A Fair Exchange
Who
hasn’t wondered about their first love? What happened? What went wrong? Where
are they now?
What
if you got a second chance?
Amelia
Armstrong is about to find out. What a shame her long-lost love, Matt, has returned
(looking way too good and acting way too sweet) when her life is a
shambles and she has finally decided once and for all to put herself and not
whichever man is currently in her life, first.
How
do you balance that desire to recapture that loving feeling with the need to
finally be the best version of yourself? What if this really is the one, how do
you choose when to stand your ground and when to cut your losses? Amelia takes a journey from Sydney to New
York and back again trying to find the answers while negotiating with
pop-divas, ex-lovers, crazy teenagers, a well-meaning cousin and the tabloids.
A
Fair Exchange is a story about being a grown up when, maybe, you’d much rather
be sixteen again.
Excerpt
It was not as if he was the first one to mention it.
In the past week everyone who had entered my apartment had commented on the
shiny new Vespa parked in the middle of the otherwise empty living room. In
fact, each and every one of them had imaginatively said “Amelia you have a red
Vespa parked in your living room!” And
they all said it in a tone that implied I might not have noticed, as if it may
have magically appeared there.
How could I not notice a vehicle parked in what was
otherwise an empty room?
What amazed me was that the Vespa was what they chose
to comment on.
Not that Nick had dumped me, after ten years, for a
twenty-one year-old. Nor that he had moved out, taking basically all the
furniture and leaving me with a great view over the beach and an enormous
mortgage.
No one even commented about the fact that I, in turn,
had quit the fabulous job that had always meant way too much to me.
No, they commented on the Vespa.
What I could not understand though was why it hadn’t
bothered me until right then, when Matthew Blue commented. And when he did
comment, why had I collapsed into this embarrassing sea of tears?
How had this happened? How had I become this sobbing
pathetic figure of womanhood? And more
importantly how had I ended up thirty-six and alone?
Didn’t I used to have so much potential? Everyone had
said so, hadn’t they?
“Amelia Armstrong is something special.”
I was one of those shiny young girls who took risks
and dreamed big. I was one of the smart ones who knew what she wanted and went
after it. I was one to watch.
If I hadn’t been that kind of a girl I would never
have met Matthew all those years ago. A different girl would not have found
herself, on the other side of the world, at sixteen, staring into his dark and
dreamy eyes.
So where was that girl right now, I wanted to know?
And how had a girl with so much potential gotten it so horribly wrong?
About the author – Monique McDonell
I am an
Australian author who writes contemporary women's fiction including chick lit
and romance. I live on Sydney's Northern Beaches with my husband and daughter,
and despite my dog phobia, with a dog called Skip.
I have written all my life especially as a child when I loved to write short stories and poetry. At University I studied Creative Writing as part of my Communication degree. Afterwards I was busy working in public relations I didn't write for pleasure for quite a few years although I wrote many media releases, brochures and newsletters. (And I still do in my day-job!)
When I began to write again I noticed a trend - writing dark unhappy stories made me unhappy. So I made a decision to write a novel with a happy ending and I have been writing happy stories ever since.
I have written all my life especially as a child when I loved to write short stories and poetry. At University I studied Creative Writing as part of my Communication degree. Afterwards I was busy working in public relations I didn't write for pleasure for quite a few years although I wrote many media releases, brochures and newsletters. (And I still do in my day-job!)
When I began to write again I noticed a trend - writing dark unhappy stories made me unhappy. So I made a decision to write a novel with a happy ending and I have been writing happy stories ever since.
I have
been a member of the writing group The Writer’s Dozen for eight years. Our
anthology Better Than Chocolate raised over $10,000 for the charity Room to
Read and helped build a library in South East Asia. I am also a member of the
Romance Writers of Australia.
A Fair
Exchange is the fifth novel I have released in the last two years.
To learn more about Monique McDonell and her upcoming
books please visit her at www.moniquemcdonell.com.au
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