About the Book
Title: ENDLESS
Author: Amanda Gray
Release Date: September 10, 2013
Pages: 384
Publisher: Month9Books
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Jenny Kramer knows she isn't normal. After all, not everybody can see the past lives of people around them.
When she befriends Ben Daulton, resident new boy, the pair stumble on an old music box with instructions for “mesmerization” and discover they may have more in common than they thought. Like a past life.
Using the instructions in the music box, Ben and Jenny share a dream that transports them to Romanov Russia and leads them to believe they have been there together before. But they weren't alone. Nikolai, the mysterious young man Jenny has been seeing in her own dreams was there, too. When Nikolai appears next door, Jenny is forced to acknowledge that he has travelled through time and space to find her. Doing so means he has defied the laws of time, and the Order, an ominous organization tasked with keeping people in the correct time, is determined to send him back.
While Ben, Jenny and Nikolai race against the clock - and the Order - Jenny and Nikolai discover a link that joins them in life - and beyond death.
When she befriends Ben Daulton, resident new boy, the pair stumble on an old music box with instructions for “mesmerization” and discover they may have more in common than they thought. Like a past life.
Using the instructions in the music box, Ben and Jenny share a dream that transports them to Romanov Russia and leads them to believe they have been there together before. But they weren't alone. Nikolai, the mysterious young man Jenny has been seeing in her own dreams was there, too. When Nikolai appears next door, Jenny is forced to acknowledge that he has travelled through time and space to find her. Doing so means he has defied the laws of time, and the Order, an ominous organization tasked with keeping people in the correct time, is determined to send him back.
While Ben, Jenny and Nikolai race against the clock - and the Order - Jenny and Nikolai discover a link that joins them in life - and beyond death.
I reviewed Endless a little over a year ago and can still remember how much I enjoyed this story! Check out my review here.
Below Is the first chapter of Endless:
ONE
The Ouija board was a bad idea. Jenny
watched Amber Rodriguez set it up, the air in the room thick with tension.
Everyone tried to pretend it wasn’t there, but Jenny heard it in their
high-pitched laughter, their voices too loud for Amber’s small basement.
“Turn out the lights,” Amber commanded
to no one in particular, lifting the board out of the box.
Someone did, and the room fell into
darkness just before Amber struck a match, holding it to the wick of a candle
on the coffee table. Light flickered across the board.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,”
Tiffany warned.
Jenny wished she’d been the one to say
it. Wished she had the guts to blow them all off without worrying that they’d
think she was even more of a freak than they already did.
“Don’t be stupid,” Gary Collins sneered,
tossing back the last of his beer, his face distorted by the wavering light of
the candle.
The comment was directed at Tiffany, but
it still made Jenny nervous. The whole group made her nervous. She wasn’t
exactly a social butterfly.
Besides, they were Tiffany’s friends,
and Tiffany had only come because she didn’t want to spend the first night of
summer watching TV with her mom. The problem was, she didn’t want to spend the
night alone with her so-called friends, either.
Jenny had wanted to stay home and put
the finishing touches on her pieces for the art show, but Tiffany had begged
her to come to Amber’s instead. It had taken a little coaxing, but Jenny had
finally agreed. She didn’t have a lot of experience with the necessary
sacrifices of friendship, but going to a party with your best and only friend
when you wanted to stay home probably qualified.
“It’s not stupid to be cautious,”
Tiffany said, glaring at Gary. She moved closer to the table, her black braid
flipped over her shoulder. “Ouija boards are really powerful. You have to open
your mind for them to work, but opening your mind to the spirit world can be
dangerous.”
“Oooooooh!” Alvin Ling made a spooky
ghost sound. “Scaaaary! Is that what your hippy-dippy mom told you?”
The guys erupted into laughter. They
were jerks, but Tiffany’s mom, Maura, was a little New Agey, especially
for a town like Stony Creek. The older woman had known about Jenny from the
second they shook hands at the tiny natural foods store in town.
“Oh, honey … “ Maura had met Jenny’s
eyes with sadness in her own. “What a burden for you.”
Jenny had pulled her hand away,
double-checking that her palms were covered by her fingerless gloves. They
were, but Tiffany’s mom had felt it anyway.
