TUESDAY POTPOURRI: INTROS/TEASERS — “AFTERWARDS” — OCT. 30

 

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday Potpourri, in which we celebrate bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; to Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Today I’m excerpting from Afterwards, by Rosamund Lupton.

 

Intro:  Prologue:

I couldn’t move, not even a little finger or a flicker of an eye.  I couldn’t open my mouth to scream.

I struggled, as hard as I could, to move the huge bulk that my body had become, but I was trapped under the hull of a vast ship wrecked on the ocean floor and moving was impossible.

My eyelids were welded shut.  My eardrums broken.  My vocal cords snapped off.

Pitch-dark and silent and so heavy in there; a mile of dense water above me.

Only one thing for it, I said to myself, thinking of you, and I slipped out of the wrecked ship of my body into the black ocean.

I swam upwards towards the daylight with all my strength.

Not a mile deep after all.

Because I was suddenly in a white room, brightly gleaming, smelling pungently of antiseptic.  I heard voices and my name.

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Teaser:  Inside your head now, on those wide-open prairies, I see a one-man stockade of hope, built by your strength of spirit.  p. 93

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Amazon Description:   The school is on fire. Her children are inside.
Grace runs toward the burning building, desperate to reach them.
In the aftermath of the devastating fire which tears her family apart, Grace embarks on a mission to find the person responsible and protect her children from further harm.  This fire was not an accident, and her daughter Jenny may still be in grave danger. Grace is the only one who can discover the culprit, and she will do whatever it takes to save her family and find out who committed the crime that rocked their lives.  While unearthing truths about her life that may help her find answers, Grace learns more about everyone around her — and finds she has courage she never knew she possessed.
Powerful and beautiful, with a riveting story and Lupton’s trademark elegant style that made Sister such a sweeping success, Afterwards explores the depths of a mother’s unswerving love.

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What do you think?  I am finding this story riveting, as Grace tells us the story from “wherever she is,” and I am captivated.