Excerpt & Giveaway: The Telling by Alexandra Sirowy:

I'm happy to share a part of THE TELLING by Alexandra Sirowy with you today! 

Make sure to check each blog part of the tour (listed below) to find different chapter excerpts!

Book Title: The Telling

Author: Alexandra Sirowy

Release Date: August 2, 2016

Summary 

A chilling new novel about a girl who must delve into her past if she wants to live long enough to have a future when a series of murders that are eerily similar to the dark stories her brother used to tell start happening in her hometown.

Lana used to know what was real. That was before, when her life was small and quiet. Her golden stepbrother, Ben was alive. She could only dream about bonfiring with the populars. Their wooded island home was idyllic, she could tell truth from lies, and Ben’s childhood stories were firmly in her imagination.

Then came after.

After has Lana boldly kissing her crush, jumping into the water from too high up, living with nerve and mischief. But after also has horrors, deaths that only make sense in fairy tales, and terrors from a past Lana thought long forgotten. Love, blood, and murder.

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Excerpt

Chapter 2 part 1

What comes next happens fast. It’s getting dark and everyone is out of breath, their panting magnified in my ears. Becca’s whimpers are desperate and grinding, bouncing off the trees. I want to tell her to shut up already, I need to concentrate. Josh leaves the surface, and there’s only black lapping water where he was.

Duncan makes it to the shore and his voice booms, “Carolynn, call 9-1-1.”

And she says, “My effing cell is in the car.”

Willa shouts, “Run for it.”

And then they stop making noise—except for Becca, who’s still wailing—so I assume Carolynn runs for her phone. I get caught up in the enormous unlikelihood of seven of us and not one cell, and then I want to smack my forehead because there’s no service at the spring.

Rusty vanishes too. He and Josh are diving for the girl. And I think, What is she doing down there? A split second later, I dive also.

I swim blind, the surface gone too dim to illuminate below. I wriggle through the black, my chest squeezing with the increased pressure. My hands jab the bottom. It’s soundless as death, and I wonder if Ben can hear anything where he is. Stupid to believe he could be anywhere, dead is dead. And I’m not dead, even if sometimes I wonder if we’d be together if I were. That’s a nightmare thought, the kind that filled the first month after we buried Ben’s empty coffin.

There’s a ripple in the water to my right—Josh or Rusty scouring the spring for the girl. The girl. I was below a minute ago and there was no one except loneliness and memories of Ben—but aren’t those two actually the same? My arms sweep back and forth, legs propelling me forward. Pressure behind my eyeballs. Too long since the surface. And that must be the case, because I have the inkling that I’m an astronaut in space and I’m only dreaming that I’m in water.

My arms close around something—no, someone—waxy and firm. I take hold and yank and yank, ripping the form free from an invisible grip. She’s slender in my arms, all sharp angles and poking bones. I wonder if she’s a kid as we surface, and I gasp so hard it’s a punch in the lungs.

“Help,” I sputter. Everything is silver edged. Rusty’s arms windmill toward me. His hands skate over mine to get a grip on the girl, which is good because she’s slipping, her breasts smushed against my arms as I try to keep hold. Breasts, so she’s not a kid. Rusty floats her on her back, and with an arm hooked under hers, he cuts through the water.

“Over here, man,” Duncan calls, crouched on the shore, blood smeared across his face. Josh jerks his head to the ladder, and we swim for it. Rusty must have reached the shore, because Duncan adds, “Lift her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a bit higher.”

My arms go shaky and dumb as I climb from one rung to the next. I’m at the top, swinging a leg over a boulder, when Duncan shouts, “Holy shit, I know her.” Becca cries out from where she’s curled on her towel, the skipper hat and her face ducking intermittently behind her knees. “It’s Maggie Lewis,” Duncan says.

About the Author

Alexandra Sirowy is the author of The Creeping and The Telling. She was born and raised in Northern California, where she attended a women’s college as an undergraduate and received her MA at the University of San Francisco. She is a voracious reader, the oldest of three children, an avid traveler, a record-holding high school long jumper, a gourmet cook, a feminist, and forever grateful to her parents for reading to her as a child. Alexandra lives in Northern California with her husband.

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Photo by Vivian Sachs

Giveaway

The publisher is giving away a copy to one of my blog readers!
This is for US entrants, 13+ only.
Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Tour Schedule:
7/11: The Book Cellar
7/12: Dizneeee's World of Books
7/13: I Turn the Pages
7/14: Actin' Up With Books
7/15: Such A Novel Idea