Welcome to the small island town of Cloud Bay, where it’s never the wrong time to find a love that’s oh-so-right. . .
Caleb White knows what he wants out of life—and being a star tennis player is not it. After speaking to the press about his plans to retire, Caleb decides that a trip to quaint, beautiful Cloud Bay for its legendary music festival is exactly what he needs. There will be time to figure out what to do with his life without a racket in his hand soon enough. Until then, Caleb is content to be stuck on an island with CloudFest’s gorgeous director Faith Harper. . .
The daughter of a famous rock star, Faith knows all about fame, fortune, and hot flings that aren’t meant to last longer than a few good songs. Gorgeous, built Caleb is a temptation she can’t resist, but she’s not prepared for the way he makes her feel. . .and the dreams that they both share. What begins as a carefree distraction deepens into something real. But is Caleb ready to put his celebrity behind him and give life in the slow lane with Faith a chance?
I absolute adore the cover image for this book- it’s just so romantic and a perfect summery scene. This itself invites me to read the book. I was torally drawn in by the synppsis. The book is a perfect summer or beach read, although I’d read it any time of year as it is a perfect feel-good, relaxing escapist novel. It’s the best island- based romance I have read since the YA/romance teen series, Making Out by Katherine Applegate. I think Need You Now, being a sweet, small-town romance, will be popular with teens and adults alike. I’m giving it 4 out of 5 stars.
Ever since her dad Grey died, Faith Harper has been in charge of the business she runs with her family in the small town of Cloud Bay on the island of Lansing off the coast of California. She’s really caught up in the running Harper Inc, the family business, and so does not have time for relationships, or so she thought. Caleb White and his friend Liam are renting a house on the island so that they can go to the CloudFest does the island’s only music festival and main source of income during the summer months.
Caleb is an ex-tennis player who first sets eyes on Faith on the day of the festival. He and Faith meet in the most unexpected of places, and, reluctantly (for Faith, at least) a kind of timid, slightly awkward friendship emerges between them that I was glad to see.
The book is very family – orientated, and the island setting gives it a cosy feel. Faith and her mother Lou are incredibly close. Faith definitely has her work cut out over much of the book with trying to arrange the island’s festival and try to get clear what she thinks about Caleb.
She gets on well with her sister Mina and their brother Zach is hardly around, having commitments with his own band.
The book presents an interesting family dynamic, with many of the members living close together, and having a common interest in music. Mina, who, in Faith’s own words, is the “married to her childhood sweetheart at 18 type person,” lives in a cottage at the base of a lighthouse and loves storms and painting. She is not remotely interested in music, but takes an interest in what Faith does now and then, and offers her opinion. I like it that two sisters who have different interests get on well.
After an initial slowness, friends Theo and Ivy. Ivy is one of just 6 employees at Harper Inc. What I enjoyed about the book most was that the plot seems quite simple, but is tightly woven to produce the atmosphere of the town, island and festival and the business of festival time contrasts with how quiet the quaint-sounding town’s few shops, bars and distillery usually are.
Music and memories are in Faith’s blood and on her mind as her dad left her the family home and the rest of the family members all live close by. Blacklight was her dad’s band, and the star of the show during many CloudFest shows in years past, and her dad’s former fellow band member colleagues are like uncles to Faith.
Will the CloudFest be a success this year?
Will Caleb and Faith’s relationship develop further?
Read the book to find out!
This is the first book I have read by Emma Douglas, and it is a sweet and tender book that has it’s moments of drama. I’m looking forward to reading more from Emma Douglas and the residents of Cloud Bay.
Thank you to Emma Douglas and to St Martin’s Press for a copy of this book via NetGalley as well as the chance to participate in the blog tour for this title. I have read some amazing books published by St Martin’s Press, and Need You Now is no exception. I cannot wait to discover the rest of te Cloud Bay series!
