Love Stories GIVEAWAY: What Makes A Home

in this post: what makes a home

Happy February – official (according to me) KissingBooks month! And welcome to another Love Stories giveaway post! This LOVE STORIES giveaway series is thusly named for two reasons – first, because I love stories and second, because I love Love Stories.

Throughout the entire month of February, I’ll be spotlighting swoony Christian fiction & ‘clean read’ romances. Three cheers for KissingBooks!!! So… grab a fan or two, your trusty fainting couch, and maybe a freezer just to be safe and start making your KissingBooks tbr list! Oh… and did I mention there are GIVEAWAYS with EACH POST in this series??!! (Because authors are awesome!)

Today’s next book is What Makes a Home by Jaycee Weaver + the author shares her thoughts about last first kisses!

WHAT MAKES A HOME
SERIES: Everyday Love #3
GENRE: Inspirational Contemporary Romance
PUBLISHER: Sandia Sky Press
RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2019
PAGES: 320

An artist who’s never truly known home. A bored computer guy with a fixer-upper. While opposites attract, too much stands in the way. Will they ever figure out what truly makes a home?

Jobie Everett is building a life around teaching art to senior citizens, a boutique job to fund her passion, living green(ish), social media, and wild pursuits that inspire her Muse. When her roommate introduces her to a God who personifies Love like she’s never known, she begins to see the shallowness of her life and searches for greater meaning.

Surely there’s more for Caleb March’s lackluster life than work and his computer hobbies. Desperate for change, he buys a run-down house near an old friend and her pretty roommate. Ready for more than “just friends,” Caleb will first have to reconnect with a God he’s been ignoring for too long.

As Caleb and Jobie bond over renovations, a new development forever changes her and pulls the rug out from under him. Jobie needs a godly man who will support and pursue her. Caleb must break himself free of the friend zone and become the man she needs in order to finally give her heart a home.

The Everyday Love Series is a contemporary romance series set in Albuquerque, featuring ordinary people in lifelike stories that inspire, uplift, and share hope. Stories in which a very real God shows Himself in everyday ways to carry His people through any circumstance.

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Also available to read for FREE with Kindle Unlimited

There’s Nothing Like a First Kiss

by Jaycee Weaver, author of What Makes A Home

“There’s nothing like a first kiss,” sweet, brain-injured Lucy Whitmore tells suitor Henry Roth. At least a dozen times. Poor Lucy, whose memories are unable to convert from short- to long-term can’t remember meeting Henry, but he adores her so much he’s willing to do what it takes to prove his affection and get her to date—and eventually kiss—him. And every time, she tells him those words with a happy sigh, her new and unexpected feelings are written across her face.

Okay, you’ve got me. That’s straight out of the Drew Barrymore/Adam Sandler rom-com 50 First Dates. No matter how many times I watch it, Lucy’s pronouncement makes me smile. She’s absolutely right. There really is nothing like a first kiss. Especially one that’s been a long time coming.

Every girl remembers her first kiss. It’s a special memory, even if the experience itself wasn’t the best. She holds it in her heart with the breathless rush of feelings she’d never felt before. And then there’s the last first kiss. You know the one. The kiss that changes everything, even if she doesn’t know it at the time. The first kiss with the one she’ll commit her life to someday. The kiss that really counts.

I met my husband just before I turned twenty. At the time, it felt like I’d been waiting forever for the one. I’d dated, had my share of kisses with boys I at some point had learned weren’t in God’s plans for me. Someday I’ll write about the crazy circumstances that brought my husband and I together, but for now I’ll shorten it to the most important fact: I knew he was the man I would marry the very first time we met.

Granted, I questioned what I knew God had whispered to my spirit that day for several weeks. A lot happened between that first meeting and our first actual date. We hadn’t been dating long when he had to leave town for a whole week. At nineteen, a week felt like an eternity, especially considering how strong my feelings had already grown for this guy.

I’ll never forget the way my nerves were humming, praying he’d kiss me before he left. Hoping it would surpass all my previous experiences. That it would somehow magically confirm what I already knew God had revealed to me so I could quit second guessing Him and accept the truth that had me both terrified and overjoyed.

A lot to expect from a kiss, right? I know.

He was about to leave, lingering enough I knew he was working up as much nerve as I was. I managed to take a few steps toward him. “Can I at least get a hug before you go?” Speaking the words felt so brave, but he was braver. He smiled down at me and opened his arms. As soon as I stepped into them, he whispered, “Or…how about a kiss?”

I swooned, y’all. The second his lips touched mine, my knees went wobbly and if he hadn’t been holding on to me with unexpected confidence, I totally would have dropped to the floor from all the feelings in that one light but incredible kiss. To this day, I consider that the very best kiss I’ve ever received. Over twenty years of that man’s kisses and I still remember that feeling of nearly falling over. He’s always been the one. Always will be. That kiss sealed it.

That’s how I know romance books aren’t total bahookey. Tingles and weak knees and feeling it clear down to your toes really can happen. They happened to me. They still happen to me. And they make excellent inspiration for writing authentic kissing scenes.

When I talked with Carrie about doing this topic, I originally planned to share a few first kiss scenes from some of my books. I picked up each and every one of the seven I have published right now and reread the scenes, fully intending to choose one. I fell back in love with a few of my characters I haven’t visited with in a while. I rejoiced in their big moment of discovering the true depth of their feelings. Sometimes the kiss comes early, but usually it’s toward the end. And then I realized I couldn’t share most of them, because, hello, spoilers.

Plus, sharing just a kissing scene lessens its impact. Probably because it’s the anticipation that truly connects us to a first kiss, whether fictional or in real life. In the romances we read, we’re invested in that first kiss when it happens. Not for the kiss itself, but what it embodies—the transformation of the relationship from first spark to real, lasting attachment. The culmination of what they’d had to overcome to get to that point, when the characters are finally ready to admit to themselves (whether they’d been yearning for it or were taken by surprise) that this was it.

Their last first kiss. The one I’ll insist to my dying day is the very, very best one of all.

Lover of Jesus, family, books, coffee, music, and crafting (in that order), Jaycee Weaver is perpetually pursuing at least one of her passions. She writes contemporary Christian romance stories featuring realistic characters in everyday situations where God is at work in big ways. She appreciates books where the characters face shortcomings, temptations, and adversity but always get their happy ending, so that’s what she writes.

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Jaycee Weaver is offering an ebook of What Makes a Home to one of my readers! (open internationally except where prohibited by law or logistics.) This giveaway is subject to Reading Is My SuperPower’s giveaway policies which can be found here. Enter via the Rafflecopter form below.

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What about you? What interests you most about What Makes a Home? What did you love about Jaycee’s ‘last first kiss’ post?