REVIEW and GIVEAWAY
What I Did for Love
by Mickey J. Corrigan
What I Did for Love by Mickey J. Corrigan is currently on tour with Xpresso Book Tours. The tour stops here today for my review, an excerpt, and a giveaway. Please be sure to visit the other tour stops as well.
Description
What happens when a teacher falls for her student?
After her seventeen-year-old student fails to live up to his potential in class, Cathriona O’Hale conducts a parent teacher meeting with the boy’s widowed father. He is attractive, intelligent, and exceedingly wealthy, everything an unmarried middle-aged woman would normally find appealing.
But Cath is not your average forty-something. She’s a wild card who has a crush on the man’s teenage son.
Cath finds herself juggling father and son while battling the true source of her lust and forbidden love. So when the father of the object of her obsession proposes, she has a choice to make:
Love or crime?
And when her decision is made, the consequences might just be deadly …
Book Video
Excerpt
Mojito, the drink of my choice. My heart and my reason, my loss of reason. So wrong for me. But now, without Mojito, my life is an empty glass.
Mojito is not his real name, of course. It is the pseudonym I will use while I tell you this story. To protect his reputation. He was not of age.
Gasp. You are horrified? Well, that is my point, you see. To draw you in with the tawdry steam of my situation, my obsession, my bad choices.
What I mean to say is, picture this: under a gaudy blue sky, a tanned young man in colorful board shorts lopes across the hot white sand to the turquoise Florida surf. A tall golden lightly muscled teenager, fully emerged from boyhood, but not yet a hardened man. Imagine watching him toss the shiny yellow board into the clutch of the aqua waves and jump on. He lays flat, paddles out. Deftly shaking the sea from his eyes and hair. Wet, joyful, like a young seal. So carefree, strong, full of spirit. Full of life.
Got that? Now, imagine this: a middle-aged woman standing alone on the tideline, staring at the distant horizon. Thirsty, licking at her sun-dried lips. Wearing a broad-brimmed hat to shade her fine skin. Her freckles. Her (dear God) wrinkles.
You see now?
Was he the first young man I lusted after? No. I'd wanted others before him. So he had a precursor? He did, of course. I've loved many men over the years, men younger than I. In fact, I always preferred my men unseasoned. Even as a high school junior and senior, I liked the middle school boys with their wide eyes and virginal smiles. I kicked my cheerleader legs high for those kids seated passively in the stadium. I lured them in, the ripening jocks. By their freshman year, many of them had already been mine.
And in college? I did not respond to the creative writing professor who called me to his weed-hazy office in order to ogle my model figure and make suggestive comments on my work. No, thank you. Unlike the other coeds, I did not worship the ice hockey studs with their bearish manes and campus swagger. Instead, I had my heart set on the genius kid. You know, the four-eyed geek who skipped high school to breeze through college on a three-year track. I wanted his black-framed glasses on the floor beside my futon. I wanted his serious little face pressed against my naked skin.
That's how it's always been for me. Give me the boys, burning young and bright. Hold me up to these hot new suns and bake me to a crisp. After, I will cover myself with coconut crème and soak in tequila and lime.
But this Mojito, he was nothing but a typical American surf rat, you say? Not true. When the ride was high, he slipped away to test and retest his body and his prowess. Yes, he did. But he worked hard between wave sessions. High school senior by day, plus community college classes at night, studying on weekends for the SATs. He wasn't slacking. Too energetic for that, too full of plans for his blazing future.
My mouth is so dry. It needs wetting. The drink I crave, however, is not available. Will never be available again.
Back then in that dream, I slaked myself as often as possible. I lived high above the unfurling sea in a castle on the sugary sand, he in his father's princedom on the peaceful Intracoastal Waterway. I know, my prose here is laughable. But you can always count on a seductive murderess to have a book in her. We always do, you see.
So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please take a hard look at exhibit A. Mojito, there in the distance on his colorful surfboard, glorious in the glance of the afternoon sun. The salt water glistening on his hairless chest. Toothpaste smile gleaming against the blue green water. Honey blond hair long as a girl's, but prettier. Wet trunks clinging to seaside thighs.
And me, here at the defense table. Pale, withering. Juiceless. Dry, so very dry.
He was a child, you say? Ha. He was seventeen. Smart. Aware. Sexy. Jacked on testosterone, full of passion. He had so much to look forward to. He was beauty. He was youth. Energy. Vitality. Everything that is irresistible to old age.
And me? I was incapable of resisting his youth-soaked charms. Because there I was, looking ahead to what? To growing only older. My lord, I was gripped by a funhouse mirror. I saw myself warped, in crisis, tumbling ever faster down the bumpy hill from forty. A woman alone, trying to survive the avalanche of aging, buried alive in unquenched desire.
On that, you see, I rest my case.
My story is, of course, a tangle of roses, stones, and broken glass. Someone had to bleed.
[Want more? Click below to read a longer excerpt.]
Praise for the Book
“Deliciously decadent, sometimes shocking, often hilarious, and always entertaining, Mickey J. Corrigan’s What I Did for Love is a delightful read.” ~ Alicia Dean, award-winning author of the Northland Crime Chronicles
“A wild, hilarious send-up of Lolita. This time the sexes are reversed and the poor boy is no match for What I Did for Love's deliciously demented protagonist.” ~ Jade Bos, Hookers or Cake
“‘Someone had to bleed,’ Mickey J. Corrigan writes in her latest crime thriller, What I Did for Love. Well, they had to do much more than bleed, but her twisted novels always put a satisfied smile on my face.” ~ Michael Cantwell, True Justice
“I really enjoyed Mickey’s writing style. It is fluid, engaging, flows at the right pace and has you on the edge of your seat as you hold your breath throughout waiting to see how it all is going to unfold. It does so with a twist that even though I saw coming did not hinder my enjoyment of the book. Mickey has taken what for some may be an uncomfortable topic and has created a very believable story that lets face it really does happen out there.” ~ Marnie Harrison
“A first-rate psychological story with an ending that isn't what I thought it would be.” ~ Bev
My Review
By Lynda Dickson
Cath is being courted by the father of one of her students. However, she’s more interested in the son than the father. Maybe she can use this situation to her advantage?
Given the subject matter, the story is at times a bit confronting. However, while there are sex scenes, there is no graphic detail. Our narrator has a great voice, speaking directly to the reader (e.g., “Ladies and gentlemen, you've been amazingly patient with me up to this point in my discourse.”). She hints at things to come, creating suspense and anticipation while maintaining the reader’s interest. You probably won’t like her, but you will want to find out what happens to her.
Warnings: coarse language, sex scenes, excessive alcohol consumption.
Some of My Favorite Lines
“… when Mojito said my name, my heart skipped rope. Quickly, happily, like a giddy child.”
“Had he been passing off others' work as his own? Now that's low, stealing from dead poets. What a cheat! I so hate plagiarism. Do your own work, people. Writing is extraordinarily hard, and most writers make very little money. Not fair ripping them off!”
About the Author
Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes pulp fiction, literary crime, and psychological thrillers. Her stories have been called “gritty realism”, “oh so compulsive” reads, and “bizarre but believable”. Her novellas and novels have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Salt Publishing in the UK released her satirical crime novel about a school shooting in 2017.
Giveaway
Enter the tour-wide giveaway for a chance to win one of 10 ebook copies of What I Did for Love by Mickey J. Corrigan.
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