Blog Tour & Review: At Death's Door (Freefall Book 1) by Astrid V. Tallaksen
At Death's Door by Astrid V. Tallaksen
Paranormal * Urban Fantasy
Self-Published
232 Pages
The world is a pretty straight forward place. Even for medium Sara Stone things seem pretty simple, aside from the whole talking to spirits bit. But when the spirits get too hard to handle and Sara ends up admitted to a mental hospital, the world starts to seem a lot less straightforward. First her family disappears, including her four year old son. Then she gets the sneaking suspicion that not only are the staff at the mental hospital somehow connected, but they also have no intention of ever letting her leave the hospital.
Everything changes when Sara has her first visitor in three months. Daniel is handsome, friendly, and a complete stranger. When he promises to spring her from the hospital and swears that everything she's experienced is completely real, Sara has no choice but to believe him. But once she reaches a run-down Victorian house in the tiny Alabama town her rescuer calls home, the last thing she expects to discover is that every memory she has is a lie.
Daniel reveals a world filled with angels, demons, and an impending war humans know nothing about. Sara wants to ignore her role in the whole mess – all that matters is solving the mystery of where her son has gone. But the forces of Heaven, Hell, and the Heart have other plans for her. Can she find her child before the world comes crashing down?
Sara's Review - Four Boundless Stars
I was provided a copy of At Death's Door, in exchange for an honest review. I love it when I open the page of a book and I am immediately sucked in and I don't want to put the book down! That is what I got with At Death's Door.
We meet Sara, (another score, she spelled her name just like mine) in a mental hospital because she sees ghosts. Things aren't quite right in the hospital. Shortly after she is admitted her parents and her son disappear. Then the hospital staff try to convince Sara that she is crazy despite the ghosts and she never had a family. Sara knows they are wrong and knows with everything she has that she has a son! She is in such a bad place, it was painful to read. My heart broke for her so much.
Then one day hope arrives in the form of a tall dark strange who comes to visit. Daniel arrives with more mysteries than answers but he comes with the promise that he will help her find her son if she can get out. Sara is so desperate to get out of the mental hospital she jumps for the only chance she has and takes a leap of faith and puts her trust in Daniel.
Oh things unraveled in a way I never would have guessed in a million years! There were so many HUGE twists that once you thought you knew what was going on in changed! It was fantastic!
Sara was a mother who wanted nothing more than to reclaim her son and the life she lost yet she is so much more! This is such a brilliant start to a new series. I can't wait to read the next book Between Heaven & Hell.
**Excerpt**
He didn't say anything as I turned and walked downstairs. I kept expecting him to call out to me, or come grab me again. Part of me wished he would, I guess, but he didn't so it was irrelevant. The front door was bolted four times, but I got it open and walked out. It was night now, or mostly night—the sky wasn't black yet, or the orangish tint the sky gets in the city at night, but was instead the indigo glow that comes just after sunset.
The air was warm and muggy, and June bugs buzzed around the street light at the corner. It was dark here, though, and I walked a few yards down the cracked and busted sidewalk before sitting down on the curb between Daniel's house and the next. Other than the brief time today between car and building, it had been a long time since I sat outside in complete freedom. Daniel had said he wouldn't let me go, but I knew if I decided to walk away and leave he wouldn't stop me.
It was in the way he looked at me, that constant sad apology in his eyes since the day I met him. I reached down and started picking dandelion leaves out of a crack in the curb, tearing one up and then picking another, like I was playing 'he loves me, he loves me not', although without petals and without romance. It was more like 'she walks away, she walks away not'. I turned and looked back at the crumbling old house behind me; Daniel was standing upstairs by one of the windows. He must have been looking out at me, but now he just leaned with his forehead against it, looking downward. I was so angry at everything that was happening, had happened, I couldn't think of anything else but leaving.
But every time I started formulating a plan to get out of here, thought of looking into those amber-hued eyes and telling Daniel to fuck off and leave me alone for good, my heart clenched up and the lump in my throat returned. I had named my son, our son, after him and I didn't even remember him or know who he was.
My feelings for him must have been pretty substantial once. Even in the life I remembered I couldn't recall ever having felt something so earth-moving. I pulled my knees in toward my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs, resting my forehead on my kneecaps. I wasn't going to be able to make myself leave.
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Author Bio
Astrid V. Tallaksen grew up with a heart for stories of creatures and places outside of this world. Her love of reading quickly became a love of writing. She spent several years creating content and helping writers to improve theircraft on the online world of Althanas, a creative writing workshop in the guise of a roleplaying forum.
A self-avowed nerd, Astrid loves science fiction, comic books, and eighties fantasy movies in the vein of The Princess Bride and Labyrinth. Her geekiness extends to annual volunteer work at the massive sci-fi convention known as Dragon*con every year in Atlanta, Georgia. In the odd times that she's not immersed in geekdom or writing, Astrid loves to sing karaoke, crochet, and spend time with her family and pets.
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