**Giveaway** Where it All Began by Lorana Hoopes

Where it All Began

by Lorana Hoopes

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GENRE: Christian Fiction

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BLURB:

Sandra Baker thought her life was going in the right direction until she ended up pregnant. Not ready for a baby, her boyfriend pushes her to have an abortion. After the procedure, Sandra spirals into depression losing her relationship and turning to alcohol. Then she meets Henry, a strong Christian man, who shows her God's love. Will she accept God's forgiveness and more importantly, will she forgive herself?

 

I pulled four festively colored mugs down from the cabinet and filled them each with the creamy liquid. Handing two to Raquel, I picked up the other two, and we returned to the living room where we chatted idly as Christmas music played in the background.

When I could contain my joy and curiosity no longer, I clapped my hands and surveyed my friends. “Okay, who’s ready for gifts?”

They smiled, laughing at my exuberance, and I handed out a gift for each person. The little red box from Henry I picked for myself, holding it like a cherished toy. “Open yours first,” I nudged him.

He smiled and unwrapped the gift I had gotten for him. As he pulled out the book he had wanted, his smile deepened. “You remembered.”

“Of course I remembered.” I swatted him playfully on the arm. “You didn’t already buy it for yourself, did you?”

“No, I was hoping my very attentive girlfriend would cover that base.” He laughed and kissed my nose. “Okay, now you.” He stared at me as I began to unwrap the little box.

Beneath the red paper was a small black jewelry box. A lump formed in my throat, and I raised silent eyes on him.

“Go ahead,” he teased. “Open it.”

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Lorana Hoopes is currently an English teacher in the Pacific Northwest where she lives with her husband and three children. When not writing, she can be seen kickboxing in her local gym, singing at her church, or performing on stage. The Heartbeats series is her first full length novel series. She has also just released the first book in her early reader chapter book, The Wishing Stone.

You can follow her blog at https://twoheartbeats.org

Twitter: www.twitter.com/loranahoopes

Facebook: www.facebook.com/loranalhoopes

Get a free novella or audio reading of The Wishing Stone by filling out the contact form at http://authorloranahoopes.site123.me/

The Book is on sale for $0.99 during the tour:

Where It All Began is available at Amazon: http://bit.ly/HeartbeatsWIAB 

Barnes and Nobles: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/where-it-all-began-lorana-l-hoopes/1124598788

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31944027-where-it-all-began?from_search=true

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/where-it-all-began-2
 

RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY

Dumpster Dying & Grilled, Chilled, and Killed by Lesley A. Diehl

Emily Rhodes came to rural Florida for the cowboys, the cattle, and to do a little country two-step, not to fall head first onto a dead body in a dumpster. Ah, the golden years of retirement in the sunshine state. They're more like pot metal to Emily Rhodes, who discovers the body of the county's wealthiest rancher in the Big Lake Country Club dumpster. With her close friend accused of the murder, Emily sets aside her grief at her life partner's death to find the real killer. She underestimates the obstacles rural Florida can set up for a winter visitor and runs afoul of a local judge with his own version of justice, hires a lawyer who works out of a retirement home, and flees wild fires -- hand-in-hand with the man she believes to be the killer

Review:
We all know what they say about Florida....you either retire there, visit there, move there, or were born there. Right? Although I visited there once for a couple weeks and thoroughly enjoyed the sun and warm rain (I'm from Seattle - our rain is cold.), I am a city girl and will always love my Seattle although I would love to live in New York. Anyway...
This is the first installment in the Big Lake Murder Mysteries, and it is set in Florida.  Emily Rhodes, I really liked her. I think she is very relatable to a lot of women - can still be referred to as "hip and young" but is no longer a "spring chicken". I've had moments like that. Sort of like that meme "I still feel like I'm in my twenties until I hang out with twenty year old's and then I'm like nope, I'm 30". She's spunky, full of personality, and cool. And, she is loyal to her friends, very close to them but...don't double cross her or do her wrong because...you don't want to see that side of her. Which is what the detective find out when her friend is accused of murder and she steps in to prove her friends innocence only to put the bulls-eye on her own back in the process.
This is a great start to a fun series and I look forward to reading more from this series/author! 

This is the second in the Big Lake Mysteries (the first was Dumpster Dying) featuring Emily Rhodes, retired preschool teacher and bartender turned amateur snoop.

It seems as if Emily is destined to discover dead bodies. This time she finds one of the contestants at the local barbeque cook-off dead and covered in barbeque sauce in a beer cooler. She should be used to stumbling onto corpses by now and the question of who killed the guy should pique her curiosity, but Emily decides to let Detective Lewis handle this one, at least until she figures his theory of who did the deed is wrong, wrong, wrong. Lewis’ denigration of Emily’s speculations is condescending enough to stimulate her dormant snooping skills. As the two of them go on their separate paths to find the killer, Lewis’ old partner, Toby the dirty, tobacco-spitting cop interferes in the investigation leaving Lewis with the wrong man in jail. Killers, bootleggers, barbeque and feral pigs—it’s a lethal game of hide and seek in the Florida swamp

REVIEW:
Poor Emily...she keeps getting herself into these situations one way or another. In the second installment of this series, she stumbles across yet another body except this time, it's at a barbecue cook-off in Texas. This was another fun read by this author with humorous elements and twists I did not see coming!