Verwandte Artikel zu Just Fall

Just Fall - Hardcover

Sadowsky, Nina

 
9780553394856: Just Fall
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0553394851 ISBN 13: 9780553394856
Verlag: Bantam USA, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Perfect for fans of Patricia Highsmith and Gillian Flynn, this sexy and seductive debut novel asks: How can you find out that the person you love is a killer . . . and continue to love him anyway?

THEN

Ellie Larrabee’s life is perfect. She’s thriving at work, living in a fabulous apartment, and engaged to the man of her dreams. To all appearances, Ellie and Rob Beauman are a golden couple—blessed with good looks, success, and romantic chemistry that’s off the charts. Surely their future together promises nothing but happiness.

But on what should be the most wonderful day of her life, moments after saying “I do,” a shocking secret threatens to shatter Ellie’s happily-ever-after. She learns that the man she just married and loves with all her heart hides a dark past beneath his charismatic exterior. And the more harrowing truth she uncovers, the deeper Ellie is swept into a vortex of betrayal and uncertainty from which she may never escape.

NOW

On the island paradise of St. Lucia, Ellie isn’t basking in honeymoon splendor—she’s grappling with the chilling realities of her violently derailed life: Rob has blood on his hands and some very dangerous people on his trail, and only Ellie stands between him and the lethal destiny he’s facing. Rob never dreamed that Ellie would be dragged into the deadly world he’s trapped in—or used as a pawn against him. And Ellie could never have imagined how far she’d be forced to go to save the man she loves.

Praise for Just Fall

“[A] tense, wild fever dream of a debut.”—Entertainment Weekly

“What a terrific novel! Just Fall arrived in the mail this morning and I read the book in one sitting, which I haven’t done for years. Nina Sadowsky’s premise is original, her voice is clear, her storytelling skills are remarkable, and her pacing is perfect.”—Sue Grafton

“Character-rich and compulsively readable, Just Fall is a marvelous surprise. Exploring the universal need for family and human connection, and the costs incurred when those bonds are severed, Just Fall takes the reader on a wild ride through the psyches of two damaged people who hope to find redemption in each other. The writing is lush, the insights sharp. This novel is a winner.”—Diane Keaton

“Apt comparisons to The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl . . . The tension becomes almost unbearable. . . . The many plot strands are neatly woven together as the story hurtles towards its shocking . . . ending.”—Booklist

“Chilling . . . Sadowsky’s debut is an excellent foray into the depths of the depraved criminal mind and its control over others.”—RT Book Reviews (four stars)

“[An] intriguing setup . . . Sex and violence abound. . . . Ellie must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice for a man she only thought she knew.”—Publishers Weekly

“Impressive and memorable . . . [Sadowsky’s] creative abilities, honed in the film industry, are on display here. She knows just how much to give the reader, and when.”—Bookreporter

“A chilling story exploring the fine lines between love and hate, good and evil, Just Fall is a wild ride of unnerving twists and turns, right up to the last page.”—Andrea Kane, New York Times bestselling author of The Silence That Speaks

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nina Sadowsky has written numerous original screenplays and adaptations for such companies as The Walt Disney Company, Working Title Films, and Lifetime Television. She was president of Meg Ryan’s Prufrock Pictures. She was the executive producer of The Wedding Planner and has produced numerous other films. She also served as president of production for Signpost Films, where she worked on such movies as House of Sand and Fog. Sadowsky is currently an adjunct professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, teaching both script development and producing. This is her first novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Now

Salt tang and the slight, sickly sweet scent of alcohol, sugar, and fruit too long in the sun. Orange-tipped sun, baby blue skies, sand fine as powder, azure waves lapping dreamily against the shore.

The room in question is on the third, the top, floor of the hotel. The building runs long and lean, a jagged spine along the pristine shoreline, rooms staggered for optimal views.

The rooms are broad and deep. Each opens out to a private terrace or patio. Sliding glass doors pair with plantation shutters in the event of a desperately necessary lazy afternoon nap. Or fuck.

Juxtaposed against the beauty of the beach, a juicy array of the human species: pale, bronzed, brown, sunburned, leathery, crispy; thin, fat, plump, beefy, curvy, lanky; reading, sleeping, drooling, floating, swimming, sailing. Kissing, snoring, drinking, flirting.

Hotel staff circulates, offering menus, bringing cocktails and towels and sunscreen, planting thatched umbrellas, jerking open extra chairs. You are lucky indeed to be a guest at this hotel.

Directly in front of the room in question, hard-muscled young men toss a football in the surf. They shout and laugh and grunt, their sounds wafting up on balmy air caresses.

At the window of the room in question, a woman watches the men play.

The woman, blond, graceful, is poised just on the lip of the balcony, half in the room and half out. A shadow slices her lovely face in half, leaving her eyes recessed in darkness.

She leans out to better watch the game below. Her skin is pale, but for two spots of flush, high on her cheekbones. A slight, sudden inhale through her plummy mouth as one man dives for a catch, his taut body arcing into the air and slicing down hard into sand. He grunts on impact and then groans theatrically before springing up with a laugh.

The blonde backs away from the window.

