WHERE WINTER FINDS YOUA Caldwell Christmas
by J. R. Ward
On Sale: November 26th 2019
#1 New York Times bestselling
author J.R. Ward is heating things up this winter with a holiday novel
featuring some of her most iconic Black Dagger Brothers.
The
Book Junkie Reads . . . Review of . . . WHERE WINTER FINDS YOU (A Caldwell
Christmas) . . . I am sad to say that I did not read the first book with
Trey (Shadow) in it. I will be correcting that mistake soon. I have a whole
marathon of Black Dagger Brotherhood series on my new year
reading for January. I enjoyed the book for what it was and
the fact that Trey was really having a hard time not believing that the woman he
had meet is not his deceased beloved. I find that not having read book one of
his story was frustrating me to no ends. I wanted to stop several times and go
pick up The Shadows. I wanted to understand the struggle and
trouble that Trey went through. I did find that him meeting Therese to be a
kind of meant to happen. They both needed to let go of the past and embrace the
present.
As the story unfolds you get glimpses of the past and what brought
each, Trey and Therese to the point they were at when we meet them. I found the
story rich, engaging, intense, and emotional. There was that touch of forever
through all times and place kind of love.
You had to go through the sad and heartbreaking to get to the
other side of what was being offered. I recommend this story to all
of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series fans. I also recommend
it to those looking for that all encompassing holiday read that will pull at
your heart, maybe a few tears, and believer in love for eternity. Caution to
read book one of Trey (The Shadows, Black Dagger Brotherhood, #13) first.
This addition to the series is most certainly a romance. There are
depths of things in the background that are not fully explored but this was a
heartbreaking romance that had a hint of sorrow, pain, fate, and forever love.
J. R. Ward has done it again. She has her own way of revisiting characters and
making things work for them even a second time around. Seeing things work for
Trey this time was interesting.
BLURB
When Trez lost his beloved to a tragic death (The Shadows,
Black Dagger Brotherhood, #13), his soul was crushed and his destiny seemed
relegated to suffering. But when he meets a mysterious female, he becomes
convinced his true love has been reincarnated. Is he right? Or has his grief
created a disastrous delusion?
Therese has come to Caldwell to escape a rift with her bloodline. The revelation that she was adopted and not born into her family shakes the foundations of her identity, and she is determined to make it on her own. Her attraction to Trez is not what she’s looking for, except the sexy Shadow proves to be undeniable.
Has fate provided a grieving widower with a second chance...or is Trez too blinded by the past to see the present for what it really is? In this sensual, arresting book full of the themes of redemption and self-discovery, two lost souls find themselves at a crossroads where the heart is the only compass that can be trusted...but that may require a courage that neither of them possesses.
Therese has come to Caldwell to escape a rift with her bloodline. The revelation that she was adopted and not born into her family shakes the foundations of her identity, and she is determined to make it on her own. Her attraction to Trez is not what she’s looking for, except the sexy Shadow proves to be undeniable.
Has fate provided a grieving widower with a second chance...or is Trez too blinded by the past to see the present for what it really is? In this sensual, arresting book full of the themes of redemption and self-discovery, two lost souls find themselves at a crossroads where the heart is the only compass that can be trusted...but that may require a courage that neither of them possesses.
Purchase Link:
Sneak Peek at WHERE WINTER FINDS YOU:
“Holy f--k,” Trez yelled as a semitrailer truck the size of a
building went blasting past the front bumper of his brand-new BMW.
Like right past. Like . . . nearly peeling off the
hood of the damned car.
As his four-wheel drive, heavily treaded snow tires abruptly
grabbed at that which they had been spinning on, and a pedestrian who’d slipped
suddenly righted himself out of the way of the truck, Trez decided that the
definition of in-the-nick-of time was exactly what just happened. If he’d been
able to go when the light had turned, if that pedestrian hadn’t caught himself
just when he had, they would both have been filing their termination papers
tonight.
Because about a split second prior to the almost catastrophe going
down, Trez had been debating whether or not to just drive on. And not merely
through the intersection.
Having spent two
decades in Caldwell, watching with his Shadow eyes the way a couple generations
of humans built up the city, he knew exactly where this particular street in
this particular section of town ended up.
At the Hudson River.
So if he hit the gas
and kept on a direct, no wavering course until the street ended, he could take
a Fast & Furious jump off the concrete embankment under one of
Caldie’s two bridges. The BMW would not last long in the free fall, the sleek
car having been built to fly over asphalt, not literally fly, and soon enough,
both he and all this expensive steel, leather, and plastic would be sinking
beneath the cold, sluggish waters of the Hudson.
As his eyes had
flashed peridot, his brain had imagined what it would be like. At first, the
water would infiltrate through seams and vents, a trickle, not a rush. But that
would change as he used the last of the electrical system’s power to lower the
windows. After that, he would sit and wait for his drowning to take place,
probably with his hands still on the wheel, maybe not, his seat belt remaining
pulled across his chest, his clothes dampening and then clinging to his warm
body with the clammy touch of the corpse he would soon become.
He would not
struggle. He would keep his eyes open. He imagined himself feeling a calmness
that had been missing since all the light in his world went out in that
hospital room about twenty miles, and some distance underground, away from
where he himself would die. He would be so relieved. Even as the water reached
his throat, then proceeded over his mouth and into his nose and ears, even as
his body temperature tried to rally against the icy submersion and failed to
conserve any warmth, even as his air supply dwindled to that which was in his
lungs and no more, he would be at peace.
