Cover Reveal: Seeking Her by Cora Carmack

It's a well-known secret that I'm a bit of a Cora Carmack fangirl and have loved each and every installment of her Losing It series, so I'm extremely excited today to get the chance to reveal the cover for her upcoming novella, Seeking Her. Seeking Her is written from Jackson Hunt's point of view (Kelsey's love interest in Finding It), and I simply cannot wait to get my hands on this one. Finding It was my favorite of the series to date despite a very rocky start with Kelsey, and I repeatedly found myself wishing for a peek inside Jackson's head as I read her story, so this one is sure to be a real treat for me.

Enough rambling, check out Seeking Her!

SEEKING HER

(releases January 28th from William Morrow)

A few months after being honorably discharged from the military, Jackson Hunt is still struggling to adjust back to the real world. He needs to get a job and find a sense of normalcy if he’s going to keep his own demons at bay. The job that falls into his lap, though, is anything but normal.

Bodyguard (and baby-sitter) to spoiled-rich-girl Kelsey Summers isn’t exactly what he’d been looking for, but it’s a chance to travel, to get away from the home that has felt stifling ever since his return. It would be a pretty sweet gig if it weren’t for the fact that Kelsey’s father doesn’t want Kelsey to know she’s being followed. Hunt feels guilty (and a little bit creepy) as he watches her from afar. She’s vibrant and infuriating, exciting and reckless, mysterious and familiar. When he sees her falling into the same patterns that he suffered years ago, he decides it’s time to stop watching and help her instead. But getting to know her is more difficult than he thought, especially because the more he knows her, the more he wants her. 

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Review: Finding It

FINDING IT
Losing It #3
Cora Carmack
Contemporary New Adult
320 pages
William Morrow
Available October 15th
Source: ARC from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Sometimes you have to lose yourself to find where you truly belong...

Most girls would kill to spend months traveling around Europe after college graduation with no responsibility, no parents, and no-limit credit cards. Kelsey Summers is no exception. She's having the time of her life . . . or that's what she keeps telling herself.

It's a lonely business trying to find out who you are, especially when you're afraid you won't like what you discover. No amount of drinking or dancing can chase away Kelsey's loneliness, but maybe Jackson Hunt can. After a few chance meetings, he convinces her to take a journey of adventure instead of alcohol. With each new city and experience, Kelsey's mind becomes a little clearer and her heart a little less hers. Jackson helps her unravel her own dreams and desires. But the more she learns about herself, the more Kelsey realizes how little she knows about Jackson.

MY THOUGHTS
Finding It, following in the wake of its hugely entertaining predecessors, seems initially as though it's going to pale in comparison, heroine Kelsey a woman who in the opening chapters makes us question whether or not we can even bring ourselves to spend several hundred pages with her as she makes one spectacularly poor and dangerous choice after another. The only excuse she provides for her bar and bed hopping is the self-delusion she's filling herself so full of life that when she returns to a cold, empty and regimented world of wealth and privilege she'll have her time in Europe to carry her through. Her reasoning appears weak at best to us in the beginning, and it's difficult to do anything other than grimace at her behavior, watching as what appears to be a spoiled rich girl drinks herself to stupidity in order to forget the not-unique misfortune of having a grossly imperfect home life. What we soon come to see though is that we should have had faith in Ms. Cormack from page one, Kelsey's story turning out to be impressively gut-wrenching as it casts an entirely new light on a character we're mistakenly quick to judge.

After a rough start with Kelsey, we're given a few small hints here and there that bring an abrupt halt to the judgmental rant we'd been creating in our heads, forcing us to look harder at the young woman in black and white before us. What we find is someone with so many faces she honestly doesn't know if there's a real one in the bunch; someone who from an appallingly young age has been throwing booze and men in the path of her past as she's run away from it, trying in vain to slow down its relentless pursuit with obstacles so she can continue to find empty comfort in hiding herself away from the world. Though Kelsey recognizes what happened to her so long ago and what she's done to herself since then are far less gruesome than what so many others are forced to endure, it doesn't take away from the reality of her pain, and we feel every agonizing beat of her heart as it bleeds for the girl she feels she could have been.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the romantic setup of Finding It is how little we actually get to know Jackson Hunt, a young man of secret smiles and hooded eyes that hide far more than they reveal, but even so Ms. Cormack writes a stunning relationship between the two of them rich in realism and believability. Just because we don't get to know him all that well doesn't mean he's not an absolutely fascinating character with a past as dark–and in some ways darker given his time in the military–than Kelsey's, and he easily manages to charm us just as he does her. It's not difficult to guess what he's hiding, but knowing in advance doesn't detract in the least from the devastation we feel when Kelsey learns the truth for herself, the fragile foundation of a new life brutally ripped away to reveal ruse where she desperately needed reality.

Though the bitter and deeply troubling relationship with her parents could have been explored with more depth, it likely would have taken us on an unnecessary detour, our minds and hearts so involved in Kelsey's life that we can't help but want every element of her existence to be detailed for us. Overall, Finding It rockets right on by both Losing it and Faking It to easily become the best of the series, taking us to new emotional highs and lows and challenging us as readers to not make snap judgments based on limited information, instead showing us just how much unexpected beauty can be found in patience.

Rating: 4.5/5

Find Cora:

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This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.

Cover Reveal: Finding It by Cora Carmack

I'm hugely excited today to share with you the cover for Finding It, the third book in the Losing It series by Cora Carmack. I think everyone knows by now that I'm a rabid cool, calm, and collected fan of Cora's, so I'm of course counting down the days until October 1st when I can finally get my hands on Finding It. Luckily for me though, the follow up novella to Bliss and Garrick's story, Keeping Her, is releasing on August 13th so I'll have something to tide me over. You can get a sneak peek of this story as well as several scenes from Garrick's POV here if you missed that post a little while ago, but first, let me know what you think of Finding It!

From Goodreads:

Most girls would kill to spend months traveling around Europe after college graduation with no responsibility, no parents, and no-limit credit cards. Kelsey Summers is no exception. She's having the time of her life...or that's what she keeps telling herself.

It's a lonely business trying to find out who you are, especially when you're afraid you won't like what you discover. No amount of drinking or dancing can chase away Kelsey's loneliness, but maybe Jackson Hunt can. After a few chance meetings, he convinces her to take a journey of adventure instead of alcohol. With each new city and experience, Kelsey's mind becomes a little clearer and her heart a little less hers. Jackson helps her unravel her own dreams and desires. But the more she learns about herself, the more Kelsey realizes how little she knows about Jackson.

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CORA CARMACK

 (photo by Matt Tolbert)

I'm Cora Carmack,  a twenty-something writer who likes to write about twenty-something characters. I've done a multitude of things in my life-- boring jobs (like working retail), Fun jobs (like working in a theatre), stressful jobs (like teaching), and dream jobs (like writing). I enjoy placing my characters in the most awkward situations possible, and then trying to help them get a boyfriend out of it. Awkward people need love, too.  My first book, LOSING IT, was a New York Times and USA Today Bestseller.

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