Just because she was hippy-dippy didn’t
mean she was a fake.
“Okay.” Amber surveyed them with
excitement. “Who wants to go first?”
Jenny looked around the room. It wasn’t
going to be Gary and his girlfriend, Heather. They had lost interest and were
making out hot and heavy on the couch right in front of everyone.
“Tiffany?” Amber prompted when no one
answered.
“No way.”
“Come on, you guys. Don’t be lame.”
Amber said. “Alvin?”
“Nah,” he said. “Not my thing.”
“God! You guys suck!” Amber sighed. She
looked around again, her eyes locking on Jenny’s. “I guess it’s just you and me
then.”
“I don’t think so.” The foreboding in
Jenny’s stomach was making her nauseous.
Amber grabbed Jenny’s hands and pulled
her toward the coffee table.
“Well, I’m not doing it alone,”
Amber said, dropping to the floor and tugging Jenny down with her. “Okay, I
think we just have to … I don’t know, touch it or something and then ask it
questions.”
Jenny’s mouth was suddenly dry. She
licked her lips. At least she had her gloves on. Maybe they’d offer some kind
of protection from the spirit world. Or whatever.
She nodded. “Okay.”
Tiffany came up beside her. “Jen, are
you sure you want to do this? Because if you don’t—“
“I’m fine,” Jenny interrupted. It was
too late. Everyone was already watching. Even Gary and Heather. Backing out now
would make a scene. It was better to just play along.
Amber lifted a hand to the pointer,
waiting until Jenny did the same.
“Just a minute.” Amber removed her hand
from the board. “Take those off.”
Jenny followed Amber’s eyes. The gloves.
Amber wanted her to take off the gloves.
Jenny swallowed hard, shaking her head.
“I don’t think it matters. They’re fingerless anyway.”
“It matters to me,” Amber said tightly.
“Besides, you wear them all the time. It’s weird.”
“Yeah, what’s with the gloves?” Gary
snickered. “Do you have OCD about germs or some shit?”
Jenny didn’t bother answering. The
tension in the room was building. Everyone was waiting. She could refuse. Get
up. Walk out. No one would stop her. They might call her a freak, but it was
summer. She wouldn’t have to see them if she didn’t want to.
Except she couldn’t make herself stand
up.
It wasn’t that she wanted to use the
Ouija board. God, no. She knew firsthand that there were unexplainable things
out there. Things that could keep you up at night, wondering just how honest
your reality was and how much of it you couldn’t see.
The truth was, she didn’t know why she
couldn’t leave. It was like she’d lost some essential power over her own body.
She finally gave in, peeling back the
black gloves from her hands, tucking them into her pocket. She placed her
fingers on the pointer.
“There.” She looked at Amber. “Happy?”
Amber put her hands back on the pointer
without answering. They passed a couple of awkward minutes while the guys made
jokes, but Amber threatened to make them leave and the room finally got quiet.
“Okay, now just take a deep breath and …
I don’t know,” Amber said. “Clear your mind. Or open it. Or whatever.”
Right, Jenny thought. I think I’ll go with Option A.
All things considered, clearing her mind
was a lot less scary than opening it. She inhaled and took a few deep breaths.
Feeling the blood racing through her veins, she willed it to slow just before
Amber spoke, her voice authoritative.
“Hello. I’m Amber. Is there anyone
here?”
Ten seconds ticked silently by without
response. After another ten, Amber tried again.
“If there’s someone here, please give us
a sign.”
Nothing happened.
Amber looked at Jenny. “Let’s close our
eyes for a minute. Maybe it will help.”
Jenny didn’t see how it would, but if it
meant getting through the whole ordeal faster, she was in. She closed her eyes.
Darkness didn’t scare her. It was the things she could see that did. The
things she saw and felt when her hands
came into contact with certain people. Sometimes, she could touch someone and
feel nothing. Other times she would be transported to places that were oddly
familiar or ones she didn’t recognize at all.
The problem was, she never knew who was
going to kick-start the process. Not touching anyone was her safest bet, and
she managed to do just that most of the time through the use of her gloves and
careful movements engineered to keep her at a distance from everyone else.
