Book Review: Innocents by Mary Elizabeth and Sarah Elizabeth

Here is my review of 'Innocents' by Mary Elizabeth and Sarah Elizabeth.

*An e-ARC was provided by the author for an honest review.*

Title: Innocents
Author:  Mary Elizabeth and Sarah Elizabeth
Series:  Dusty Book 1
Genre: Coming-of-Age
Pages: 365
Release Date: July 14, 2014
Publisher: The Elizabeths LLC

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Book Description - 

The girl with an innocent heart knows all about bad choices, but has yet to make them for herself. Searching for freedom, she finds it in the delinquent down the hall. The troublemaker with summer-sky blue eyes knows he should stay away, but can’t resist the blissful wonder who makes his house a home. She’s a hopeless romantic. He’s just hopeless. She’s his reason, but he might not catch her when she falls. She loves him. He loves her crazy. This is what happens when a love made of secrets is kept with rules instead of promises.

Excerpt:

Front windows cracked, we’re relaxed in the back of his parents’ old Audi and it feels good again.

“Caffeine isn’t good for you, you know,” Thomas says, glancing over.

The sun has set and the purple sky and the Yaquina lighthouse paint my temperamental troublemaker in soft hues. The scent and sounds of the sea drift in with the breeze, mixing with smoke from the blunt he’s relit and the low melodies of Citizen Cope singing about a girl that won’t give in and he’ll never let go of.

Taking another drink of the coffee he bought me, I shrug. I don’t know what he said to get the baristas to make a pumpkin spice latte in February, but cinnamon and caffeine fill me with warm relief.

Under his breath and around a hit, Thomas chuckles.

“It’s bad for your bones and skin,” he says, smirking as I tuck my toes under his leg. “And your heart. Uncontrolled beats are a prelude to heart attack, princess.”

I roll my eyes and laugh some, because I do feel them. I felt them earlier in his bed, and before that, when I was thinking of him. My unsteady heartbeats have nothing to do with coffee.

“Bring on the palpitations,” I say before taking another drink, letting Dusty lecture me about bad habits, as if I’m too young to understand irony.

“I’m serious,” he continues, smoking up and blowing out. “Your body will build a tolerance. When you feel it’s becoming bad for you, you’ll want more. You’ll need more. Caffeine’s a drug, Leigh.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. Maybe I’m still high.

“Oh yeah?” I ask. “Like pot?”

This boy blows a cloud of smoke up, and I watch it swirl-spread out across the car’s ceiling.

“Pot’s from the earth,” he says, puffing smoke rings while I wrap both hands around my cup, absorbing its warmth through my palms. I inhale the cream-sweet scent of cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger, and it may be full of stimulants, but I feel calm.

Thomas’ presence is the best Valentine’s Day gift. Candy is nice, and candy flavored blunt wraps were thoughtful, but this is what I wanted most. Just us.

“Pumpkins are from the earth,” I say. “And coffee beans.”

“You think there’s real pumpkin in that?” he asks. When I can’t do more than smile and stare at his lips, he sits up straighter.

“Caffeine’s an analeptic. It fucks with your impulse control and your insulin resistance.”

I laugh because, “What?”

He pulls a hit. “That shit will give you stress hormones, Bliss.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Baseball.”

We’re quiet for a second, looking at each other. His carefreeness is back, but his smile is understated.

“You sure you’re not worried it’ll stunt my growth?”

Between licking his bottom lip and bringing the blunt back up, Dusty glances at my chest without a stitch of modesty.

“You’re growing up fine, girl.”

My cheeks heat, and I hide my smile with another drink.

After I’ve finished my coffee, Thomas offers me the blunt. When I decline, my actual addiction leans into me, nudges his hood from my head, and exhales his smoke all over my neck.

The playful punk that was lecturing me is gone. This honest to a fault, recklessly unflinching, too-beautiful, fated youth is a person only I know. This is my person.

He tosses the blunt out the window while I drop my empty cup to the floorboard, and we shift together. We kiss open and deep, claiming and binding. We kiss the way I wanted to earlier, with eyes closed and hearts open, and I know the real drug is here. It’s between us and inside us.

It’s the way he opens my lips with his lips to kiss me deeper, and the way my pulse feels like his name is in my veins.

It’s the way I can’t stay hurt or mad or jealous, and the way he can’t stand for me to.

It’s the craving that never goes away, the need for more that grows as we feed it. It’s the tolerance he was talking about and knowing he’s right.

It’s this, our secret.

We’re the drug.

Reviewer’s Thoughts -

My heart is so full right now.

You know when you read a classic book such as Wuthering Heights, or Romeo and Juliet, and you have a sense of contentment, fulfillment, and satisfaction, right after you've finished reading it?

Innocents is just like that and so much MORE.

