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Title: It's Not My Favourite
Series: The Lake Effect Series Bk1
Author: Rue
Target Audience: NA & Adult
Cover: Rue & Anne French
Release Date: 21st April 2014
BLURB supplied by Sparkle Book Tours
The Hutchinson sisters grew up under the
piercing, pious stare of a preacher’s wife. Plagued by her ever-disappointed
refrain, “Well, it’s not my favorite.” Their search to find their own way in
the world has not been a screaming success.
Gwenn is a good girl, a responsible girl…a
miserable girl. Her steady diet of vivid fantasies is the only part of her life
she enjoys. She daydreams of new parents, a more exciting job and an actual
love life. She struggles to run a business as The Organizer, while she stacks
relationship carcasses in the closet of her own completely unorganized life.
Her only real friend is her younger sister, Rachel.
Rachel is outgoing, risqué and happily gay.
The only people who don’t know this little secret are her judgmental parents,
Pastor Ed and Shirley. Rachel struggles mightily to dodge her mother’s constant
attempts to set her up with “nice Christian boys”; while holding down a job at
the bakery and keeping up with her rock-star girlfriend!
Gwenn uncovers a photo that brings her
imaginary world careening into reality. She’s forced to ask herself if wealthy
artist, Daniel Gregory is the answer she’s been seeking or a grand delusion.
Break-ups, meltdowns, family secrets, wild
nights and finally a journey of self-discovery to exotic New Zealand keep Gwenn
and Rachel stumbling toward independence.
So grab your parka and join the Hutchinson
girls, as they experience the Lake Effect in Duluth, Minnesota!
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EXCERPT
“Why Jeff, I had no idea you were a
necromancer.” Gwenn saw the confusion cloud Jeff’s face. “Sorry, bad joke.
She’s a ghost. I mean literally, sheet with holes, etc. Good luck finding her.”
Gwen pretended to see someone in the crowd and smiled at Jeff as she rushed
away. She turned the corner just in time to see Rachel climbing up on the
buffet. “Oh, you gotta be frickin’ kidding me.” Gwenn made it to the bathroom
before Rachel hit the chorus of Let’s Go Crazy.
Hiding in the bathroom, Gwenn remembered
a far more embarrassing Halloween. She was barely ten and had just started
fifth grade at a new school, several weeks late in keeping with the Hutchinson
family annual relocation tradition.
“Hi, I’m Gwenn.” No one at the lunch
table acknowledged her existence. “Um, sorry, I didn’t want to bug you. I was
just wondering if any of you wanted to come to my big Halloween party?” Gwenn
smoothly lied.
All heads turned.
“Cool!” Came from several directions.
“Yeah, totally,” chimed in a few guys.
“Awesome. What’s your costume, Jen?”
Sarah Beth asked.
“Oh, it’s Gwenn, and my costume is
Catwoman.” Gwenn embellished.
“Wow. My mom is making me dress like
Alice in Wonderland. I can’t wait to come to your party.” Sarah Beth made room
for Gwenn at the table, “Here, sit by me.”
Gwenn had rushed home, filled with the
excitement of acceptance—finally.
“Hey Trixie, yer home early.” Pastor Ed
patted Gwenn patronizingly on the head. “Take a seat in the living room. We are
havin’ a family meeting.”
Gwenn felt her stomach churn. Oh crap
they were moving again. She just made an actual friend. Why were Ed and Shirley
so dead set against her having friends?
“Hi Gwenny!” Rachel beamed.
“Shut up, twerp.” Gwenn stuck her tongue
out at Rachel.
Shirley took the reins, ”Girls the Lord
has spoken to us and He has shown us that Halloween is Satan’s night. As good
Christians we cannot sin against the Lord by paying tribute to the Devil.” She
closed her eyes and folded her hands in prayer.
“What’d that mean mommy?” Rachel
innocently asked.
“Halloween’s canceled idiot! No
costumes. No candy.” Gwenn stormed out of the room.
Big wet tears rolled down Rachel’s
chubby cheeks. “No candy!” She wailed.
But the torment was much greater for
Gwenn.
Ed and Shirley didn’t have the decency
to cancel Halloween at the Hutchinson house. Instead, they carved up some
pumpkins and turned on the porch lights to lure the unsuspecting children.
Gwenn hid on the stairs and watched through the banister as innocent
trick-or-treaters came to the door and Shirley shoved little orange tracts in
their treat bags and told them Jesus died for their sins.
Sarah Beth did not make room for
Gwenn—ever again.
That’s when the emotional deformities
started. The inability to trust completely, the gnawing nameless guilt and
finally that unsettling feeling that someone was judging her every action—and
Gwenn always came up short.
She kept telling herself it would
change, that someday she would find the key that would unlock the door to her
invisible prison and she would be free.
Gwenn jumped when the music stopped. She
wiped an unexplained tear from her cheek, exhaled the yuck and marched out of
the bathroom.
The party was winding down and Rachel
had crossed the line between life of the party and annoying drunk; landing
clumsily on the pain-in–the-ass side of that line. Gwenn shepherded her sister
through the maze of glass and steel skyway corridors connecting the buildings
of Duluth’s downtown.
They emerged into the bitter cold wind
knifing across the harbor and Gwenn tried to hurry the procession to her car.
Rachel was already quite numb from the alcohol, so the cold had little effect.
“Rache, come on. I’m freezing. I’ll take
you back to my place.”
“No…home,” slurred Rachel, insistently.
“But…”
“Gotta work…”
“You have to open the bakery tomorrow? Rache,
how the hell are you gonna—”
“No worries, mate,” Rachel spouted off
in her best Australian accent.
“Oh, crikey!” Gwenn was keenly aware
that in the order of Rachel’s sorrow-drowning inebriation, accents preceded
vomiting and passing out was just around the corner.
“Fine. I’ll take you home, but you have
to hurry.” Gwenn steered zig-zaggy Rachel to the Jeep and fishtailed out of the
icy parking lot in a hasty attempt to arrive at Rachel’s loft before phase
vomit emerged.
Gwenn beat the odds and managed to get
Rachel into her own bed without further incident. She removed the
alcohol-stained costume and placed it on Rachel’s dry cleaning pile. Gwenn
kissed her sister on the forehead, tucked the comforter under Rachel’s chin and
quietly flicked off the light as she left the loft.
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