Preparing for a big date – #MFRWHooks

For today’s Book Hooks, I’m changing pace with an excerpt from my first novel, Dream Student.  I realized that, other than the excerpt I shared last week from Ten Years and Then… I don’t actually have ANY Valentine’s Day scenes across all the books I’ve published!  So as the next best thing, this scene features the heroine, Sara, preparing herself for a big date on New Year’s Eve at a very fancy restaurant:

And now it’s Saturday night.  Mom took me out to get my hair done and for a manicure.  I feel a little ridiculous being fussed over all day, but I have to admit that the end result is worth it.  At six-thirty I’m finally dressed and all made up.  Obviously, I’m wearing the emerald necklace; I haven’t taken it off except in the shower since Brian gave it to me.  I’ve put on the diamond earrings that Mom forced me to borrow from her, there’s nothing else left to do.

I take one final look in the mirror. I don’t recognize the person looking back at me.  “Who are you?” I ask her, but she doesn’t answer.  She looks like the older, prettier, more sophisticated sister that I don’t have.  I turn my back on her and go downstairs.  I wonder if I’ll see her again.

Mom and Dad are waiting for me, and they’re both speechless.  Mom looks like she’s about to cry.  I see that they’ve got the camera out; I should have expected that.  Bob comes down the stairs, and he looks at me.  He seems confused.  “Who’s she?” he asks Mom and Dad.  Then he looks back at me again, really stares.  “Holy crap.”

“Thank you, Bob,” I answer.  I take it as a compliment, even if it really wasn’t.

*** (the date goes well, and Sara’s boyfriend brings her back home, where her parents’ party is still going on) ***

At just after one o’clock, we very reluctantly make our goodbyes.  Brian walks me to the door, which is unlocked, and sees me inside.  I kiss him one more time, and then I stand in the doorway and watch him back to the car and until he’s driven out of sight.

I stand there a few minutes more, completely lost in thought.  “Hello in there!” my Dad’s voice says from behind me.  “I wondered if you might have him drop you here.  Come on, I want to show my beautiful daughter off,” he says, and he leads me into the still-hopping party.

“Juliet, look who decided to join us!” Dad says to Mrs. McGuire, a very tall, dark-haired woman whose actual age I can’t begin to guess.  Considering her oldest daughter is thirty, she’s got to be at least fifty herself, but she definitely doesn’t look it.  She gives me a good once-over.

“I don’t think I’ve met her before.  I thought you only had the one daughter, Howard?”  Well, I didn’t really recognize myself in the mirror earlier tonight, did I?  And to be fair, she’s had more than a few drinks.  Dad, though, doesn’t want to play fair.  He catches my eye, and he’s got a playful look in his.

“Oh, no.  But we don’t usually like to talk about Gretchen,” he says, giving me a quick wink.  I almost lose it on the spot.  Gretchen?  If he’s going to pass me off as my nonexistent older sister, at least Dad could have come up with a better name than Gretchen!  But I play along for a few minutes until Dad finally takes pity on Mrs. McGuire and tells her the truth.

It is a compliment, I guess, to be mistaken for someone older and more mature than I really am.  Right?

Dream Student is the first book of the Dream Doctor Mysteries:

Sara Barnes has her life totally under control. All she has to worry about is college exams, Christmas shopping, applying to medical school–and what to do about the cute freshman who has a crush on her. And everything is going according to plan, until the night she starts dreaming other people’s dreams.

It’s bad enough that every night is a theater of her friends’ and classmates’ secret fantasies. Worse yet are the other dreams, the dark ones featuring a strange, terrifying man committing unspeakable crimes.

As the nightmares increase, Sara’s life becomes a blur of waking and sleeping, of terror and urgency. Because if she was given this dream-sharing gift for a reason, it must be to stop the killer madman she’s come to know all too well. But how can she stop him when she’s just a student, and they’re only dreams?

You can find “Dream Student” on Amazon, at a list of other ebook retailers, and on Audible!

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