Title: Paper Souls
Author: Allie Burke
Series: Stand Alone
Genre: Dark Literary Fiction
Publisher: Booktrope
Release Date: Sept 9 2014
Edition/Formats Available In: eBook & Print
Blurb/Synopsis:
From the author of the bestselling genre-defining Enchanters series, comes a new literary tour de force about Emily, a young woman balancing two worlds between her fingertips: the one that is real to her and the one that is real to everyone else…
The question is: which one will she choose?
Never romanticizing what it means to be a twenty-something schizophrenic in a world broken by normalcy and half-baked fairytales, Allie Burke’s latest novel unites Emily and her world at large spanning from the streets of Russia, to the sheets of her bed, to the idiosyncratic comfort she gets from worlds that don’t exist at all.
Woven with angst and darkness, bursting with heartache, Paper Souls tells of the irreparably damaged and broken, and how they survive.
Book Links
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Books A Million (BAM)
Author Information
An American novelist, book critic, and magazine editor from Burbank, California, Allie Burke writes books she can’t find in the bookstore. Having been recognized as writing a “kickass book that defies the genre it’s in”, Allie writes with a prose that has been labeled poetic and ethereal.
Her life is a beautiful disaster, flowered with the harrowing existence of inherited eccentricity, a murderous family history, a faithful literature addiction, and the intricate darkness of true love. These are the enchanting experiences that inspire Allie’s fairytales.
From some coffee shop in Los Angeles, she is working on her next novel.
Author Links
Excerpt 4
In that moment that she gazed down at him, taking in his soft features, Emily truly believed she would never see Brendan again. That their years of a practically silent friendship would be for naught, because he loved her, but the universe wouldn’t let her have him. Because the universe didn’t grant beautiful things like Brendan Tanner. Not to girls like Emily. Over time, she forgot that she ever had this thought. And once, in the many years that followed, when she remembered, she wished more than anything that she had kept it in mind. That Emily Colt wasn’t good enough for Brendan Tanner and never would be.
You’re never going to forgive me for this, she said. I’m sorry.
She kissed him. His lips were warm. His mouth on fire.
Emily was on fire.
His hand was on her neck, choking her. She had never been choked in a sexual situation, or in any situation, before. She invited the pain. Any feeling was better than the absence of it, and every day she craved the kind of physical connection laced with the chemistry that currently passed between them. This physical feeling was the best that Emily had ever had.
He rose from the ground and, with his other hand, he squeezed her hip. Emily screamed. He was on top of her; the center console dug into her spine. She unconsciously arched her back, rising to his stiffness. He groaned, tightening his grip and biting her bottom lip hard.
He pulled away and took her by the hands and pulled her out of the car. He wrapped her in his arms. Over his shoulder, the moon was full.
Beautiful night, Emily whispered.
You’re beautiful, he replied.
That was the last and only time Brendan ever told Emily she was beautiful.