She’d almost forgotten about the room
around her when she heard Amber’s voice again, distant this time, as if coming
to her down a very long tunnel.
“Are you trying to tell us something?”
It was hard to focus on Amber’s voice.
Jenny was floating in peaceful darkness. She thought of her mother and wondered
if she was in a place like this. A place of utter serenity. Not heaven the way
people described it with angels and streets of gold, but just this simple
quiet.
And then, something shifted. A subtle
change, like the click of a key in a lock.
Someone was there, in the darkness. She
couldn’t see who it was, but she felt the presence the way she sometimes did
when someone entered a room behind her. There was the same awareness, the same
prickle along the back of her neck.
The presence reached out to her, not
with physical hands but with thoughts and feelings Jenny couldn’t quite grasp.
It was like having déjà vu, some kind of secret knowledge just beyond her
reach.
There was a sudden tug at her
consciousness, something pulling her out of the darkness. She fought to stay.
To listen. To understand. But it was no use. She was falling. Falling
and falling as she tried to hold on.
For a few seconds she was in a void. No
sound. No sense of anyone with her. Then everything opened up again, and she
heard voices coming to her from a great distance. Someone shouting. Calling her
name.
Jenny opened her eyes. It took a minute
for the room came back into focus. Someone had turned the lights on, and
everyone was staring down at her. Jenny couldn’t name the expression in their
eyes. She thought they looked scared, but that didn’t make any sense.
‘Jenny?” Tiffany was kneeling at her side.
“Are you okay?”
Jenny pushed herself up onto her elbows,
wondering how she’d gotten flat on her back. A headache slammed into her brain
with the force of a freight train.
“Ow.” She touched her temple. “I’m okay,
I think. What happened?”
Amber glanced at Tiffany, but no one in
the circle would make eye contact with Jenny.
“Come on—what happened?”
“Dude, that was some screwed-up shit!”
Gary finally said.
“What are you talking about?” Jenny
asked.
“There was a message.” Amber was
excited, but Jenny had been right; there was fear there, too. “It answered our
questions.”
Jenny nodded slowly. “Right. Like you
could even see the board with your eyes closed.”
“Her eyes weren’t closed,” Alvin said.
“I mean, they were for a minute, but she opened them when the pointer started
to move.”
“When the pointer started to—“ Jenny
stopped, sighing. “Oh, I get it. You guys are messing with me. Ha, ha. Very
funny. You’re hilarious.”
“They’re not.” It was Heather. She was
quiet, which made sense since she was Gary’s girlfriend and he never shut up.
“The pointer moved. It answered Amber’s questions, but you were … I don’t
know.‖ She shrugged. ―Out of it, I guess.”
“I wasn’t out of it,” Jenny protested.
“I just closed my eyes like Amber told me to and then I opened them when it was
over.”
“Not exactly,” Tiffany said carefully,
her eyes shadowed with worry.
“What do you mean?” Jenny asked.
“Your eyes were closed for at least ten
minutes. We thought you were doing it on purpose until … well, until this.”
Tiffany bent to a piece of paper on the coffee table and slid it toward her.
Jenny shook her head, trying to find the
answers in Tiffany’s eyes before she picked up the piece of paper. Writing
covered most of one side. Words jumped out at her, words like coming and
warden and even her name Jennifer, but she couldn’t pull it
together enough to make sense of it all.
She looked around the room. “What is
this?”
“I asked if someone was here,” Amber
started, “and—“
“I remember that,” Jenny interrupted.
“Nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened at first,”
Amber corrected her. “But after a couple of tries, the pointer started to move.
So we kept asking it questions.”
Jenny was still trying to connect what
Amber was saying with what had happened to her in the abyss of unconsciousness.
But a shiver ran up her spine when she looked at the words scrawled across the
piece of paper.
She dropped it back onto the coffee
table and stood up, grabbing her bag. “This is such bull. I’m out of here.”
She dug around for her purple crocheted
hat, pulling it down over her dirty blond hair before turning to leave.
“Jen, wait!” Tiffany’s voice stopped
her.
Jenny turned around. “What?”
