Thursday, April 8, 2021

Blog Tour, Excerpt & Giveaway: Downsizing by Lin Stepp

Downsizing JustRead Blog + Review Tour 

Welcome to the Blog + Review Tour for Downsizing by Lin Stepp, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Downsizing

Title: Downsizing
Series: Mountain Home Books #2
Author: Lin Stepp
Publisher: Mountain Hill Press
Release Date: April 1, 2021
Genre: Clean/Sweet Contemporary Romance

Forced to suddenly downsize her life, and not by choice, pushes Mary Pat Latham to give up all that is familiar, to reexamine her life in every area, and to eventually open her heart to new beauty and purpose, instead of only looking back in regret.

At midlife, Mary Pat Latham has an almost perfect life—a successful husband, a beautiful home, four fine grown children, and a wealth of meaningful activities and social clubs to fill her days—so it’s a total shock when her husband walks in one day and says he wants a divorce. As if hearing a stranger talking in her own kitchen, Mary Pat listens to Russell’s reasons for wanting to abandon their long marriage and to his plans, already in place, to sell their home and move on. What will she do? Where will she go? She hasn’t worked since the children were born, her life wrapped up in home and family. Stunned, Mary Pat heads to the small mountain home she and Russell bought from her parents years ago, too shocked and humiliated to face her friends or anyone she knows right now. 

Owen McCarter knew he’d need to stop by the old Jennings place, on some pretense or other, after Wheeler told him he’d seen a woman up there acting sick. After all, the house was next door to his at the end of Highland Drive. When he knocked on the front door later, it took him a minute to recognize Mary Pat, weeping and so different from the girl he’d known in childhood and fallen in love with. Owen reached out in friendship, of course, seeing Mary Pat so upset, but he felt surprised at the old memories that touched him, too. Hearing her problems and learning why she’d come to the mountains, Owen knew it unlikely she’d stay for long after the more lavish life she’d known. But he couldn’t help wishing she would. 

Another Lin Stepp novel set in the Smoky Mountains … with a special “Downsizing Diet” available free to readers as a book supplement.

PURCHASE LINKS*: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository

 

EXCERPT

The next day after driving her mother to the airport, Mary Pat pulled into the driveway in front of her home and had one of those moments. She stared at the house, the house that had been her home for over twenty years, and wept. She’d been so happy here, raised her children here, shared holidays with her family here. It was going to be very hard to walk away and say goodbye. The house, a beautiful large two-storied white colonial home had crisp black shutters, lush landscaping and a black ornate fountain in front, with a long, green lawn reaching down to the river behind to the boat dock where Russell kept his boat. Or where Russell had kept his boat. He’d moved it somewhere now. …

   While her mother had been here this month, Mary Pat held back a lot of her grief, hating to seem overly emotional and immature. But she knew she had some bad days ahead of her now. Despite how everyone said ‘things were only things’ the things in her home had meaning to her and were filled with the memories of her married life and years raising her children. It would be hard watching all her possessions hauled out of the house. Sold or given away. ….

   Mary Pat expected a lot of crying sweeps over the days to come. And some lonely, lonely times.

   None of the children had come home during this time to be a comfort either. They made excuses as to why, but she knew they were angry about the divorce. They didn’t want to come home; they didn’t want to see her or Russell or the house they’d grown up in that would soon be sold. …

   Taking a deep breath, Mary Pat got out of the car at last. She had a lot to do and precious little time in which to do it. In the kitchen she stopped to read the quote she’d put on the refrigerator door to encourage herself: “Grief comes in two distinct stages. The first is filled with loss, denial, and heartache. But the second is filled with new beginnings and the making of a new life.” She needed to remember that and to look ahead instead of back.

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lin Stepp

image credit Katie Riley

Lin Stepp is a New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Amazon best-selling international author, A native Tennessean, businesswoman, and former  faculty member at Tusculum College, Lin has twenty-one published books, including her beloved Smoky Mountain and Mountain Home novels, all set in different Tennessee and North Carolina locations, plus a novella A Smoky Mountain Gift in one of Kensington’s Christmas anthologies.

Stepp’s latest novels, set around the Smoky Mountains, are Downsizing (2021) and Happy Valley (2019). Lin also has three novels set on the South Carolina coast in her Edisto Trilogy: Claire at Edisto (2019), Return to Edisto (2020) and Edisto Song (2021). Lin and her husband J.L. also write regional guidebooks, including a Smoky Mountain hiking guide and two state parks guidebooks for Tennessee and South Carolina.

Lin’s title Claire At Edisto was the 2019 Best Books Award Winner in Fiction: Romance, sponsored by American Book Fest, her novel Welcome Back a finalist in the 2017 Selah Awards, and Lin and her husband’s guidebook Discovering Tennessee State Parks a 2019 Best Books Award Finalist in Nonfiction: Travel Guides with American Book Fest.

Lin enjoys hiking and exploring out of doors and she loves speaking for events, festivals, libraries, and book clubs and sharing about her work and interests through her monthly blog and newsletter, both on her website at: www.linstepp.com

CONNECT WITH LIN: Website | Facebook | Twitter

 

TOUR GIVEAWAY

(1) winner will receive a Tennesee gift pack including a print copy of Downsizing by Lin Stepp, The Afternoon Hiker and Discovering Tennessee State Parks by J.L. & Lin Stepp, and a Great Smoky Mountains National Park pocket guide!

Downsizing JustRead Giveaway

Full tour schedule linked below. Giveaway began at midnight April 5, 2021 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on April 12, 2021. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.

Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.

ENTER GIVEAWAY HERE


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