The death throes,
when they came—and they would, for his body was, as all were, evolutionarily
adapted for survival, the conscious mind in charge only up to a dire point,
whereupon autonomic function took over and things went haywire—would thrash him
about in the bucket seat, throwing his head forward and back, his mouth opening
and drawing in water as a reflex, as a desperate hope that his lungs were
merely being denied oxygen as opposed to there being none available to them. He
was under no illusions that it would be easy. There would be suffering from the
suffocation, burning inside his body, perhaps even some last-moment panic
kicked over his mortal transom by the lizard part of his brain.
But then it would be
over. Done with. The whole miserable biological accident of his life dusted, in
the bin, over and out.
A void, and nothing
more.
Which was heretical.
As a Shadow, he had
been raised in a slightly different belief system than regular vampires. His
people, an evolutionary extension within the fanged species, relied a great
deal on the stars in the sky, the traditions of the s’Hisbe a variant of what
was accepted as the way the afterlife worked. The core tenets, however, were
the same for both. It was like Protestants and Catholics—same essential
language, but different dialects—and as such, his kind, too, had the theory
that after you died, you went up unto the Fade, and lived out eternity with
your loved ones under the benevolent auspices of the Scribe Virgin. Assuming
you hadn’t been a total douche down on earth. If you had been an asshole, you
were relegated to Dhunhd, also known as Hell, which was where the Omega
and his minions hung out. Either way, your conduct over the course of your
mortal nights determined your final zip code, and there was something after
your last breath to look forward to—or dread—depending on your worthiness.
It was an okay
theory, and a construct that he understood was, in its own fashion, to be found
on the human side of things as well. Not the Fade or Dhunhd, perhaps,
not the Scribe Virgin or the Omega, exactly, but rather other, similar belief
systems that covered both how you treated yourself and others while you were
mortal, and also considered what happened to you after your coil, so to speak,
got popped. Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and countless
other religions, they were all efforts to give more of a vista after death than
just a coffin and a grave. Or a pyre.
He knew from
pyres.
God, did he ever.
What he no longer
knew from, however, what he no longer believed in, was all the rest of that
stuff. He’d never been particularly spiritual, but man, you didn’t know how
much you had been until you were not any longer.
At all.
Anyway, prior to the whole truck/intersection/ almost-obliteration
thing, he had been considering what was not exactly a sin, but rather a really,
very not-so-hot idea. Assuming you were a believer. In the lexicon of both
vampires and Shadows, if you took your own life, that was it. No Fade for you,
motherfucker. Now, no one had been able to provide him with a good explanation
of what the alternative repercussions were—sure, lore had it you were
closed-door’d on the whole Fade thing. But where did you end up? Dhunhd?
Worm food? Who knew. Yet everyone and their uncle was damn clear on the fact
that you weren’t going to be elbows deep in people you liked for the next
jabillion years.
The message apparently being, if you took your own life, well,
then, to hell with you if you didn’t appreciate the gift you were given at
birth.
Yeah, like this whole breathing/heart-beating thing had been such
a fucking prize, these years he’d been upright and walking around such a
goddamn joy. He’d been destined for a loveless mating since the night he was
born, been responsible for the senseless suffering of both his parents, watched
a dear friend get tortured by a psychotic cunt for a good twenty years—that was
fun—been a pimp, a drug dealer, and an enforcer.
Real partridge-in-a-pear-tree shit.
And then that heaping sundae of shit-chip ice cream—which he’d
self-medicated with an outstanding sex addiction, thank you very much—had been
cherry-topped by the granddaddy of all gutwrenchers.
He’d met the female of his dreams, fallen in
love . . . and, after what felt like twenty minutes of
happiness, had had to hold her hand as she died of a wasting disease right in
front of him.
Honestly, he hadn’t just been born under a bad star; he’d been
born under one that kicked him in the nuts so badly, he’d coughed them out in
his hand.
So now he was here, in this BMW he’d just bought, on this snowy
night, during the motherfucking human season of cocksucking joy, contemplating
suicide—only to have the GODDAMN ACCIDENT THAT COULD HAVE MADE IT ALL COME OUT
ALL RIGHT DENIED TO HIM BY A SET OF ALL-SEASON RADIALS THAT HAD WORKED JUST
FINE AT EVERY OTHER FUCKING INTERSECTION HE’D EVER DRIVEN THROUGH.
Not to put too fine a point on things.
But FFS, he couldn’t even have a chance to get dead in such a way
that he could both end this bullshit AND not run afoul of the maybe truth that
suicide got you, literally, nowhere.
Not that he believed in the afterlife anymore anyway. No matter
what he’d thought he’d seen after Selena had died.
Hell, if there was anything that the last three months had taught
him, it was that death was a hard stop. Especially if you were the one left
behind.
Well, Trez thought, as he sped along in the snow, at least
there was still the embankment option.
There was that to look forward to.
Author Info
J.R. Ward is the author of more than thirty novels, including
those in her #1 New York Times bestselling Black Dagger
Brotherhood series. There are more than fifteen million copies of her novels in
print worldwide, and they have been published in twenty-six different countries
around the world. She lives in the South with her family.
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