Play of Light
Debra Doxer
Published on December 8th 2014
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, New Adult, Romance, Romantic Suspense
I lived in paradise, and I loved Spencer Pierce.
At fourteen, my life was perfect. The beach was my playground, and the boy who stole my heart lived just around the corner. But perfect never lasts. In one horrifying moment, I lost it all. My family was destroyed, and the boy I believed in turned his back on me. Paradise became a nightmare.
That was five years ago. Everything changed when we moved from our home by the sea. I’ve changed, and I don’t like who I’ve become. I miss the smiling, carefree beach girl who disappeared that terrible night. I want to find her again. I want to face the people we ran from so long ago. Most of all, I have to face Spencer. So I can prove that when he broke my heart, he didn’t break me.
But when I see him again, Spencer Pierce is no longer the boy from my memories. He’s now a man who could devastate me if I let him. He watches me when he thinks I’m not looking. There’s regret written on his face when he’s near. Each time I see him, my heart aches for what might have been, and I think his does too. How can I convince myself I’m over him when I suspect he never got over me?
~ This is a standalone story. ~
REVIEW
Play of Light is an almost sweet new adult romance with some mystery and suspense elements. The two main characters, Sarah and Spencer, meet as young kids. Sarah was just twelve and Spencer was fourteen. There was an instant connection between them, but two years is a pretty insurmountable age difference when you’re so young. Sarah spent her most of her life with a strange infatuation with this boy. She even has a few what-if daydreams about meeting him and talking to him.
Which totally reminded me of being so young because that’s what you do. You make up all these crazy fantasies about how you’d meet. Or how he’d be sorry for not talking to you. Or, if you’re Kristi here on the blog, certain other things that we can’t talk about outside the street team. 😉
I really thought the memory trip stuff with Sarah was cute because she was so typical of how girls think.
But over the years Sarah and Spencer gradually form a tight, but also very loose, friendship. He uses her to talk about things she’s really too young to understand. So Sarah ends up with Spencer’s secrets. And since her father is a policeman, she’s been taught that the right thing to do is tell someone when you’re in trouble.
So she does. And her whole life unravels and before she knows it, she’s been moved a thousand miles away and she never sees Spencer again.
Enter present day and Sarah is grown up now, ready to go to college. She decides to go back to the town she left so abruptly years before so she can get some closure.
But on day one, there he is. Spencer.
The relationship doesn’t quite pick up where it left off, but it builds slowly and eventually all the answers Sarah didn’t know she needed come rushing out. And nothing is what it seemed.
I really enjoyed this book. I think Spencer is a good guy despite his rocky start in life. And Sarah was a strong heroine. The romance was sweet with just a few sexual scenes near the end. And the mystery was quite original. It wasn’t earth-shattering and the stakes were not high enough for me. But I’m a pretty avid thriller/suspense reader, so if you mainly read romance, then this is a good mystery/suspense novel to try out. Most of the book focuses on the relationship between Sarah and Spencer and how they come to terms with living the same past, except from different ends of the spectrum.
Four stars for Play of Light.
Tour-wide giveaway (INTL)
$50 Amazon Gift Card
Signed copy of Play Of Light
About Debra Doxer
Debra Doxer was born in Boston, and other than a few lost years in the California sunshine, she has always resided in the Boston area. She writes fiction, technical software documents, illegible scribbles on sticky notes, and texts that get mangled by AutoCorrect. She writes for a living, and she writes for fun. When her daughter asks when she’ll run out of words, her response always is, “When I run out of time.”
Connect with Debra. She loves hearing from readers.
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