Need You Now is a must-read for all fans of sweet, small-town romances. Because of this book, Emma Douglas now is right up there with my favorite authors in the genre
Katherine’s Book Universe Interview with Emma Douglas
1) Where did the idea for the plot come from?
I’ve always loved music so I’ve really enjoyed a lot of the rock star romances that are around. But when I was thinking about them, I found myself wondering what it might be like to be the children of the kind of rock star who maybe isn’t always so heroic as the heroes in those books. So Grey Harper and his three children were born. When it came to Need You Now specifically, I wanted to do Faith’s books first. She’s grown up with a superstar dad who wasn’t such a superstar at home. She’s watched him go through multiple marriages and relationships and has pretty much decided marriage and love are not for her. To come up with her hero, I tried to think about what was the nightmare scenario for her…which would be not only falling in love but falling for a guy who was also used to being a superstar. Which was how I came up with Caleb White.
2) Who is your favourite character? Why?
Faith, because she’s tried to hold everything together for her family for so long, it was fun to watch her have to lose a bit of that control and stop avoiding what she really wants.
3) Who is your least favourite character? Why?
In this book? Zach. Because he’s focused entirely on himself. But he has his own journey to go on so I don’t hate him forever.
4) Which is your favourite scene in the book? Why?
I had fun writing the scene where Faith and Lou (her mom) are showing Caleb and Liam around when they first arrive on the island. The mixture of Lou fangirling Caleb and Faith trying not to admit she might like to do a bit of fangirling herself was fun! I have another scene I really like later in the book but it’s a bit spoilery so I won’t go into detail but it’s a scene where Faith reclaims something for herself that she’s cut herself off from. Because I think everyone should do the things they love in some way, big or small.
5) What do you most like to do when you are not writing?
Read. Or do crafty things. I knit and crochet and paint and take pictures. Things that give me a different kind of creative outlet. I also like to walk or swim (I’m recovering from a shoulder injury at the moment that I’m hoping won’t keep me out of the pool too long). Both things that let me think and are kind of meditative while being good for you!
6) What’s the story behind why and how you became an author?
7) What is your favourite movie? Why?
I love movies so that’s a very hard question! My favorite romance film is Catch and Release with Jennifer Garner and Timothy Olyphant…which starts with a woman at her fiance’s wake. Non romance…well, that changes but maybe The Abyss or How To Train Your Dragon (because I want a Toothless)
Thanks Emma!
Author Bio:
Emma Douglas would love to live in a world where professional napping was a thing. But until then, she thinks writing books is a pretty awesome alternative. When not writing about imaginary people, she can be found reading, doing something crafty, binge-watching TV, playing her latest song crush on repeat, or singing badly in her car. She lives in Melbourne, Australia in a tiny house stuffed full of books, too many craft supplies and two cats who take up more space than you would expect. Find out more about Emma at http://www.emmadouglasbooks.com
Read on for an excerpt of this fantastic book!
So maybe that was the wrong thing to think about.
She steered the car through the familiar bends of the road from Salt Devil to Danny’s place, not needing to really pay much attention to what she was doing. She could make the drive with a bag over her head. Could probably drive all around Lansing that way and never miss a beat.
Unlike her heart, which was bumping just that little bit too quickly to let her fool herself into thinking she didn’t have a rapidly developing case of, to quote Ivy, “flaming panties,” when it came to Caleb White.
Well, her panties were just going to have to cool it a little longer.
She let her left hand drift out the open window, fingers spread to catch the night air rushing against her skin so one part of her body had a chance to feel cool. “My mom would tell you that’s a terrible habit,” Caleb said. His voice sounded lower in the darkness.
Rumblier.
Sexier.
Engine vibrations. That was it. Blame it on the roar of whatever supercharged monster engine Will had put into the Mustang. That was what was making his voice sound so good.
Note to self: Drive the Prius if you ever have to share a car with this man again.
“I know this road. There’s nothing I could possibly catch my hand on.” She turned her head slightly to look at him for a second. He’d lowered his window too, his elbow resting on the window frame, his fingers gripped around the top. “And hello, pot, kettle, black. You do not have all limbs inside the vehicle, Mr. White.”
