SERENDIPITOUS TUESDAYS: INTROS/TEASERS – WHILE WE WERE WATCHING DOWNTON ABBEY — MARCH 12

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Today I’m sharing from my current read, an ARC:  While We Were Watching Downton Abbey, by Wendy Wax.

 

Intro:  Chapter One

As a child Samantha Jackson Davis loved fairy tales as much as the next girl.  She just hadn’t expected to end up in one.

Every morning when her eyes fluttered open and every night before she closed them to go to sleep, Samantha marveled at her good fortune.  In a Disney version of the airline passenger held up in security just long enough to miss the plane that goes down, or the driver who runs back for a forgotten cell phone and barely avoids a deadly ten-car-pileup, Samantha averted disaster in the once-upon-a-time way:  she married the prince.

Over the past twenty-five years Samantha had sometimes wished she’d spent a little more time and energy considering alternatives.  But when your world comes crashing down around you at the age of twenty-one, deep thinking and soul-searching are rarely your first response.

Intrigued yet?  I certainly am!

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Teaser:  It was late afternoon and Samantha stood in her gourmet kitchen staring into the pan of what was meant to be saltimbocca alla Romana, but which looked like a rolled-up lump of shoe leather—and not the expensive Manolo Blahnik kind. (p. 26)

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Amazon Description:  When the concierge of The Alexander, a historic Atlanta apartment building, invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of Downton Abbey, four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and—even more unexpectedly—with each other…

Samantha Davis married young and for the wrong reason: the security of old Atlanta money—for herself and for her orphaned brother and sister. She never expected her marriage to be complicated by love and compromised by a shattering family betrayal.

Claire Walker is now an empty nester and struggling author who left her home in the suburbs for the old world charm of The Alexander, and for a new and productive life. But she soon wonders if clinging to old dreams can be more destructive than having no dreams at all.

And then there’s Brooke MacKenzie, a woman in constant battle with her faithless ex-husband. She’s just starting to realize that it’s time to take a deep breath and come to terms with the fact that her life is not the fairy tale she thought it would be.

For Samantha, Claire, Brooke—and Edward, who arranges the weekly gatherings—it will be a season of surprises as they forge a bond that will sustain them through some of life’s hardest moments—all of it reflected in the unfolding drama, comedy, and convergent lives of Downton Abbey.

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Now I’m off to see the wonderful books the rest of you are spotlighting.