3 August 2011 – Sultan’s Choice Giveaway

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Hi there, it’s giveaway time! The Sultan’s Choice is due out on the shelves any day now and I have some copies to give away, but first a little bit about this series of books. When my Ed first asked me to write a Sheikh book for the Summer Sheikhs anthology…

…I was reluctant. I love Sheikh stories but felt that there were plenty of authors doing them already, and very well! But, I had had an idea of a Sheikh story about the horse breeding/racing industry in Ireland…and so Breaking The Sheikh’s Rules was born, which is Nadim and Iseult’s story. Imagine my shock when it got nominated for a RITA award at this summer’s RWA conference in NYC!

As I was writing Breaking The Sheikh’s Rules, I had a character called Jamilah who was very beautiful and sad because of a failed love affair with Nadim’s brother, and so Secrets of the Oasis was born, which is Salman and Jamilah’s story…it’s due out in North America in January of 2012.

In both Breaking The Sheikh’s Rules and Secrets of the Oasis, I mention a Sultan called Sultan Sadiq Ibn Kamal Hussein of Al – Omar. So then I had to do a story about him! And The Sultan’s Choice is his and Samia’s story.

 

 

There is one more story in this sequence – The Call of the Desert which is Samia’s brother, Kaden’s story, and that is due out in the UK and Ireland in December.

So as you can see, I was asked to do one Sheikh story and then I ended spending the whole of last year writing about Sheikhs/Sultans and Emirs!

So, if you would like a copy of The Sultan’s Choice, just send me an email to [email protected] with your snail mail address and I’ll let you know when I’ve run out of copies ;).

I’ll whet your appetites with a great review I found on Goodreads for The Sultan’s Choice by Lululemon…I particularly love the last line :).

… I really enjoyed this book. Both Sadiq and Samia were likable characters with their own emotional scars and both afraid to love. Sadiq arranges a marriage of convenience with a suitably unexciting, nondescript, meek and royal wife. He wants a bland wife who will blend into the background and make no demands on his emotions so that his life will be ordered, smoothly calm, controlled and unemotional. Little does he know that the apparently nondescript and mousy Samia will cause passion and turbulent emotions to rise in him- the very opposite of what he so carefully planned through their seemingly business-like arrangement. 

Abby Green’s writing is evocative and pulls us into the characters’ experience of being gripped by unexplained and unwanted emotions and connection with one another, their utter confusion, frustration and anger in the process, their inner struggles and soul searching, wonderment and finally their ultimate surrender to love. I really felt involved in each of the steps each character, and especially Sadiq, undergoes in this journey. I liked how the characters each evolve, mature, heal and blossom while going through this discovery process. Ms. Green does a good job of showing Sadiq and Samia’s soul-deep connection beyond the mere physical, with the physical aspect of their relationship merely being a fumbled means to understand, express and ultimately admit their emotional connection where their fear and confusion precluded them from doing so otherwise. 

Palpable emotions and connection with evocative writing make this an enjoyable and emotional read. This book does not have the in-your-face over-the-top drama that you will find in some of the books in this line, but I found this book to be more satisfying and enjoyable in its more understated and more complex and elegant tone, a bit like drinking velvet-smooth oak-aged whisky after a stream of tequila shots.

xx Abby