This is not your average book.

This is not your average coming-of-age story.

This is a story about growing up, sneaking for love, loving passionately, heart-overruling-mind-and-common-sense, and love being a trader.

This story is about Thomas and Leighlee. Or, as some of us know them, as Dusty and Bliss.

Who knew starting your first day of school, while eating a banana popsicle, would change your entire life?

Bliss didn’t.

And yet that is exactly what happened.

Best friends enter your life and so do newly-appointed brothers.

Bliss and her best friend, Becka are inseparable. Sometimes Rebecka’s brother, Thomas, was around, sometimes not. But the girls never had to worry, because Dusty and his boys always had their back.

After all, little sisters are untouchable.

Becka and Bliss have a sleepover, and on one fateful night, Bliss couldn’t fall asleep; she was restless.

Call it fate, destiny, a higher power, or whatever you believe in, but Dusty and Bliss are soul mates. They are meant to be together. Should they be together? That is up to you, the reader, to decide.

But, I digress.

Now, on the way to the bathroom to wash her face, Bliss sees Dusty’s television is on and asks him if she can watch TV with him.

Was that the end of the beginning? Or the beginning of the end?

Finding out for yourself is the sweetest reward.

They are the youth of a nation.

They are kids growing up causing anarchy.

They are a group of kids we all know too well, or can relate too.

There is so much I want to say, but don’t want to spoil it for you.

I’ve never loved a book more than I do with Innocents.

Mary Elizabeth and Sarah Elizabeth write poetry with their words, and immerse you into Dusty and Bliss’ world so deeply, you’ll definitely have a book hangover, wanting more.

Innocents is riveting, soul-capturing, gut-wrenchingly beautiful, and I can not wait for Delinquents to release, which comes out in October.

If you were to ever read a book, Innocents is it.

It was life changing for me, and I hope it will be for you as well.

I give Innocents my very first Stephanie's Sexy Read Approval!

This is equivalent to a 6-star review! It is selectively given for those books that were extra special to me. Sometimes they moved me emotionally or made me think deeply about a certain topic. Sometimes they were beautiful stories. Most of the time they were the books that I need to own and will reread over and over again because I love the characters and story.

About the Authors:

Mary Elizabeth is an up and coming author who finds words in chaos, writing stories about the skeletons hanging in your closets. Known as The Realist, she is one half of The Elizabeths—a duo brave enough to never hide the truth. Born and raised in Southern California, she’s a wife, mother of four beautiful children, and dog tamer to one enthusiastic Pit Bull and a prissy Chihuahua. She’s a hairstylist by day but contemporary fiction, new adult author by night. Mary can often be found finger twirling her hair and chewing on a stick of licorice while writing and rewriting a sentence over and over until it’s perfect. She discovered her talent for tale-telling accidentally, but literature is in her stranglehold. And she’s not letting go until every story is told.

To follow Mary’s upcoming solo and collaborative projects, she can be found at her website: http://www.maryelizabethlit.com/.

Brought together by their love of storytelling, Mary and Sarah Elizabeth are a pair of dedicated writers with complementary strengths who’ve cultivated a literary style that captures a Realist’s brutality with a Poet’s grace, uncovering the self-seeking side of tenderness and the undisguised truth of honesty. Inspired by the lyrics of a song, Dusty was born between emails and long G-chats before a single chapter was ever typed. A short story turned into a monster, and more than four years and several edits later, the first half of their collaboration, Innocents, will be released on July 14, 2014. And its conclusion, Delinquents, is set to release on October 23, 2014.

Listener, messenger, secret keeper, Elizabeth, and TrueLove, Sarah works two jobs by day so that she’s able to really work by night. She’s written since she was old enough to hold a marker, and her writing bridges the sacred and profane, from first love to forbidden, with a longing for truth and a passion for hearts. She is currently based in Kansas City where her army is comprised of one little buffalo. Her best friends are girls named Moses and Bunny. Her hero is a boy named Bishop, and the one she loves has ocean eyes. In addition to Dusty, Sarah also has a collaborative novella, Light and Wine, due to be released on June 8th, and her solo work will be featured in the anthology Branded, this August.

Brought together by their love of storytelling, Mary and Sarah Elizabeth are a pair of dedicated writers with complementary strengths who’ve cultivated a literary style that captures a Realist’s brutality with a Poet’s grace, uncovering the self-seeking side of tenderness and the undisguised truth of honesty. Inspired by the lyrics of a song, Dusty was born between emails and long G-chats before a single chapter was ever typed. A short story turned into a monster, and more than four years and several edits later, the first half of their collaboration, Innocents, will be released on July 14, 2014. And its conclusion, Delinquents, is set to release on October 23, 2014.

If you’d like to contact The Elizabeths, they can be located on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheElizabethsDusty.

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