Title: Paralleled Bond
Author: Stephanie Hansen
Genre: YA Dystopian Romance
Book Blurb:
When the only option left means losing someone you love, you have no options. How could you, how could you save one person you care about, when doing so would harm another? What if they weren’t even letting you choose but choosing for you? You’d have to intervene without letting them know, right?
To be an Altered Helix and put others in danger is the new reality for Austria. Luckily someone’s there to catch her when she falls, Josh, and fall she does, in love that is. While witnessing her family being put in danger, Austria’s haunted house family grows. Now that Austria has found a way to defeat Mutant Altered Helixes after her, a dangerous stream of events occur to those around her. Just when the family has finally come together, could they be ruined?
The amazing conclusion to the Altered Helix series, Paralleled Bond displays the results when polar opposites come together for the greater good.
Excerpt:
I crumple to the floor sobbing. I’m not just crying now. It’s one of those intense, wretched sobs that shake your entire body. I pull my knees into my chest trying to comfort myself. I try to see some way out or some way to make things right, but I know there’s nothing. Nothing will ever make this pain go away. My body begins convulsing, and I can’t make it stop. I see Josh’s face in front of me but cannot hear what he’s saying. I’m not surprised that my wailing woke him. I feel him wrap his arms around me and lift me to a sitting position. Even with a cast, he does this with ease. His lips move, and he looks in my eyes. I can’t move a muscle. It feels as though I can’t even blink. I’m frozen. I’m like a statue of misery.
He turns his head away from me and opens his mouth wide. He’s screaming something. The vein on the side of his forehead’s bulging out. Then Tiff’s shaking me. She’s also saying something, but I don’t hear her. Luke grabs a flashlight and shines it in my eyes. He’s checking my vitals. I feel him touch my wrist with his thumb and forefinger. Then he and Josh pick me up and put me on the bed. That’s when Josh sees the note. I see him open it and read it. His eyes move back and forth across the page. His facial expressions change over and over again as he reads. I wish I could wrap my arms around him. I wish I could talk and explain. None of those things are available to me. He squeezes the note in his hand and says something to Tiff and Luke.
Tiff grabs my phone and unlocks it. She says something to me, but I still don’t hear her. Am I going to remain in this deaf and mute state of paralysis forever? Was it the portal that did this to me, or is this how everyone is when they lose their entire family? Tiff shows me the screen. She has my father’s email up. She points it at me and looks like she’s asking me something, but I still can’t hear. Then she turns it back to herself. She’s touching the screen, but I have no idea what she’s doing. What if she’s deleting his message, the last message from my father? I try to will my body to move so I can grab the phone. I swear I’m flexing my muscles in my arm hard enough to lift fifty pounds, but my arm doesn’t even budge. Then she turns the phone back to me. There’s a message from my mother. Before I can read it, she turns it back to herself.
A tear rolls down her cheek, and she hugs me. Luke holds my hand. Josh is looking at the phone now. He’s pacing back and forth. I wonder what was in my mother’s message. Did she talk about everything? Then Josh stops and drops to his knees. He looks at me, and I can see understanding in his eyes. We’re both without family in this world now. We’re all each other have. He walks over to the bed and says something to Luke and Tiff. They get up and leave the room. Josh sits down next to me. He smells like the woods. I wish I could be hidden away somewhere in the woods. Lost in a cabin with him away from society and away from where everyone else has a family.
He picks me up and walks to the bathroom. He sets me down on the floor mat. It’s one of those mats with extra padding. It feels like I’m sitting on a cloud. More feeling is coming back. Then I remember my father and grandmother walking up the stairs towards the clouds. A tear springs through my eyelashes. Josh wipes it away with his fingertip. Then he turns the water on. I can hear it hitting the tub. My hearing’s returning too. I’m not sure I’m ready to be back. My father will never be back. Why should I?
Josh begins to brush my hair. I look in his eyes. They’ve always made me think of clear blue water. It reminds me of the grassy pad next to the beach I was supposed to land on instead of going to a portal and watching my loved ones being taken from me. Multiple tears flow down my cheeks now. I begin to shake and writhe in agony again. Josh strips my pajamas off of me, picks me up, and puts me in the water. It’s warm. It calms me. His arms soothe me despite the cast and awkward moves it requires in order for him to keep it dry.
“Everything’s going to be fine, Austria. Stay with me.”
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
If you could dress up as anything or anyone this Halloween, what or who would it be and why?
Rhaenyra Targaryen
Explain why your featured book is a treat to read:
With a haunted house setting, Paralleled Bond is a perfect read for October.
“I loved this SciFi Romance Novella Trilogy!!! I laughed, I swooned, I was on the edge of my seat, and I cried. Who would have thought three little books could have had such an impact on my emotions?! I enjoyed every minute of it.” ~ BookDragonGirl
Giveaway –
One lucky reader will win a $75 Amazon gift card
Open internationally.
Runs October 1 – 31
Drawing will be held on November 1.
Author Biography:
Stephanie Hansen is a PenCraft and Global Book Award Winning Author as well as an Imadjinn finalist. Her debut novella series, Altered Helix, released in 2020. It hit the #1 New Release, #1 Best Seller, and other top 100 lists on Amazon. It is now being adapted to an animated story for Tales. Her debut novel, Replaced Parts, released in 2021 through Fire & Ice YA and Tantor Audio. It has been in a Forbes article, hit Amazon bestseller lists, and made the Apple young adult coming soon bestsellers list. The second book in the Transformed Nexus series, Omitted Pieces, releases in 2022. She is a member of the deaf and hard of hearing community, so she tries to incorporate that into her fiction.
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