We are absolutely over the moon about this Release Day launch for Courtney Cole's VERUM!! VERUM is a New Adult dark romantic psychological suspense novel and the second book in Courtney's The Nocte Trilogy! To celebrate the release NOCTE is on sale for only $.99 through tomorrow! Grab both now! Thank us later.
About VERUM: The truth shall set you free. My name is Calla Price and I’m drowning. My new world is a dark, dark ocean and I’m being pulled under by secrets. Can I trust anyone? I don’t know anymore. The lies are spirals. They twist and turn, binding me with their thorns and serpentine tongues. And just when I think I have it figured out, everything is pulled out from under me. I’m entangled in the darkness. But the truth will set me free. It’s just ahead of me, so close I can touch it. But even though it shines and glimmers, it has glistening fangs and I know it will shred me. Are you scared? I am.
Together, we float to the surface, still intertwined. We break through the top and I suck in a breath and Dare is staring into my eyes. There’s tension here, but not the bad kind. It’s the kind that ignites you, the kind that intoxicates you, the kind that once you taste it, you’ll crave for the rest of your life. I’ve forgotten that I was going to be careful, that I was going to reject him on every level. All I can remember, all I can focus on, is how veryalive Dare DuBray is making me feel in this moment, how alive he always makes me feel. For a girl who has been surrounded by death her entire life, this is a very big deal. “I’m a little afraid of you,” I blurt honestly, and Dare still has his arms around me. Our treading water motions keep our legs rubbing together, the friction still there. Hot, Hot, Hotter. Dare smiles, but there is no humor in it. “Good.” “Why?” My honesty makes me seem innocent, but I don’t know how to play games. I have no experience with the opposite sex at all. “Because that makes you feel something.” But he’s hesitant now and he looks away. There’s something he wants to say, it’s balanced on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows it. “What is it?” I ask softly. “Just tell me.” He wants to, I can tell. His secrets are killing him. He just wants to be normal, he’s just acting out a role. I don’t know why I feel like I know this. It’s just there, suddenly resting on my heart. “You don’t have to be someone you’re not,” I murmur quietly. His dark eyes snap up to mine and he pulls his hands away. There’s something in his eyes now, something guarded, and our easy afternoon has come to an end. “What makes you think I am?” he snaps. “Pretending to be something I’m not, I mean.” I’ve somehow annoyed him, and I don’t answer because I don’t know what to say. “I’m not being someone I’m not, Calla,” he says coolly as he strides from the water. “I’m being who you need me to be.” I’m utterly confused, and I’m dripping wet. “We don’t have towels,” is all he says when I follow him. My clothing soaks up the water and it is a very cold ride back home. Dare doesn’t say another word and I leave him in the garage. I don’t see him at dinner, and I don’t see him the rest of the night. But as I lay in bed around midnight, I see his car leave the garage. I don’t see him come home, and I’m awake for half the night waiting. I have no idea where he goes when he slips away. Somehow, I think he wants it that way. There’s a fork in the road and even though I see it, I can’t avoid it. One road goes left, one goes right, and neither of them end well. I feel it in my bones, In my bones, In my bones. I sing a song of nonsense, and it sings back. The notes echo and twist in the air, and I swallow them whole. “Come out,” I call behind me, because I know they’re there. I can’t see them, but they’re always watching. Eyes appear, blood red, and they blink once, twice, three times. “I can see you,” I announce and there’s a growl and then I’m crushed beneath the dark, beneath the weight, beneath the oppression. “You don’t scare me,” I lie. There’s savagery here, there’s grace. But above all, there’s oblivion and no matter what I do, I will be sucked into it. I know it. I feel it. I’m crazy. And it doesn’t matter. I’m the rabbitrabbitrabbit and I’ll never be free.
“I have to admit that I do feel the danger. It crackles around me, everywhere. It’s here for me. I feel it, it’s real. I just don’t know why.” – Calla
In the follow up to Nocte, you will feel the foreboding doom, the cloak of mystery and impending urgency for Calla Price to sort through her reality and dreams. To decipher and decode her purpose and fate. You will take the journey with her and experience first hand the intensity, family history and puzzling illusions in this captivating story.
Courtney Cole has created a trilogy that is layered with depth, despair and beauty. It is precarious, thought provoking and mind bending. The type of book that engages and triggers and heightens ones emotions.
“The past year swirls through my mind in blurs and snippets.”- Calla
Along with Calla, we are immersed in her confusion, dreams and reality. We are left to sort along with her what is real and not. Is she paranoid or in danger? Or is there more to it? In a sense, the reader is urged to decode the plot…..in order to understand and comprehend the beauty and pain of Verum.
“There’s something you need to know.” - Dare
It is a continous maze. A maze cloaked in secrets, the past, the present and future. Your head will spin, your mind will comprehend the intense connection she has for her loved ones and Dare. Your heart will ache. Courtney weaved a clever tale. One that enchants and has us pondering. Not many books make you think these days. Verum is profound! Now I lay in wait for the final book LUX.
