Release Blitz, Excerpt & Giveaway: Timeless By Declan Rhodes

In 2024, Dylan Mercer is the rising star of professional hockey, adored by fans and unmatched on the ice. Yet beneath the glitz of his burgeoning career lies a truth Dylan fears could derail everything: he’s gay in a world where he fears coming out could mean the end of his career. After a tough practice session, Dylan’s discovery of a pair of vintage skates in an old locker sends him spiralling back in time to 1980, just before the US Olympic hockey team’s “Miracle on Ice.”

Thrown into an era where the stakes for being himself are even higher, Dylan finds an unexpected ally and more in Nico Santoro, a fellow player with secrets of his own. In the shadow of history, Dylan and Nico forge a bond that defies time, facing down prejudice and fear with the strength found in each other.

As Dylan grapples with his return to the present, he faces an impossible choice: a past world that ultimately learns to love openly because of his and Nico’s courage, or the present where he’s one of the brightest future hockey stars.

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Excerpt

“Yeah, Nico. I wouldn’t lie to you. I accidentally came here when I put on a pair of glowing skates, and now I don’t know how to get back…or when. I suspect it will happen soon, but…”

I stared at him with a dubious gaze. What he’d described was impossible. Maybe Kowalski and the guys were behind it all. They could have found a hockey guy from the city and paid him to throw me off.

It was time to challenge Dylan. “Prove it. Show me something futuristic, something undeniable.”

He hesitated for a moment. “My clothes are from 2024.”

I shrugged. “There’s nothing original about them other than sort of whacked-out styles. Jeans are jeans, and the shirt is cotton.”

“Oh,” he whispered, and he shoved his hand into his pocket. I leaned forward, hoping for a surprise. He pulled out the device he’d been holding when he first appeared in the locker room.

“This is a smartphone from 2024,” Dylan announced, puffing his chest out. It’s not just a phone; it’s a little computer that fits in your pocket, and it’s practically a window to the future.”

“Computer? That size?” I scoffed. I couldn’t hide my disbelief, but I also looked closely, thinking about the stories I could tell if I saw something nobody else in my time had seen.

He held the device out toward me. “You don’t believe me? Just watch.”

Everything was silent around us. The earth stood still. Dylan awakened his device, and the screen came to life. I took a step back. In James Bond movies, little machines like that could shoot to kill.

The thing glowed and displayed a bunch of colorful shapes, unlike anything I’d ever seen. It practically screamed modern technology.

My breath caught in my throat as I took a cautious step forward. Could what Dylan called a phone really be a gateway into a new world?

I was about to concede a slight chance that Dylan was telling the truth when the screen flickered, and then it went black. My heart sank.

“What happened? I want to see it. Turn it back on.”

Dylan frowned. “Damn…of course, the battery goes dead right at this minute, and I don’t have my charger.”

Enter the Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Timeless, Declan is giving away 2 e-copies & 2 Paperbacks of the upcoming release!

Enter the Rafflecopter giveaway for your chance to win!

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About the Author

Declan Rhodes is a gay hockey romance author who has written more than 40 novels. He also has published in the past as Grant C. Holland. He lives and works in the Upper Midwest where hockey is a birthright. Wisconsin is his home and the setting for many of his books. This is his fifth hockey romance novel and his first involving time travel.

Connect with Declan
https://www.facebook.com/declanrhodesauthor
https://www.facebook.com/DeclanRhodesBooks
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B01JNPT260/about
https://www.instagram.com/declanrhodesbooks

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

First seen over on Book’d Out I’m going to try to do this post regularly linking to It’s Monday! What are you reading? at BookDate.

I’m slowly catching up with my ARCs which is good, a couple more reviews to catch up on in the next couple of days, so keep your eyes open for those, I updated last week’s post with review links for the books I’d finished.

This week I finished listening to

Growing Up Queer in Australia

I started reading this but had to take it back to the library so I borrowed the audiobook on BorrowBox instead. This is my first book for the Nonfiction Readers Challenge and I will do up a post for that this week.

I finished reading

Stepbrother Mine by Felicity Snow (ARC) Read my Review

Oblivious by Ashlynn Mills (ARC) Read my Review

Thorn Evermore by Mia Monroe – Read my Review

Not as much reading as I’d hoped but happy to have these ones finished, they were all very good reads. I’m continuing on with Cry of the Firebird by TM Clark, I’m at 89% and no matter what, I will finish it this week.

I’m also continuing with

Snowy Mountains Dawn (Bundilla Novels #4) by Alissa Callen (ARC) I’m at 62% so this should also be finished this week.

Candy Hearts Vol 1 – LGBTQIA2S+ Charity Anthology (ARC)

I’m also going to be reading

Easy Does It by K.M Neuhold (ARC)

Icebound Rivals by Hayden Hall (ARC)

I’m listening to

To the Moon and Back by NR Walker

I only have 2 hours left of this one, it’s only a short book but I haven’t decided what I am listening to next. The book I was going to listen to for my book club had triggers in for me and I couldn’t get past the first chapter, so it will be a surprise for all of us what I choose next.

