About the Book
It’s the same routine every night, and country music superstar Teddy Hayes wouldn’t have it any other way.
7:00 pm: Arena doors open and fans fill the stands.
7:45 pm: Lights go out and spotlights come on.
7:46 pm: Energy from concert-goers reaches an ear-spitting crescendo.
7:47 pm: Teddy takes the stage and begins to sing.
But tonight, something is off.
It starts when a stage light malfunctions and sends sparks into the air.
It continues when his drummer stops playing and stares slack-jawed in Teddy’s direction.
It dawns on him when a fan doubles-over and a red stain spreads across her shirt.
Something isn’t just off tonight.
Someone in the crowd is shooting a gun.
And it’s up to a female bodyguard he’s never met before to save his life.
Excerpt
Movement catches my eye, a blur of black here and gone before I can focus. My heart beats behind my eyes. Adrenaline pumps into my throat. Nothing in my body feels right or familiar. These things happen in other states and other towns. In churches and shopping malls, at gas stations and schools. They cover it on the news; it’s heartbreaking and frustrating, but it always happens to someone else.
It never happens to you.
People move like nervous mice, going everywhere and nowhere. They hide under chairs, kick at doors, step on each other, rush the aisles, look for an escape. A door opens. A flash of red goes off to my right; another gunshot, this one close to my ear. I duck and holler and half-crawl a few feet, survival instinct clawing upward to choke out every other emotion. A century passes in ten seconds. A hand grips my forearm tighter. A voice shouts in my ear.
“Move! Faster! Now!“
I trip over a shoe in the aisle, but the hand doesn’t let go. The shoe looks like a child’s, but there is no time to take a second glance. Blood. All I see is blood. A sunburst. An emptying of life. Red on black on white, a foreign flag inside a Seattle arena.
Why is a child’s shoe just lying on the floor?
A door opens, and I’m flung inside a room the size of a closet. My back slams against the far wall and I fall to the floor.
I think I hit my head.
Or maybe my head hit me.
I stare and stare and stare and stare.
I rock back and forth and forth and forth.
My heart swells in my chest and explodes like a hand grenade. Shrapnel goes everywhere and cuts everything in its path. My limbs, my brain, my throat, my lungs. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t move. I can’t see.
I rock and rock and rock and rock.
It’s pitch black in this room, but the nightmare is vivid.
People are dying out there, and it’s all my fault.
Review
Wow! I knew I wouldn’t want to put this down once I started, and I was so right. This was an intense read. Riveting and oh-so-good kind of intense. Amy Matayo always creates fabulous characters who draw me in, but there’s something extra magnetic about Teddy Hayes and has been since the beginning of the series. Sure, he’s got the whole country music superstar vibe—a man who knows he’s adored and plays up to it—but there’s always been this sense that he knows the fame thing isn’t real, if I can quote Julia Roberts from a certain movie. He’s just “a guy who likes music and figured out a way to make money doing it” with all the same annoying habits as the rest of us—and the same vulnerabilities, as it turns out.
And that’s what really upped the wow factor to this book—the vulnerabilities Matayo explored and the way the characters worked through them. The first part was full of suspense, with Teddy and Jane hiding for their lives in the pitch darkness of a closet under the stage Teddy had been performing on only a minute earlier. I loved the delicious irony in the way the physical darkness stripped away all outward trappings—looks, fame, wealth—and allowed them to be “seen” by the other in a clearer, more elemental way than they would have been had they met in broad daylight.
The second half of the story delves into the emotional aftermath as Teddy and Jane try to step back into the lives they had been living prior to the shooting, and this is where Matayo’s trademark raw authenticity shines. Teddy’s struggle to take to the stage again is heart-wrenching, but Jane helps him take baby steps towards overcoming his paralysing fear and guilt in what becomes a deeply satisfying story of the kind of love that goes so much deeper than physical attraction and right to the very core of what we all ultimately crave—to be seen and to matter, just as we are, weaknesses, warts, and all. And while the tone of the novel is definitely aimed at the general market, there are several times throughout the story that Matayo points to a God who is waiting to offer exactly that kind of love, no matter where we’ve been or what we’ve done.
All that is to say: Wow! Fabulous read! When’s the next one out?
I received a copy of this novel from the author. This has not influenced the content of my review, which is my honest and unbiased opinion.
About the Author
Author Amy Matayo is an excellent speaker, mathematician, seamstress, chef…and liar. She’s decent at writing books but not much else. Then again, the book thing makes her marginally cool and a whole lot intimidating.
Not really. Not even her kids are afraid of her.
She graduated with barely passing grades from John Brown University with a degree in Journalism. But she’s proud of that degree and all the ways she hasn’t put it to good use.
She laughs often, cries easily, feels deeply, and loves hard. She lives in Arkansas with her husband and four kids and is working on her next novel.
Fantastic review, Katie! I’m woefully behind on this series, but it’s definitely on my radar and my wish list. I love Amy’s books!
You’re in for a treat when you get there, Winnie!
There are so many authors I have not read before and this is one of them. Is this a series that needs to be read in order?