Teaser Tuesday #24: Shadows by Ilsa J. Bick

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


This week's teaser comes from the following book:

Title:  Shadows
Author:  Ilsa J. Bick
Series:  Book two in The Ashes Trilogy
Publisher:  EgmontUSA
Publication Date:  September 25, 2012
Source:  Publisher/Netgalley
Purchase:  Amazon | Barnes & Noble

The Apocalypse does not end. The Changed will grow in numbers. The Spared may not survive.

Even before the EMPs brought down the world, Alex was on the run from the demons of her past and the monster living in her head. After the world was gone, she believed Rule could be a sanctuary for her and those she’d come to love. But she was wrong.

Now Alex is in the fight of her life against the adults, who would use her, the survivors, who don’t trust her, and the Changed, who would eat her alive.

Welcome to Shadows, the second book in the haunting apocalyptic Ashes Trilogy: where no one is safe and humans may be the worst of the monsters.

My teaser:

  She watched the tear swell then splash to his cheek, and the sour scent of his loss and despair--and, worse, the scorch of his self-contempt--balled in her throat.
  "Because I...I just c-couldn't," he choked.  "Not after I saw you." -- p. 255 of galley

I listened to the audio for Ashes, and I was out of breath the entire time, just listening to Katherine Kellgren narrate.  But even though I'm reading this second installment myself, I still find myself gasping for air often.  If you've read Ashes, you know that Alex not only overcomes so much physically but also mentally, and both aspects have been ratcheted up exponentially in Shadows.  I'm shocked and appalled one minute and elated the next.  And I still know that I'm going to be on the edge of my seat right up until the very end because there's still more of the story to come.