Behind her, in the room, in the soft white bed, a man is sprawled. A drunken arm crooked across his forehead, a swath of cool sheet twisted over his naked torso, he is completely still.

He looks healthy. That would be anyone’s first impression. His legs are strong limbs, and deeply tanned, fading paler toward his thighs. A man who lives outdoors, wears shorts, uses his body. His shoulders are thick, his arms powerful. His hands are palms up, open, relaxed.

What do these two mean to each other? Let’s hazard a guess. Or two.

A holiday hookup, the pure anonymity of it, the thrill? Possible. They don’t seem quite a pair, somehow.

Newlyweds, finally alone together after the pageantry of their wedding? Or more telling, after a tearful and regretted fight, the very first bitter sticks of marital kindling upon which the funeral pyre of their relationship would be built? Don’t think this cynical. Open-eyed pragmatism is actually romantic.

Or could they be longtime best friends, passion unleashed by mojitos—only to face uneasy regret? Adulterous lovers, mixing their urgent guilt and needy thrill-seeking into a heady cocktail? John and hooker, sex as transaction, the body quite separate from the mind or heart?

Let’s look closer.

The blonde gives us little at first. Her lovely face is composed, her beautiful body at ease. There is that high flush on her cheeks. Could be sunburn. Or fever? But note this: Her eyes look everywhere but at the man in the bed.

Two wineglasses on the dresser. One empty, one full. A bottle of wine lolls on the floor. A joint smolders on the nightstand, burning a small char into the finish, right next to the placard declaring this a No Smoking Room. There was some kind of party here. Maybe it’s still going on.

The blonde crosses to the smoldering joint and considers it. Then crosses to the bathroom and flushes it down the toilet. Returns to rub her thumb over the burn mark it has left on the nightstand.

She lifts the bottle of wine from the floor and empties its contents down the sink, rinses it thoroughly. Rinses both glasses.

The blonde crosses to the man on the bed. It’s time to at least check. She can’t put it off any longer. She looks at his face.

A shock of sun-streaked hair drapes onto his forehead. He looks peaceful. She darts a glance down toward his abdomen.

Is that blood? Yes, it is. No other signs of violence. Just a sticky carnation of blooming blood in the twisted sheets. And the knife that caused it to grow.

Well, that changes things.

Accident? Misadventure? Attack or defense? What happened here? We still have more questions than answers.

Has she done this to the man?

She’s delicate, but she has confidence in her young, strong body. She’s athletic, at home in her skin. Still. She’s half the size of the man on the bed.

No blood sours her lime green bikini or the white gauze cover-up, with its angelic float around her body. That seems in her favor.

But then what is she doing here? What does she feel about this dead man?

She pulls the wisp of white cover-up over her head, wraps it around her hand, and wipes down the room. The phone, the desk, the sink and shower and bathroom counter, the book of guest services. The wineglasses and bottle and bed frame and mirrors. Thoroughly. Methodically. Even the handle of the knife in the man’s belly, careful to avoid the well of blood. Meticulously.

There’s no anger here. Or fear. No sorrow or loss.

Resignation maybe? Calculation? Shock?

Or all three?

A shudder of revulsion courses through her like an electric shock as she notices a strand of her long blond hair on the pillow next to the man’s graying face. She plucks it up. Walks to the balcony and releases the hair into the wind.

A pair of joyful leaping dolphins appears on the horizon, their freedom and exuberant beauty a reproach. She is not free. Her face twists. As she turns to exit the balcony and reenter the room, the raucous hoots of the young men on the beach float up as if to mock her.

Carefully, she spreads a beach towel over the room’s sole armchair, a large, cushy bucket of crisp navy cotton. She settles in, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

A square of sky and sea and pearl-hued sands can be seen through the window. But she closes her eyes. The sea is spectacular, brilliant turquoise, and she knows the fish and flora below its surface are also marvelously colored. She’s not snorkeled or swum; she doesn’t know this from personal experience, but rather from the Internet crash course on the island she gave herself before she arrived.

She could at least look at all that beauty if she opened her eyes. But that would mean looking past the dead man with the knife in his belly, his thickening puddle of blood.

She has to wait now. Be still and calm and purposeful. Every cell in her body is screaming at her to run. But she will wait.

Then

Long blond hair was twisted into an elegant chignon. Ellie sat stoic and still, a well-mannered girl who usually doesn’t fuss this much, simultaneously a little disdainful and more than a little thrilled by her transformation into a princess for a day. Her hairdresser, Franco, worked his magic. And babbled. “They’re totally lovely people. Been clients of mine for years. After the wedding, you and Rob must come out with me on their boat. A yacht really. Super chic.”

Ellie made some noncommittal sound. She contemplated herself in the dressing table mirror. Her face was flawlessly made-up. Her creamy shoulders were bare, emerging from the beaded lace bodice of a pouf of a wedding dress. She was gorgeous, if a little chilly. What they used to call a Hitchcock blonde.

Mrs. Robert Beauman, she thought but didn’t say...

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Verlag
Bantam USA
Erscheinungsdatum
2016
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553394851
ISBN 13 
9780553394856
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
286
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Verantwortliche Person
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