3/31/2014
A Fair Exchange
Who hasn’t wondered about their first love? What happened? What went wrong? Where are they now?
What if you got a second chance?
Amelia Armstrong is about to find out. What a shame her long-lost love, Matt, has returned (looking way too good and acting way too sweet) when her life is a shambles and she has finally decided once and for all to put herself and not whichever man is currently in her life, first.
How do you balance that desire to recapture that loving feeling with the need to finally be the best version of yourself? What if this really is the one, how do you choose when to stand your ground and when to cut your losses? Amelia takes a journey from Sydney to New York and back again trying to find the answers while negotiating with pop-divas, ex-lovers, crazy teenagers, a well-meaning cousin and the tabloids.
A Fair Exchange is a story about being a grown up when, maybe, you’d much rather be sixteen again.
Excerpt
It was not as if he was the first one to mention it. In the past week everyone who had entered my apartment had commented on the shiny new Vespa parked in the middle of the otherwise empty living room. In fact, each and every one of them had imaginatively said “Amelia you have a red Vespa parked in your living room!” And they all said it in a tone that implied I might not have noticed, as if it may have magically appeared there.
How could I not notice a vehicle parked in what was otherwise an empty room?
What amazed me was that the Vespa was what they chose to comment on.
Not that Nick had dumped me, after ten years, for a twenty-one year-old. Nor that he had moved out, taking basically all the furniture and leaving me with a great view over the beach and an enormous mortgage.
No one even commented about the fact that I, in turn, had quit the fabulous job that had always meant way too much to me.
No, they commented on the Vespa.
What I could not understand though was why it hadn’t bothered me until right then, when Matthew Blue commented. And when he did comment, why had I collapsed into this embarrassing sea of tears?
How had this happened? How had I become this sobbing pathetic figure of womanhood? And more importantly how had I ended up thirty-six and alone?
Didn’t I used to have so much potential? Everyone had said so, hadn’t they?
“Amelia Armstrong is something special.”
I was one of those shiny young girls who took risks and dreamed big. I was one of the smart ones who knew what she wanted and went after it. I was one to watch.
If I hadn’t been that kind of a girl I would never have met Matthew all those years ago. A different girl would not have found herself, on the other side of the world, at sixteen, staring into his dark and dreamy eyes.
So where was that girl right now, I wanted to know? And how had a girl with so much potential gotten it so horribly wrong?
***
To buy a copy of A Fair Exchange go to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JBPPC08
To celebrate the release I’m giving away a $25 Amazon Gift Certificate as part of my blog tour. Enter below for your chance to win. (It is running on US April 1st, apologies to Australian readers please come back later).
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Comments
Karen e. Martin
3/31/2014 03:03:24 pm
Great excerpt! Congratulations on the book launch!
Reply
Monique
3/31/2014 03:14:56 pm
Thanks Karen 🙂
Jacque
3/31/2014 04:38:38 pm
Can’t wait to read it Monique. Congratulations.
girlfromwva
4/1/2014 01:32:16 am
looking forward to reading!