“Amber’s telling the truth. She had to
ask a couple of times, but something did answer,” Tiffany’s voice was gentle as
she held out the piece of paper. “I ... I know it sounds crazy, but I think it
was a message for you.”
About Amanda:
Amanda Gray believes in magic and fantasy and possibilities. She is a team of two bestselling authors who live only miles apart but have never met in person. They talk on the phone and are the best of friends and between them have written more than a dozen novels and novellas and have had their work appear on television.
Goodreads
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Meet the Authors and amazing host Blogs!
All posts will be live on October 31st!
Jessica Arnold will be hosted by Read for your Future
Vanessa Barger will be hosted by Pretty Little Pages
Lisa M. Basso will be hosted by In Vogue with Books
Sarah Bromley will be hosted by A Book and A Latte
Steve Bryant will be hosted by Jump Into Books
Brynn Chapman will be hosted by A Backwards Story
Nicole Conway will be hosted by Two Chicks on Books
Scott Craven will be hosted by Books and Ashes
Ty Drago will be hosted by The A P Book Club
Dorothy Dreyer will be hosted by Her Book Thoughts!
Dorothy Dreyer will be hosted by Oops! I Read A Book Again
Jennifer M. Eaton will be hosted by Book Briefs
Kit Forbes will be hosted by Book Lovers Life
Janice Gable Bashman will be hosted by All Things Urban Fantasy
Amanda Gray will be hosted by Aspiring Joy
Kelly Hashway/Ashelyn Drake will be hosted by Book Geek Review
Elizabeth Holloway will be hosted by Tales of a Ravenous Reader
Missy Kalicicki and Abi Ketner will be hosted by Once Upon A Twilight
Nicola Marsh will be hosted by ReadWriteLove28
Georgia McBride will be hosted by YA Sisterhood
Jen McConnel will be hosted by A Dream Within A Dream
Jackie Morse Kessler will be hosted by Dark Faerie Tales
Beck Nicholas will be hosted by The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club
Michelle E. Reed will be hosted by Doodle's Book Reviews
Heather Reid will be hosted by Bookish Things & More
A. Lynden Rolland will be hosted by Fiction State of Mind
Kristal Shaff will be hosted by Chicklit vs Fantasy
Pab Sungenis will be hosted by Classy Cat Books
Rachel Tafoya will be hosted by Jessabella Reads
Vicki L. Weavil will be hosted by Magical Urban Fantasy Reads
Vanessa Barger will be hosted by Pretty Little Pages
Lisa M. Basso will be hosted by In Vogue with Books
Sarah Bromley will be hosted by A Book and A Latte
Steve Bryant will be hosted by Jump Into Books
Brynn Chapman will be hosted by A Backwards Story
Nicole Conway will be hosted by Two Chicks on Books
Scott Craven will be hosted by Books and Ashes
Ty Drago will be hosted by The A P Book Club
Dorothy Dreyer will be hosted by Her Book Thoughts!
Dorothy Dreyer will be hosted by Oops! I Read A Book Again
Jennifer M. Eaton will be hosted by Book Briefs
Kit Forbes will be hosted by Book Lovers Life
Janice Gable Bashman will be hosted by All Things Urban Fantasy
Amanda Gray will be hosted by Aspiring Joy
Kelly Hashway/Ashelyn Drake will be hosted by Book Geek Review
Elizabeth Holloway will be hosted by Tales of a Ravenous Reader
Missy Kalicicki and Abi Ketner will be hosted by Once Upon A Twilight
Nicola Marsh will be hosted by ReadWriteLove28
Georgia McBride will be hosted by YA Sisterhood
Jen McConnel will be hosted by A Dream Within A Dream
Jackie Morse Kessler will be hosted by Dark Faerie Tales
Beck Nicholas will be hosted by The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club
Michelle E. Reed will be hosted by Doodle's Book Reviews
Heather Reid will be hosted by Bookish Things & More
A. Lynden Rolland will be hosted by Fiction State of Mind
Kristal Shaff will be hosted by Chicklit vs Fantasy
Pab Sungenis will be hosted by Classy Cat Books
Rachel Tafoya will be hosted by Jessabella Reads
Vicki L. Weavil will be hosted by Magical Urban Fantasy Reads
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