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Making Faces
by Amy Harmon
Ambrose Young was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that graced the covers of romance novels, and Fern Taylor would know. She’d been reading them since she was thirteen. But maybe because he was so beautiful he was never someone Fern thought she could have . . . until he wasn’t beautiful anymore.
Making Faces is the story of a small town where five young men go off to war, and only one comes back. It is the story of loss. Collective loss, individual loss, loss of beauty, loss of life, loss of identity. It is the tale of one girl’s love for a broken boy, and a wounded warrior’s love for an unremarkable girl. This is a story of friendship that overcomes heartache, heroism that defies the common definitions, and a modern tale of Beauty and the Beast, where we discover that there is a little beauty and a little beast in all of us.
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★ Age Group/Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary Romance
★ Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
★ Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
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The crowd went instantly quiet as Ambrose took the
microphone, waiting for what was sure to be a highly entertaining massacre of
the national anthem. Ambrose was known for his strength, his good looks, and
his athletic prowess, but nobody had ever heard him sing. The silence was
saturated with giddy expectation. Ambrose pushed his hair back and then shoved
his hand in his pocket as if he was uncomfortable. Then he fixed his eyes on
the flag and began to sing.
The crowd went instantly quiet as Ambrose took the
microphone, waiting for what was sure to be a highly entertaining massacre of
the national anthem. Ambrose was known for his strength, his good looks, and
his athletic prowess, but nobody had ever heard him sing. The silence was
saturated with giddy expectation. Ambrose pushed his hair back and then shoved
his hand in his pocket as if he was uncomfortable. Then he fixed his eyes on
the flag and began to sing.
“Oh,
say can you see by the dawn's early light . . .” Again, there was an audible
gasp from the audience. Not because it was bad, but because it was wonderful.
Ambrose Young had a voice fitting of the package it was encased in. It was
smooth and deep and impossibly rich. If dark chocolate could sing, it would
sound like Ambrose Young. Fern shivered as his voice wrapped around her like an
anchor, lodging deep in her belly, pulling her under. She found her eyes
closing behind her thick glasses, and she let the sound wash over her. It was
incredible.
“O'er
the land of the free . . .” Ambrose's voice reached the summit, and Fern felt
like she had climbed Everest, breathless and ebullient and triumphant. “And the
home of the brave!” The crowd roared around her, but Fern was still hanging on
that final note.
“Fern!”
Rita's voice rang out. She shoved at Fern's leg. Fern ignored her. Fern was
having a moment. A moment with, in her opinion, the most beautiful voice on the
planet.
“Fern's
having her first orgasm.” One of Rita's girlfriends snickered. Fern's eyes shot
open to see Rita, Bailey, and Cindy Miller looking at her with big grins on
their faces. Fortunately, the applause and the cheers prevented the people
around them from hearing Cindy's humiliating assessment.
Small and pale, with bright-red hair and forgettable
features, Fern knew she was the kind of girl who was easily overlooked, easily
ignored, and never dreamed about. She had floated through childhood without
drama and with little fanfare, grounded in a perfect awareness of her own
mediocrity.
Like
Zacharias and Elizabeth, parents of the biblical John the Baptist, Fern's
parents were far beyond their childbearing years when they suddenly found
themselves in a family way. Fifty-year-old Joshua Taylor, popular pastor in the
small town of Hannah Lake, was struck dumb when his wife of fifteen years
tearfully told him she was going to have a baby. His jaw hit the floor, his
hands shook, and if it hadn't been for the serene joy stamped on his
forty-five-year-old wife, Rachel's face, he might have thought she was pulling
a prank for the first time in her life. Fern was born seven months later, an
unexpected miracle, and the whole town celebrated with the well-loved couple.
Fern found it ironic that she was once considered a miracle, since her life had
been anything but miraculous.
Fern
pulled off her glasses and began shining them on the hem of her T-shirt,
effectively blinding herself to the amused faces around her. Let them laugh.
Because the truth of the matter was, she felt euphoric and dizzy all at once,
the way she sometimes felt after a particularly satisfying love scene in a
favorite novel. Fern Taylor loved Ambrose Young, had loved him since she was
ten years old and had heard his young voice lifted in a very different kind of
song, but in that moment he reached a whole new level of beauty, and Fern was
left reeling and dazed that one boy could be gifted with so much...........................................................................................................................................................
Amy Harmon is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of ten novels. Her books are now being published in 13 languages around the globe.
She knew at an early age that writing was something she wanted to do, and divided her time between writing songs and stories as she grew. Having grown up in the middle of wheat fields without a television, with only her books and her siblings to entertain her, she developed a strong sense of what made a good story.
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Continue on for the giveaway! ~
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5 comments:
Amy Harmon is a new author to me. I really enjoyed the excerpt and would like to read the book.
Amy Harmon is a new author to me. I really enjoyed the excerpt and would like to read the book.
It sounds like my kind of book. I enjoy reading stories about small towns with amazing characters.
I read Making Faces i would love to own a signed copy from Amy
She isw new to me also, but I can't wait to read this book.
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