“Confusion consumes me and nothing seems real.” Calla
Verum truly had me on the edge of my seat gripping my kindle. It sometimes confused and at times made sense. It was a never ending puzzle. It takes you back to the beginning and takes you beyond that………..
I have to say the hardest review to write is for the books you love the most! Where do I start with VERUM…. Oh lord have mercy… This book…. It just left me speechless!! I just have no words how wonderful and amazing this series is. It’s a complete mind fuck and it will have your head spinning in a thousand different directions and I absolutely loved every minute of it! I also try to guess the plot and try to figure out the book before the end. There is just no figuring out VERUM. There is no way I could have guessed how this book ended and now I am left waiting for the LUX. I have read Courtney Cole’s romance novels but these books by far are her best work. If you have not read NOCTE, I would have to tell you to drop what you are doing and go read it. It’s just one of the best books I have read. I think I am bumping this series to one of my favorite book series ever! That’s right, EVER!
In VERUM Calla and Dare leave to England and the story takes place in Whitley, the Sanger family compound. Calla learns that she will inherit a large estate now that she is eighteen but there are some stipulations to this inheritance. One is to be of sound mind. If you have read VERUM, being of sound mind is something that I Calla is struggling with. But Dare is there with her and even though he is there for her, she knows there are still secrets that she must uncover on her own. Trust is something Calla struggles with and with a new cast of characters being introduced I don’t know if I trust anyone!
“I feel like prey and he’s the hunter, until reality hits me and I know that he would never want to hunt me. He’s night, and I’m day. He’s whole and I’m broken.”
“Where he wants to be or not, he’s a wolf. And I’m the lamb.”
While at Whitley, Calla does learn about some of Dare’s secrets but then that just leads to more questions. She is slowly putting together the missing pieces but as the pieces come together, the more she realizes the truth may just be her undoing.
“I’m floating in an ocean of insanity. It’s just ahead of me, so close I can touch it. But even though it shines and glimmers, it has glistening fangs and I know it will shred me.”
It is hard to leave a summary for this story because there are just so many facets to it and I do not want to ruin this experience for anyone. And yes, it is an experience! This novel is a fascinating tale from start to finish and it will leave you in a complete mess. Your mind will be spent. You will not know which way is up or down and then you will be saying to yourself I bow down to the genius that is Courtney Cole! For me LUX cannot get here fast enough but I will be patiently waiting (maybe rocking in a corner with a blanket, maybe clutching it for dear life) for this final book in this phenomenal series!
Verum by Courtney Cole is the second book in the Nocte Trilogy and will make your mind spin just as the first one did. Courtney Cole has a way of writing Calla's story that has the reader anticipating one thing all the while having something completely different take place that was unexpected. This book was a 3.5 star read for me and I am curious as to the final book in the trilogy and how this strangely different but slightly intriguing story will conclude.
Still reeling from the self discovery that her twin brother Finn was actually dead at the end of Nocte, Calla is determined to try and find out the secrets that Dare is hiding from her, a secret that he claims she already knows, just like she truly knew Finn had died in the car crash with her mother, and just needs to allow herself to remember. Growing more frusterated with Dare for not revealing what she is desperately trying to remember. Still grieving from the loss of her mother and her brother; and watching her father slip further and further in his own grief she decides to return to her mother's home of England to clear her head and hopefully regain the memories that seem so far from her grasp at the moment.
With Dare at her side she travels to England to stay with her mother's family, an environment that seems so cold and unwelcoming; but perhaps exactly what she needs in order to remember everything that has happened leading up to her mother and brother's fatal car accident. Befriending Sabine, one of the hired help at her families estate, she wanders and thinks trying to recall even the slightest bit of memory. All the while she is watching Dare become a completely different person that she knew back in the states; here in England is appears to be polished and polite as well as stiff and almost playing a role that has been set for him. As Calla begins to unravel some of Dare's hidden secrets while searching for the answers to her own; what she discovers is heartbreaking at best and will have the reader wanting to reach through the page to offer Dare the kindness that seems to have escaped him in his childhood.
The ending chapters of this book were shocking to me, leading everything that I had thought and expected from this series to be completely wrong. I am being intentionally vague with my review as you will need to read and discover for yourself in order for it to have the impact that Courtney Cole intended when writing. If you were a fan of Nocte and are yearning for more of Dare and Calla's story then I can promise you won't be disappointed with Verum.
Don't miss the first book in the Nocte Trilogy...
Courtney Cole is a novelist who would eat mythology for breakfast if she could. She has a degree in Business, but has since discovered that corporate America is not nearly as fun to live in as fictional worlds. She loves chocolate and roller coasters and hates waiting and rude people. Courtney lives in quiet suburbia, close to Lake Michigan, with her real-life Prince Charming, her ornery kids (there is a small chance that they get their orneriness from their mother) and a small domestic zoo.