I am excited and a bit overwhelmed as I got into the course I’d applied for, I’ll be doing my Cert 4 in Mental Health which starts in 2 weeks, On top of that I’m doing rehearsals for the City of Joondalup Community Festival Choir, I’ve never sung in my life so it’s an interesting learning curve. I’ve done two rehearsals with 5 more to go before the performance on the 17th March.

I had my art lesson on Friday as I usually do and really liked how my painting turned out so put it in a frame and hung it on the wall. I also did some painting over the weekend doing several small watercolours and my last painting for my Progressive art group something I’ve loved being a part of for the past 3 months.

So a pretty busy week really. I’d love to hear what you’ve been reading and what you hope to read this week. Until next week, happy reading.

Book Review: Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room by Kim Kelly

Winner of Independent Publisher Finlay Lloyd’s inaugural 20/40 Prize 2023

Once again Kim Kelly has taken me from the here and now and this time transported me to Sydney in the 1920s. It is here I met Clarinda and Dotty, two very different women on the surface, and both of whom I connected with immediately.

I don’t want to give too much of this wonderful story away which makes it hard to know what to write.

Dotty and Clarinda’s lives intersected the first time when they were at school, though they weren’t friends, then came the war and with it many losses and much grief, neither woman’s life has gone the way they thought it would. A chance interaction at the Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room of Farmer’s Department Store sets off a string of events that has the potential for healing, understanding and a shot at happiness that neither expected.

I have to say I loved the ending, I finished with a feeling of hope for a better future for both Dotty and Clarinda.

I definitely recommend picking up a copy of Kim Kelly’s award-winning novella and meeting Dotty and Clarinda for yourselves.

Purchase link

New Release Book Review: The Return (#5 Return to Nam) by Carole Brungar

The Return to Nam series has been one of the best series I’ve read. I couldn’t believe it when I looked it up that it had been 4 years since I read The Nam Legacy, I can still feel the impact of that first novel, still, remember the characters who became so real to me I felt like I actually knew them. I can still remember how realistic the scenes in Vietnam were, the trials Jack & Terry and their mates went through to fight for a cause they didn’t really understand.

And now 4 years later we get Jackie’s story, Jack’s daughter from his time in Vietnam, and the final book in this highly recommended series, a fitting and emotional end to all that has come to pass.

Carole Brungar has managed to do it again, to create another highly emotional journey that takes Jackie (and us the reader) on a journey of self-discovery as she fulfils a promise to Terry (one of my favourite characters from this series), the only father she’s ever known. Set nearly 33 years after she was rescued from a Vietnamese orphanage and taken to New Zealand, Jackie reluctantly makes plans to return to Vietnam for the first time and to try to track down the family and the history that she left behind.

Jackie’s relationship with her adoptive father Terry and her stepmother Frankie, whose love story we got to experience in The Nam Shadow was so wonderfully powerful, the love between them was so strong. Jackie was so lucky to have had Terry in her life, and she knew how lucky she was both to have had him as her father and to have been rescued from what her life could have been as an orphan during wartime, and Terry felt the same, their father/daughter relationship was something to be jealous of, from the moment of her rescue, both of their lives were changed for the better.

Jackie was a highly-strung, but very likeable character, her past trauma has formed who she has become and she holds herself to high expectations and doesn’t really do social engagements or relationships. When she bumps into Jeff, an old friend from her student days, things Jackie thought she was happy with in her life are about to be questioned. I loved Jeff, oh to meet a guy who feels about me the way Jeff feels about Jackie (swoon). They are both married to their jobs, but I held out hope throughout that they would work things out, especially knowing how long Jeff had been in love with Jackie.

Jackie’s return to Vietnam was extremely hard for her, she was lucky she had Frankie to go with her and support her through her journey. I enjoyed rediscovering the places I first experienced with Frankie in The Nam Shadow when she was a war photographer, it was a little like I was taking a walk down memory lane with her as she showed Jackie the places that meant something to her and Terry and remembered the people and experiences she’d lived through. Jackie was averse to meeting her mother’s relatives, finding out she had half-sisters and aunts and cousins didn’t mean anything to her when she set out on her journey. It’s amazing what actually meeting people and discovering another culture can do to change our entire perspective on our life, as Jackie discovers on her journey.

Jackie’s trip to Vietnam heralds many changes and she makes some major decisions that will affect both her future and her future with Jeff. For someone who assesses every tiny thing in her life before she makes a decision, meeting up with Jeff again and returning to Vietnam, changes Jackie in big ways.

This was a wonderful ending to this series, I wish it could keep going, I have loved the way Carole Brungar has managed to weave the many characters from the different novels so as they are so intertwined and turn up unexpectedly in each book. I highly recommend this novel and the preceding novels in this series and though you can read it as a standalone, you will get the full feeling for this series if you read it from the beginning.

Oh, and you will need tissues just like you will in each novel.

Read my thoughts on the other books in the series