Dark Blue Waves by Kimberly Sullivan [Blitz with Excerpt]

When you wake up in Bath, England two hundred years in the past, how far can a love of Jane Austen get you?

Welcome to one of the many stops on the book blitz for Dark Blue Waves by Kimberly Sullivan with XPresso Book Tours. Look for others participating in this blitz across social media and on your favourite bookish blogs May 27 – June 2, and don’t forget to enter the giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

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About the Book

Dark Blue Waves
by Kimberly Sullivan

Published 27 May 2022

Genre: Time Travel Romance
Page Count: 491
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

When you wake up in Bath, England two hundred years in the past, how far can a love of Jane Austen get you?

Janet Roberts dreams of an academic career in literature, so she can hardly believe her good fortune when she’s accepted into a Jane Austen graduate seminar in Bath, England. Settled in Georgian splendor among her seminar colleagues, Janet and her classmates live, eat and breathe Jane Austen.

An accident interrupts this idyll when Janet regains consciousness in her own room—back in Regency England. For a scholar of nineteenth-century literature, this should be a dream come true.

But Janet quickly learns there’s a world of difference between scholarly knowledge of the written page and maneuvering real life as a reluctant time traveler.

Her burgeoning friendship with Emma Huntington eases her entrée into nineteenth-century society. However, Emma’s brother, the handsome, proud and frustratingly magnetic Sir Edward, is far less welcoming.

While desperately attempting to make sense of her dilemma, Janet treads a thin line between trying to blend into her new world and not being unmasked as the imposter she is. Can she discover the way to return to her twenty-first century life? After working so hard to create a rewarding nineteenth-century life for herself and opening her hart to friendship and love, does she even want to?

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Excerpt

In her room, Janet sat at the window seat, watching the people wandering the narrow streets of Bath. She read a few pages of her book before giving in to her exhaustion and crawling into bed. After setting the alarm, she drifted off to a troubled sleep.

A piano played in the distance. Mozart. Voi che sapete. Janet struggled to breathe. Something constricted her chest and waist, yet her feet still carried her forward at a brisk pace, through candle-filled hallways she didn’t recognize. Full-length portraits lined the walls. Thick velvet brushed against her legs as she walked.

An inexplicable sense of relief washed over her when she reached a room. Her hand clasped the doorknob and turned. She slipped inside, closing the door behind her.

Darkness enveloped her. Her heartbeat slowed as she looked up to something familiar. Individual, disjointed images captured her gaze. A billowing pink cloth. An alabaster face, slightly turned. Arms reaching up to the sky. A splattering of green. These flashes seemed to calm her, but she struggled in vain to see the single parts in their entirety.

A movement under the soothing images caught her attention. A chair was positioned before a fireplace. Someone stood. A man, his back toward her. He was tall, dressed in fine, old-fashioned clothes. There was something so familiar about him. Now he was turning and taking long strides across the room to where she stood. Her heart beat faster.

Janet tried in vain to make out his features but quickly gave up. It was as if she were glimpsing him through a fog. She longed to retreat, but her feet remained firmly rooted in place as his confident gait narrowed the distance between them.

Although he was mere inches from her, she could still not distinguish the features of his face. Only the depths of his blue eyes were distinct. As she gazed into them, she felt an unfamiliar fluttering in her stomach. The man slipped a book into her hand. She opened to see shadow words scrawled in thick, black ink. Squinting did not help bring them into focus. He began to speak. She watched his lips move. She heard his voice as if she were under water, not comprehending the individual words. Oddly soothing, but indecipherable.

He reached up and stroked her face before enveloping her in an embrace. Who was this stranger who was overly familiar with her? She knew she should scream and flee, but her thoughts did not control her body. Her legs made no attempt to move from this unknown man. Inexplicably, she felt safe in his arms, with his heart beating solidly beside hers. Now he was pulling back, stroking her hair, searching her face.

Janet still only saw the shadow version of him, soft and out of focus. She gave up trying to reconstruct his face. His gaze mesmerized her. It seemed so familiar, made her knees feel weak. Those piercing blue eyes kept coming closer and closer to her own face until firm lips brushed against her own. A warmth spread throughout her body. High-pitched yells rang out. Her knees buckled.

A burst of pain exploded at her temple, and she woke with a panicked start. Her eyes flickered around the room in confusion. Deep breaths.

It was nothing. Her hotel room in Bath. A dream. Only a dream.

As her heartbeat slowed and her breathing calmed, she realized it was most likely the jet lag or all the silly talk of romantic literature. Her head throbbed. Willing the pain to stop, she closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep.

About the Author

I write the women’s fiction stories I love to read, both contemporary and historic tales of women and the rich lives they lead along their journeys of self-discovery. A lifetime admirer and longtime resident of Italy, I’m often guilty of sneaking the bel paese into my stories.

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Giveaway Alert!

Blitz-wide giveaway (INT)
$25 Amazon gift card

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