
Harlequin
Table of Contents
Girls’ Guide to Getting it Together
Burning Moon
By Jo Watson
Firstly to all my Wattpad readers! If it weren’t for you guys, I wouldn’t be writing this dedication in my very first published novel. Secondly, to my fiancé who spent
hours
discussing stories and characters with me. A big thanks to Jessica for all her input. And finally, Depeche Mode—many long nights, much need for loud music.
Prologue
“I’m sorry, I can’t.”
No matter how long I stared at the scribbled note, the meaning stayed the same. I held it up hoping, praying
,
that the sunlight would illuminate the other words that had been written in magic invisible ink.
But nothing appeared.
Just those four tiny little words…and yet, they had the power to bring my whole world crashing down around me in an instant. Splintering, shattering and exploding into a million little pieces. Yes, it was
that
dramatic!
I finally managed to pry my eyes from the note and found myself staring into the terrified faces of my two best friends. They were looking at me as if I was about to shave my head and then poke someone’s eye out with an umbrella. They looked very concerned. Like I was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.
And they were right.
I was.
Tick. Tick.
I was teetering on the brink of insanity. I could feel it trying to suck me in like an all-consuming black hole. The tug was almost too hard to fight.
Did I even want to fight it?
But what would happen if I let go? I knew I was in shock right now, drenched in a sort of numb, detached feeling. But I could feel the other hostile emotions bubbling their way to the surface and fighting to take control.
I blinked. My eyes were stinging.
I tried to open my mouth and speak.
It was dry and nothing came out.
I looked at my best friend Sue, my rock; the one person I could always rely on for help….
Nothing.
Not a word. Just horror.
I shifted my gaze to Val. She was the joker, the fun-loving rebel. She had the ability to turn even the most terrible situation into a laugh.
Again…nothing.
Just stupefied horror plastered across her now-ashen face.
I looked down at my shaking hands; they were crunching the corners of the note. My heart felt like it was going to break through the safe confines of my rib cage, taking my stomach and lungs with it.
And then I snapped. It overwhelmed me, rising up from the most primitive part of my soul where logic, rules and intellect wielded no power. This was a place of red, raw, uninhibited emotion.
And so I screamed at the top of my lungs until my voice went hoarse and my throat was raspy.
“Get me out of this dress. Get me out of it. Get it off!”
My desperate fingers franticly ripped at my wedding dress; a dress that had taken my two friends ten minutes to get me into, thanks to the intricate crisscross ribbons of the bodice. But I was trapped.
Sue and Val sprang into action, simultaneously grabbing at the stubborn ribbons, but it was taking too long. The air around me became too thick to breathe, and I felt like I was drowning.
“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. It’s too tight.”
Val made a move for the knife that had arrived earlier with the room service, and, without hesitation, she cut. The sound of the serrated knife eviscerating the ribbons was like fingernails down a blackboard; it made my skin crawl. But I could feel the bodice getting looser and looser, until it finally slipped down my aching body and pooled lifelessly on the floor.
I was finally free.
And then the tears came. Hot, wet, tears streaming down my cheeks and streaking my flushed skin with angry, black mascara lines. The tears turned to sobbing.
I looked at my dress, the pathetic puddle of ribbons, satin and beads lay at my feet. But I still felt trapped.
My hair!
The perfect updo, held together with delicate pearl clips. Suddenly, it felt like every strand of hair was tightening around my head, like a boa constrictor going in for the kill. My fingers ripped, desperately trying to free it from its pearly captives.
I wanted to get the pearl clips removed. Gone. Off. I wanted to rub every single trace of the wedding away.
I pulled out my earrings and grabbed the nearest tissue, rubbing my red lipstick off until my lips hurt. It smeared across my face like an ugly rash.
If someone were standing outside the window looking in, they would have pegged me for a crazy person. And I wouldn’t have blamed them. Because somewhere in the back of my now-estranged rational brain, I knew I looked like a lunatic escaped from a mental asylum. But I didn’t know what else to do….
Because he…
Michael Edwards—fiancé of one year, perfect boyfriend of two—had left me, Lilly Swanson, just ten minutes before I was scheduled to walk down the aisle. The bottle of perfume that he’d wanted me to wear today, insisted I wear, because “it was his favorite,” mocked me from the dressing table. So I picked it up and threw it against the wall, watching it shatter into a million pieces, just like my life. I was hit by the sickly sweet smell of jasmine and felt sick to my stomach.
What was I going to tell the five-hundred guests who were sitting in the church waiting for me? Some had even flown here to South Africa all the way from Australia.
Hi everyone. Thanks for coming. Guess what? SURPRISE! No wedding!
A wedding that my father had spent a small fortune on.
A wedding that was going to be perfect.
Perfect, dammit.
Perfect!
I’d made sure of that. I had painstakingly handled every single tiny detail. It had taken months and months of meticulous planning to create this day, and now what?