Published by Amy Harmon on 6/13
Pages: 285
Genres: Contemporary, Sports
Review Copy Provided By: Amy Harmon
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Cover by: Hang Le
**This is David ‘Tag’ Taggert's book, a supporting character introduced in The Law of Moses. This is a stand-alone story.
She said I was like a song. Her favorite song. A song isn’t something you can see. It’s something you feel, something you move to, something that disappears after the last note is played.
I won my first fight when I was eleven years old, and I’ve been throwing punches ever since. Fighting is the purest, truest, most elemental thing there is. Some people describe heaven as a sea of unending white. Where choirs sing and loved ones await. But for me, heaven was something else. It sounded like the bell at the beginning of a round, it tasted like adrenaline, it burned like sweat in my eyes and fire in my belly. It looked like the blur of screaming crowds and an opponent who wanted my blood.
For me, heaven was the octagon.
Until I met Millie, and heaven became something different. I became something different. I knew I loved her when I watched her stand perfectly still in the middle of a crowded room, people swarming, buzzing, slipping around her, her straight dancer’s posture unyielding, her chin high, her hands loose at her sides. No one seemed to see her at all, except for the few who squeezed past her, tossing exasperated looks at her unsmiling face. When they realized she wasn’t normal, they hurried away. Why was it that no one saw her, yet she was the first thing I saw?
If heaven was the octagon, then she was my angel at the center of it all, the girl with the power to take me down and lift me up again. The girl I wanted to fight for, the girl I wanted to claim. The girl who taught me that sometimes the biggest heroes go unsung and the most important battles are the ones we don’t think we can win.
I was provided a review copy; this did not influence my opinion of the book.
I stopped a foot from her and reached out, taking one of her hands in mine. “Do you like this song?” I asked. Obviously she did and obviously I was stupid.“I love this song.”“Me too,” I whispered. I reached for her other hand.“Accidental Babies.”“What?” I tugged her hands gently, and she took a step. I was so close now that the top of her head provided a shelf for my chin, and Damien’s song was being drowned out by the sound of my heart.“It’s another one of his songs. . . and I think I love it even more,” she whispered back.“But that song is so sad,” I breathed, and laid my cheek against her hair.“That’s what makes it beautiful. It’s devastating. I love it when a song devastates me.” Her voice was thready, as if she was struggling to breathe.“Ah, the sweet kind of suffering.” I dropped her hands and wrapped my arms around her.“The best kind.” Her voice hitched as our bodies aligned.“I’ve been suffering for a while now, Millie.”“You have?” she asked, clearly amazed.
“Since the moment I saw you. It devastated me. And I love when a girl devastates me.” I was using her definition of the word, but the truth was, my sister was the only girl who had ever devastated me, and it hadn’t been sweet agony.
“I’ve never devastated anyone before,” Millie said faintly, shock and pleasure coloring her words. She still stood with her arms at her sides, almost like she couldn’t believe what was happening. But her lips hovered close to my jaw, as if she was enjoying the tension between almost and not quite.
“I’m guessing you’ve left a wake of destruction,” I whispered. “You just don’t know.”
Finally, as if she couldn’t resist any longer, she raised her hands to my waist. Trembling fingers and flat palms slid across my abdomen, up my chest, past my shoulders, progressing slowly as if she memorized as she moved. Then she touched my face and her thumbs found the cleft in my chin, the way they’d done the first time she’d traced my smile. Hesitantly, she urged my face down toward hers. A heartbeat before our mouths touched she spoke, and the soft words fluttered against my lips.
“Are you going to devastate me, David?” she asked.
“God, I hope not,” I prayed aloud.
Anticipation dissolved the lingering space between us, and I pressed needy lips to her seeking mouth. And then we melded together, hands clinging, bodies surging, music moaning, dancing in the wreckage. Sweet, sweet, devastation.
“Too late . . .” I thought I heard her whisper.
Music & Lyrics by Amy Harmon and Paul Travis – Song of David
- Music video
Created by Focus 4 Productions
Devastatingly Beautiful, a favorite of the year!
“Sometimes submission meant releasing pride, letting someone else take the reins, trusting someone with your love and your life, even though they didn’t deserve it.”
I can tell you one thing for certain, I have never read a book like The Song of David before! It is a beautiful love story which will have you on the edge of your seat turning each page as you follow their story.
Without giving spoilers, I will say that this story is a love story told via a series of audio tapes. Essentially, it is an audiobook within the pages of a book. It is stunning. It is passionate. It is gripping. The switch between “then” and “now” was seamless and at times heart-wrenching.
It is also a love story between three people; Millie, Henry and Tag.
“He’s special, [Tag] and he makes me feel special.” “I can feel it in my chest, the way I can’t ever really catch my breath when he’s around. I feel it in my stomach too, the way it flips when he says my name. And mostly, I feel it when he talks to Henry. He’s gentle. And he’s sweet.”
But really, I am without words to describe the beauty of this book. It is a love story within a love story, a book within a book… an emotional rollercoaster ride, that I gladly took. I bawled ugly tears and happy tears, I laughed too. Amy Harmon was a puppet master and my heart and emotions were her toys. She played with them at will and I let her. I felt my heart squeeze both from joy and from heartache. As soon as I was up, she had me free-falling. One moment I would be enjoying the slow build romance and the incredibly endearing way Tag was with Millie, the next, I was bawling because of their love for one another. One moment I was laughing with Henry, the next he had me bawling because of the way he understood the world. GAH, I was a wreck. My husband and son were concerned!
“So who takes care of Millie?” I whispered.
“I don’t need to be taken care of, Tag,” I whispered back. “I’ve been trying to tell you that.”
“Need and want are two different things.” I swallowed once, trying to convince myself that I didn’t want what I wanted very, very much.
I have to be completely honest here. When I began reading this, while I loved Amy Harmon’s writing, I was having a difficult time connecting with the story. The melancholy feeling was a little too much for my already melancholy mood. I started reading this as I was on the very long drive taking my daughter to her college orientation. So my mind wasn’t in the right place. Gratefully, I took a break that night and the next day and didn’t resume reading until the drive back home that next night. I am so glad I took that break. I think sometimes it is as much about the book that we read as it is about our mindset when we read it. Had my mind not been in the right place, I would have missed out on all the beauty and the incredible story that Amy Harmon crafted.
This book had it all for me; it made me THINK and FEEL! I loved it!
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