If There's No Tomorrow
Title: If There's No TomorrowAuthor: Jennifer L. Armentrout
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release Date: September 5, 2017
Genre: Contemporary Young Adult Fiction
Genre: Contemporary Young Adult Fiction
Until one choice, one moment, destroys everything.
Now Lena isn’t looking forward to tomorrow. Not when friend time may never be the same. Not when college applications feel all but impossible. Not when Sebastian might never forgive her for what happened.
For what she let happen.
With the guilt growing each day, Lena knows that her only hope is to move on. But how can she move on when she and her friends’ entire existences have been redefined? How can she move on when tomorrow isn’t even guaranteed?
I lived about fifteen minutes from the center of downtown Clearbrook, in a neighborhood that was within walking distance of the elementary school where I used to spend my days daydreaming. The streets had a mixture of small and large homes, and all sizes in-between.
My mom and I lived in one of the medium size ones; a house that Mom could barely afford on her own with her insurance agent salary. We could’ve moved into something smaller, especially now that Lori was away at college and I’d be doing the same in a year, but I didn’t think Mom was ready to let go of the house. Of all the memories and all that should have been instead of what was.
It probably would’ve been for the best for all of us if we had moved, but we hadn’t, and that was a flood under the bridge now.
I pulled into the driveway, passing the used Kia that Mom had parked on the side of the street. I turned off the engine and breathed in the coconut-scented interior of the decade old silver Lexus that had once belonged to Dad. Mom hadn’t wanted it, and neither did Lori, so I ended up with it.
It wasn’t the only thing Dad had left me.
I grabbed my bag off the passenger seat and climbed out of the car before quietly closing the door behind me. Crickets chirped and a dog barked somewhere on the mostly silent street as I looked over at the larger house next to ours. All the windows were dark and the limbs of the thick maple in the front swayed, rattling the leaves.
A year from now I wouldn’t be standing here, staring at the house next door like a bona fide loser. I’d be away at college, hopefully at UVA, my top choice. I was still going to carpet bomb other colleges in the spring just in case I didn’t get in early admission, but either way, I would be gone from here.
And that would be for the best.
Getting out of this town. Moving away from the same old same old. Putting much needed distance between the house next door and me.
Tearing my gaze away from the house, I walked up the flagstone sidewalk and went inside. Mom was already in bed, so I tried to be as quiet as possible as I grabbed a soda from the fridge and made my way upstairs to take a quick shower in the hallway bathroom.I could’ve moved into Lori’s bedroom at the front of the house after she left for college. It was larger and had its own bathroom, but my bedroom had privacy and it had an amazing second story deck that I wasn’t willing to give up for a multitude of reasons.
Reasons I didn’t want to think about too much.
Once inside my bedroom, I say the soda on the nightstand and then dropped the towel by the door. I pulled my favorite sleep shirt of all time from the dresser and slipped it over my head. After turning on the lamp on the nightstand and flooding the bedroom with soft buttery light, I picked up the remote and clicked on the TV, turning to the History Channel with the volume on low.
I glanced at the scribbled-on world map tacked to the wall above my desk. The map to everywhere I planned on eventually visiting. The red and blue circles drawn all over it brought forth a grin as I grabbed a massive red and black hardcover from my desk, which was pretty much only used to stash books now. When we first moved in, Dad had built shelves lining the wall where the dresser and TV were, but those bookshelves had been overflowing for years now. Books were stacked in every spare place in the room—in front of my nightstand, on both sides of the dresser and in my closet, taking up more room than the clothes did.
I’d always been a reader and I read a lot, usually sticking to books with some sort of romantic theme and a classic happily ever after. Lori used to make fun of me nonstop for it, claiming I had cheesy taste in books, but whatever. At least I didn’t have pretentious taste in books like she did, and sometimes I just wanted to… I don’t know, escape life. To delve headfirst into a world that dealt with real life issues to open my eyes, or a world that was something else, something completely unreal. One with warring faes or roaming vampire clans. I wanted to experience new things and always, always, reach the last page feeling satisfied.
Because sometimes happily ever after only existed in the books I read.
Sitting down on the edge of my bed, I was just about to crack the book open when I heard a soft rapping coming from the balcony doors. For a split second, I froze as my heart-rate spiked , then I hopped to my feet, dropping the book on my bed.
It could only be one person: Sebastian.
About Jennifer
# 1 New York Times and # 1 International Bestselling author Jennifer lives in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
All the rumors you’ve heard about her state aren’t true. When she’s not hard at work writing. she spends her time reading, watching really bad zombie movies, pretending to write, hanging out with her husband and her Jack Russell Loki. In early 2015, Jennifer was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a group of rare genetic disorders that involve a breakdown and death of cells in the retina, eventually resulting in loss of vision, among other complications. Due to this diagnosis, educating people on the varying degrees of blindness has become of passion of hers, right alongside writing, which she plans to do as long as she can.
Her dreams of becoming an author started in algebra class, where she spent most of her time writing short stories….which explains her dismal grades in math. Jennifer writes young adult paranormal, science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary romance. She is published with Spencer Hill Press, Entangled Teen and Brazen, Disney/Hyperion and Harlequin Teen. Her Wicked Series has been optioned by PassionFlix. Jennifer has won numerous awards, including the 2013 Reviewers Choice Award for Wait for You, the 2015 Editor’s Pick for Fall With Me, and the 2014/2015 Moerser-Jugendbuch- Jury award for Obsidian. Her young adult romantic suspense novel DON’T LOOK BACK was a 2014 nominated Best in Young Adult Fiction by YALSA. Her adult romantic suspense novel TILL DEATH was a Amazon Editor’s Pick and iBook Book of the Month. Her young adult contemporary THE PROBLEM WITH FOREVER is a 2017 RITA Award Winner in Young Adult Fiction. She also writes Adult and New Adult contemporary and paranormal romance under the name J. Lynn. She is published by Entangled Brazen and HarperCollins.
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Thanks Heather! Looking forward to reading this one!
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