C. L. Beaumont

A couple of sentences in, I was hopelessly hooked, and I knew I would fall in love with this one.

"The love affair began with salt.

Thick salt. The kind that coated shivering skin in chalky warmth and crusted like splintering glass in between tiny strands of hair, seeking the water, seeking the sun, seeking the froth.

Salt that crackled across his tongue and burned in the corners of his tear ducts. That whipped through the valleys of his pruny fingertips and nestled thickly in the thin hair on his arms, the tiny crevices of his big toe nails, the hidden curve just behind his ear. That dried and slithered in shrinking flakes across the skin of his forearms under the baking sun."

Beaumont's writing is lyrical, emotive — just stunningly beautiful. It's hard to believe this is a debut novel. Just check these out, oh my god…

"The endless blue stretches out in front of him, a question and an answer all at once."

"[…] the great vast blue, a deep velvet glass cupping the earth in its wet palms and beckoning James out to its depths with the soft, rolling, even crush of the waves against the shore."

I loved James and Sydney (aka Danny) and their wonderful story. It flowed like the ocean itself, calm and soothing one minute, stormy and unpredictable the next. It just felt right for these two beautiful, hurting souls to finally find each other...

I know I already went completely crazy with the quotes, but I promise this is the last one!… (meer)