NEVER TEAR US APART – Monica Murphy
Never Tear Us Apart,  Book 1
A Perfect 10
Bantam
ISBN: 978-1-101-96728-7
January 2016
New Adult Romance

California – Now and Then

Then – Katie is not yet thirteen when she's abducted in an amusement park. She was raped, beaten, and chained in a storage shed. And that's how Will found her. He panicked and ran, but came back and saved her, and Katie has never stopped thinking he was her guardian angel. But in saving Katie, Will got dragged through hell, not that his life was good before, because the man that kidnapped and raped her was his father.

Now – Ethan has shed his former life, no one knows who he used to be, and he prefers to keep the past in the past. But when he sees Katie on television, he can't get her out of his head. It's been years, but he has to know – does she hate him because of his father? Has she been able to move on? He finds her, but suddenly becomes too afraid to tell her who he used to be. The horrible ordeal in their past will forever tie them together. But will that also tear them apart?

If you think that the New Adult Romance trend is a bunch of shiny, happy love stories – Monica Murphy is here to show you the light. Or in this case, the dark side. Told from four different viewpoints – Katie past and present, and Will past and present – this is a raw, emotional story of two broken and abused people coming together to heal…or fall apart all over again.

NEVER TEAR US APART earns a Perfect 10 rating by giving readers hope after all the pain, and yet managing to rub salt in the wound. The story is beautifully crafted, the characters and their pain so real you just want to reach in and heal them, even knowing that there are some scars that never fade.

Ethan and Katie's story continues in NEVER LET YOU GO, coming May 2016.

Amanda Toth