Cross & Crown Blog Tour!

Cross & Crown is here!  Cross & Crown is here! Yes, I really am still overjoyed to have had the chance to not only read the book for review, but also to be a part of the tour for it! I'm crazy excited. Included here at our stop is a cut scene from Cross & Crown, the Rafflecopter giveaway, and review! I'm so stinking excited I could burst. I almost did when the book hit my email!

About Cross & Crown

When Nick O'Flaherty arrives at the scene of a double homicide to find he has a witness to the crime, he thinks it’s his lucky day. But when he realizes his witness is suffering from amnesia and can’t even remember his own name, Nick wishes he’d gone with his gut and put in for vacation time.

Then Nick’s boyfriend and former Recon teammate, Kelly Abbott, joins him in Boston, and Nick finds his hands a little too full as the case and his personal life collide. The witness he’s dubbed “JD” is being tailed by Julian Cross, a retired CIA hitman. To complicate matters further, JD forms an attachment to Nick that Nick struggles not to respond to as they search for the key to JD’s identity.

Trying to determine whether JD is friend or foe as they investigate the crime puts them on the trail of a much older mystery. When multiple attempts are made on their lives, Nick is forced to turn to old enemies and new allies to solve a centuries-old crime before he and Kelly get added to the history books.

You can order Cross & Crown directly from Riptide.

If you care to follow Abi more closely, you can find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

Cut scene

I know we're all just dying for my review, right?  Completely more than anything else that might be here. Yup. And so, with that in mind, I'm just going to put this cut scene here for you, and the review below. Don't say I don't love you.

Nick was silent as he looked out on the moonlit fields. They were peaceful now, but it seemed there were echoes of gunfire and cannon blasting, bayonets clashing, men and horses screaming in fear and pain. “It doesn’t really matter why, or how history writes it down,” Nick said. “The only thing that matters is that every man out there believed in what he was doing. He was standing on this ground, willing to take a bullet fired by his brother, to protect something he thought was worth dying for. That country. That king. That ideal. That land back home. That flag. That man leading him. That man standing beside him.” Nick’s voice filled with emotion and he lowered his head. “The burden of death and bravery in places like this is heavy. I’ve always been able to feel it. Someone should feel it.”

Even if Kelly hadn’t already felt the power of this place, it came through clearly in Nick’s voice. It was holy ground, in its own way, bearing the gravity of the past up in what were now wild green pastures dotted with stone and tourists. The agony of it. The struggle. And Nick believed the same as those men, felt it down to his bones. Call it patriotism. Heroism. Integrity. Honor. That indefinable something that had driven so many men to die for something they felt more important than life also lived inside Nick. It had lived inside their team. And if what he believed in was threatened, he’d do the same as they had done; die defending it. Kelly’s chest constricted as he looked at Nick’s profile in the moonlight. He had never believed that men like this still existed, not until he’d met Sidewinder.

Nick’s breath billowed in front of him in the cold. His eyes were taking in the battlefield, seeing things Kelly couldn’t see, remembering things Kelly had lived with him. Kelly swallowed hard and set one hand lightly on Nick’s shoulder. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he didn’t speak at all.

Wench Care's Review

Okay, first off, with the ending of Ball & Chain, a lot of people were more than a little worried about series crossover. How Nick and Kelly were going to take away from Ty and Zane, how the plotlines introduced at the end of Ball & Chain were going to be used to prop up Cross & Crown. Allow me to say RESOUNDINGLY FALSE. In fact, the name of one British PITA rogue was mentioned exactly once - when Kelly was thinking about Nick "hallucinating" in recovery. So very not a factor in this book, no matter what the naysayers may have said.
 
Second. I spent so much time highlighting this book I'm grateful to have a digital copy, lest it fall apart in my hands. Nick was snarky, sassy, and generally wonderful, Kelly was level-headed, down to Earth, and funny, even Ty and Zane have brief cameos in the book, and they're showing the kind of growth (and depth!) I've learned to expect from Abi's characters. Life is going on, and everyone is dealing. The only real complaint I've had with Cross & Crown was that I read it too fast! I didn't want to put it down, and then... it was over! This, however, is not a fault of the book - honestly, it's a compliment. I didn't realize how much time had passed between starting and finishing, and I wanted it to go on forever.

Nick and Kelly are taking some time to work on things that need working on, they're getting to know each other in the context of this new dynamic, and they're funny as hell. I cannot believe I've lived this long without them. I NEED THIS. I'm glad to see how Abi got to mostly salvage her original plans for Nick, while still including the out-of-left-field Kelly, and I'm genuinely excited to see where this new series will go.

Honestly, this was a nice change for me. I'm typically pretty good at seeing where a book will go from the first few chapters. I'm glad to say Abi surprised me on this one - I didn't expect the ending to go where it did. I'm glad to see the ending we got for the characters we saw (though I'm still incredibly curious as to what happened next for a certain Irishman!!), and I'm glad to see that Nick is as clever as I originally pegged him to be. So many things were introduced in this book that I'm not sure what direction everything will go in - and I'm really looking forward to seeing the backstory presented being brought to life on page, in mind's eye... Over and over and over again - I've already read this one three times, and am anxiously awaiting the next. It's a tough battle, remembering to be patient, but we'll soldier on, won't we?

Giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Entries close at midnight Eastern Time, on June 21st, and winners will be announced on June 23rd. Contest is valid worldwide.