“My hand isn’t sticking out,” he said.
“And what would your mom say about that response?” “She’d tell me not to be a smart-ass.”
“I think I like your mom. What does she do?” “She’s a doctor. I think she’d like you too.”
Faith shook her head. Nope to him getting any kind of wrong idea. “I’m not really the kind of girl mothers approve of.”
“Why not?”
“Rock star dad. Tattoos. Not interested in settling down.”
“You have tattoos?” he said, sounding intrigued. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“That’s because so far you haven’t seen any parts of me where they’re noticeable.”
“I see.” He sounded even more intrigued. “But they’re somewhere a mom might see them?”
“I think it’s more the alcoholic-rock-star–womanizing- dad thing than the tattoos. My family’s reputation precedes me. They think I’m going to have my wicked way with their precious boys and break their hearts.”
“Are you meeting these moms via time travel? That all sounds very nineteen fifties to me,” he said. “And just so you know, I am on board with wicked ways.”
She laughed at that. “In my experience, most men are.” “Maybe the men you meet are smarter than their moms.”
“Oh no.” She pulled her hand back in the window as the approached the turn-off to Danny’s drive. “The moms have my number. I’m not the marrying kind, as they used to say.”
“Really?” He sounded skeptical. “Trust me.”
“I take it this is you telling me that if I ever get to sample your wicked ways, I should beware?”
She tried to ignore the way the rumble underscoring “wicked ways” made her want to invent some very wicked ways on the spot. Dammit. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” She pulled into the drive, rolled the car to a stop outside the gate. “And, not to change the subject or anything, but we’re here.”
Caleb blinked. “So I see. Any point in me asking you in for a nightcap?”
As much as part of her wanted to say “hell yes,” she shook her head. “Not tonight.”
“Rain check on that too?” “We’ll see.”
“All right,” he said. He didn’t sound that put out. She didn’t know if that was good or whether she should be a little insulted. Caleb undid his seatbelt and turned to face her. “Then I’ll say good night. And I’ll tell you one more thing.” He slid a little closer along the seat and leaned toward her. Not too close. Giving her plenty of time to tell him to back off. To say no.
She stayed right where she was. Pinned in place by the weight of that blue gaze and the pounding in her chest and the heat suddenly burning through her again. She tried to sound casual. “What’s that?”
“The same thing I tell my mom when she’s butting into my love life. That I’m a big boy and I can take care of myself.” He leaned in close, until his mouth was hovering only a couple of inches from hers. “Also, that I believe that when you’ve beaten a girl at pool and hitched a lift with her in a Mustang that it’s only polite to kiss her good night.”
“Oh,” was all she had time to say before he closed his mouth over hers.
She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t thought about what it might be like to kiss him over the last few hours. What sort of kiss it might be. Most of her first kisses had been the hot, fiery, let’s-get-naked-fast kind.
Caleb White was undeniably hot but this kiss was . . . different. His mouth coaxed hers, gently, his hand cup- ping the back of her neck. Each tiny change in angle he made seemed to connect with a different nerve. First her lips were tingling, then hot, and then the heat spread out and down from there in a molten rush.
She opened her mouth and tasted him, tasted whiskey and man and heat. He groaned but he held her there, suspended with him in the dark, focused just on him and the places their bodies touched. She wanted more. Wanted closer.
But as she swayed toward him, tried to slide around in the seat so she could get nearer, he pulled back, leaving her startled by his sudden absence.
“Good night, Faith Harper,” he said. And then he was out of the car walking away from her, vanishing into the night when he stepped beyond the reach of the head- lights, leaving her wondering exactly what the hell had just happened.
Copyright © 2017 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press.
Want to be in with a chance of winning a finished copy of Need You Now? Leave a comment on my post to be in with a chance! (US Only). Giveaway starts on 29 August 2017 and will run for a week, finishing on 4 September 2017.
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