The Book Bag: Release Day! To Have and To Hold by Heidi Renee Mason ~ My Thoughts, Excerpt, and #Giveaway!

To Have and To Hold by Heidi Renee Mason

Series: The Vows #1

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Cover Design: Soxsational Cover Art

Published July 20, 2019 by Hot Tree Publishing

After the death of her husband, single mom Emma McCoy has given up on love. When the mysterious Liam O’Reilly shows up in town, Emma does her best to keep her distance. What Emma doesn’t know is that Liam is connected to her past in a way that she could never imagine, and it will put her future in jeopardy.

In the small town of Beckland, Ohio, danger is the last thing that Emma expects, but since Liam’s arrival, danger is waiting around every corner.

Book 1 of 3 in Heidi Renee Mason’s romantic suspense trilogy, The Vows. This is not a stand-alone romance.

My thoughts about To Have and To Hold ~~

(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first lines.)

First line—"Moving as quickly as a woman seven months pregnant is capable of moving, Emma McCoy headed to the front door of her house. A loud knocking had awakened her from her afternoon nap."

A knock on the door changes Emma's life. When she is finally starting to get on with her life, her past comes back to take her out again. There is so much she doesn't know about her husband and what happened in the past and then Liam enters the picture, someone who seems to know too much about Emma's past.

To Have and To Hold has it all—intrigue, suspense, relationships and romance, great characters, and an interesting story-line. Heidi is a new-to-me author, although I have been following her for awhile now, so I was excited to join her tour. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the first in a series, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

I received a copy of To Have and To Hold for the Enticing Journey Book Promotion tour and this is my honest opinion of the book.

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Moving as quickly as a woman seven months pregnant is capable of moving, Emma McCoy headed to the front door of her house. The loud knocking had awakened her from her afternoon nap. Emma yawned, trying to appear awake. She didn’t remember being this exhausted during her other pregnancies. This time, she could barely stay awake during the day.

“I’ll be right there!” Emma called toward the general direction of the front door.

Emma wondered who it could be. Her best friend, Sadie, never knocked, and her husband, Jacob, was out of town on business. Her parents wouldn’t have bothered knocking, knowing that she would be resting while the girls napped.

Emma opened the door and was startled to see two policemen. Fear immediately crept up inside of her chest and nearly stole her breath away. Her first thought was that something was wrong with her parents. She prayed that the policemen were at the wrong address, but a feeling deep inside of her gut said that they were not.

“Can I help you?” Emma’s heart raced inside of her chest. She willed herself to be calm.

“Mrs. McCoy,” said the male officer. “Can we come inside, please?”

“Of course;” Emma led them through the dining room and into her living room. She offered them a seat, but refused to take one herself. As the officers gathered their thoughts, Emma paced the living room floor. “Someone please tell me what’s going on.”

“Mrs. McCoy, please sit down,” said the female officer. “We need you to stay calm. You’re pregnant; you can’t get so worked up.”

Emma sat awkwardly in the antique rocking chair that had been in her family for generations. Her parents had gifted it to her when she gave birth to her oldest daughter. She remembered that her mother told her that it would be perfect for rocking her daughter to sleep in it, and she was right. Emma ran her hands across the aged wood, thinking absently of her children, who were upstairs napping. Her palms were damp and her heart was racing. She tried to slow her breathing, but it was no use. She felt the need to vomit.

“Someone please tell me what’s wrong. I know something is wrong,” Emma looked directly at the officers, demanding answers. “Is it my parents?”

“Mrs. McCoy, there’s been an accident. Your husband’s plane went down while it was descending into Canada. The authorities have searched, but there were no survivors.” The female officer looked intently at Emma, gauging her reaction. “I am so sorry to bring you this news.”

“What do you mean? There must be some mistake. Jacob wasn’t even going to Canada. He’s in California on business.” Emma breathed a sigh of relief as she realized that the officers were mistaken.

“Look, I know this is a shock, Mrs. McCoy, but it has been confirmed. The passenger on the plane to Canada was your husband. We have copies of his plane ticket and his passport. He’s on the airport video surveillance. He boarded the plane with another passenger, a woman named Veronica Smith. Do you know her?” Both officers looked at one another before shifting their gazes toward Emma.

“Veronica Smith is our neighbor. She told me that she was going to Pennsylvania to visit her family. Why were Jacob and Veronica on the plane together?” Emma’s hands began to shake. “I don’t understand. Jacob was going to California, not Canada.” A million questions filled her mind.

She sat completely still for a moment as she tried to wrap her brain around the information. The small, nagging voice had plagued her for the past year, but suddenly it was screaming. She was stupid for not listening sooner. She had always been suspicious of Jacob and Veronica, but she convinced herself that it was paranoia. Jacob told her that she was emotional because of the pregnancy, so she pushed aside the nagging suspicion in order to keep the peace in her marriage.

Every image that she had ignored paraded through her mind. She remembered all of the times when she accused her husband of being too friendly with their lovely neighbor. With every accusation, Jacob would become incensed with anger. Emma would always back off in an effort to avoid a confrontation.

Unable to ignore them anymore, each of the images came crashing down on her. She saw Jacob helping the beautiful Veronica trim the hedge between the houses. She saw them laughing together over a shared joke. She thought of Jacob’s insistence that he was “just being neighborly.” She recalled the way that her husband had placed his hand on the small of Veronica’s back in a way that was too familiar for Emma’s comfort. It was all too much to take in. She had been right all along, and now she was playing the part of the clueless wife.

The room began to spin. Emma felt faint. Jacob was having an affair with Veronica and they were both dead. She was alone, with two little girls and another on the way. Emma tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t support her. The officers caught Emma as her body gave way and she slipped into oblivion.

Heidi Renee Mason is an Ohio girl transplanted into the Pacific Northwest. She is a homeschooling mom of three daughters, wife of one mail man, and a people-watching introvert who can be found hiding in the nearest corner. She is an Amazon best-selling author, and writer of your next happily ever after.

Visit my publishers at www.solsticepublishing.com and www.hottreepublishing.com!