{Release Day Review} Blind Kiss by Renée Carlino (@Renayz @AtriaBooks)

From the national bestselling author of Before We Were Strangers, Swear on this Life, and Wish You Were Here comes a powerful story of two people who spend years denying their scientifically proven chemistry.

Penny spends her afternoons sitting outside a sandwich shop, surrounded by ghosts. Fourteen years ago, this shop was her childhood dance studio—and she was a dancer on the rise. Now she’s a suburban housewife, dreading the moment her son departs for MIT, leaving her with an impeccably decorated McMansion and a failing marriage. She had her chance at wild, stars-in-her-eyes happiness, but that was a lifetime ago. After The Kiss. Before The Decision.

The Kiss was soulful. Magical. Earth-shattering. And it was all for a free gift card. Asked to participate in a psych study that posed the question, “Can you have sexual chemistry without knowing what the other person looks like?” Penny agreed to be blindfolded, make polite conversation with a total stranger, and kiss him. She never expected The Kiss to change her life forever and introduce her to Gavin: tattooed, gorgeous, and spontaneous enough to ask her out seconds after the blindfolds came off.

For a year, they danced between friendship and romance—until Penny made The Decision that forced them to settle for friendship. Now, fourteen years later, both of their lives are about to radically change—and it’s his turn to decide what will become of their once-in-a-lifetime connection.

Penny Piper wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of becoming a dancer.  Not even the green-eyed boy she’d just shared the most explosive moment of her life with during a Blind Kiss study.  
 
For years, she tried to resist the pull that always brought her back into his orbit.  It never mattered how much time had passed or how their lives had changed, Gavin was always there when she needed him the most. And now even that was going to come to an end. 

I didn’t think what I was doing to him was fair, but I was scared we would become exploding stars if we gave in to each other. Our energy would be exhausted too soon and we’d have to float through space like lifeless rocks, bumping into each other, drifting through our own stardust.

​Gavin Berninger has spent most of his life longing for someone he could never have. Penny owned him body and soul from the moment that their lips met and he’s built his life around the precious moments they’ve spent together.  But life has a way of stealing happiness away right when it’s within your grasp. And a there’s only so much pain that one man can take before he has to let go.

He started the engine as I stood there, waiting for him to leave. 

“We’ll talk on the phone or email or something, okay?” 

“Okay,” I told him. 

He swallowed nervously.
Looking up at me from the car window, he said, “I wish it were you, Penny.” 
​
That was my bow. He knew I needed it, good or bad—no matter what feelings it shook loose from our long and complicated history together.

​With Blind Kiss, Renée held my heart captive with her gorgeous tale of undying love and she never let it go for an instant!  It’s her most angst-filled story to date and it’s painted with sweeping stokes of such longing that I literally lost my breath – several times.
 
The road to find each other for Gavin and Penny was nothing short of arduous but in the end, that is what made their prize the sweetest of all…

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