We are thrilled to bring you the Release Day Launch for Robin York's HARDER!! HARDER is a New Adult contemporary romance being published by Random House’s Bantam imprint and is the 2nd novel in Robin York’s Caroline & West Series. This book, y'all.
HARDER Synopsis:
In Robin York’s provocative new novel, two
young ex-lovers find themselves together again in the shadow of tragedy—and an
intense, undeniable attraction.
Caroline still dreams about West. His warm skin, his taut
muscles, his hand sliding down her stomach. Then she wakes up and she’s back to
reality: West is gone. And before he left, he broke her heart.
Then, out of the blue, West calls in crisis. A tragedy has
hit his family—a family that’s already a fractured mess. Caroline knows what
she has to do. Without discussion, without stopping to think, she’s on a plane,
flying to his side to support him in any way he needs.
They’re together again, but things are totally different.
West looks edgy, angry at the world. Caroline doesn’t fit in. She should be
back in Iowa, finalizing her civil suit against the ex-boyfriend who posted
their explicit pictures on a revenge porn website. But here she is. Deeply into
West, wrapped up in him, in love with him. Still.
They fought the odds once. Losing each other was hard. But
finding their way back to each other couldn’t be harder.
Advance praise for HARDER:
“Bursting with chemistry, emotion, and heart, Caroline and
West’s story will take your breath away!”—Katy
Evans, New York Times bestselling author of the
REAL series
“Robin York writes exceptionally real characters in achingly
real situations. Harder had a hold on my heart
and didn’t let go until the very end.”—New York
Times bestselling author Cora Carmack
Advance praise for DEEPER:
“The perfect new adult story . . . West will make you swoon!”—New
York Times bestselling author Monica Murphy
“Beautifully written and full of swoony tender moments,
toe-curling chemistry, and delicious, twisty angst . . . Stop whatever you’re
doing and read this book.”—Christina Lauren, author of the
Beautiful Bastard series
Excerpt:
When West’s ringtone starts playing in my darkened bedroom,
it slips into my subconscious, and I have one of those
last-second-before-you-wake-up dreams that’s pure sensation—his skin warm
against me everywhere, his weight and smell, the muscles in his thighs against
the backs of mine, his hand sliding down my stomach. All of that, slow and
melting and West, until the song finally manages to pierce
through the haze of my sleep and pinch me awake.
I fight my way from under the sheet, turned on and pissed
off because I know how this goes. The rock in my stomach, the day ahead during
which I’ll try and fail to shake that flood of sense-memory.
I’m going to have to live through it, and then I’m going to
lose it, every good memory I have of West, again, when
what I want is to drop back into that dream and live there instead.
It sucks. It sucks, and I’m so
distracted by the suckage that I’m picking up the phone and swiping at the
screen with my thumb before I completely register what’s going on.
West’s ringtone. West is calling me.
West is calling me at one a.m. when I haven’t heard from him
in two and a half months.
If he’s drunk-dialing me, I’m going to fly to Oregon and
kick him in the nuts.
That’s what I’m thinking when I put the phone to my ear—but
it’s not how I feel. I wish it were. I wish I could say
Hello?and hear West say Hey, and not
feel . . . I don’t even know. Plugged in. Lit up. Juiced.
I stand in my dark bedroom, aware in every centimeter of my
skin that he’s breathing on the other end of the phone, somewhere on the far
side of the country.
I have too many memories that start this way. Too many
conversations where I told myself I wouldn’t and then I did.
I have this enormous burden of longing and pain, so heavy I
can hear it in my voice when I snap, “What do you want?”
“My dad’s dead.”
My head clears in an instant, my attention sharpening to a
point.
“He got shot,” West says, “and it’s . . . it’s a fucking
mess, Caro. I know this is—I shouldn’t ask you. I can’t ask you, but I just
need to tell you because I can’t fucking—” A crackling whooshing noise
interrupts him, the kind of interference that fills your whole head with white
sound. I just stand there, waiting for his voice to come back.
I’m pushing the phone so hard against my ear, my breath
coming shallow and fast, aware with the kind of clarity I’ve only found in
moments of crisis that it doesn’t even matter. Whatever he says next. It
doesn’t matter.
The thing I never understood before West was that there are
some people who, when it comes to them, reason and logic are never going to be
in charge.
He left me. He hurt me.
But I stand there in the dark, holding the phone, and I know
that in a few hours I’ll be on a plane.
Robin York grew up at a college, went to college, signed on
for some more college, and then married a university professor. She still isn’t
sure why it didn’t occur to her to write New Adult sooner. Writing asRuthie
Knox, she is a USA TODAY bestselling author of contemporary romance,
including RITA-finalistsAbout Last
Night and Room at the Inn. She
moonlights as a mother, makes killer salted caramels, and sorts out thorny plot
problems while running, hiking, or riding her bike.
