**Blog Tour & Giveaway ~ Forever Innocent ~ Deanna Roy**

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Deanna Roy's Forever Innocent. My stop includes all the important information on the book, my review, and a giveaway.

To follow all the blogs on along the tour, click here.

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Forever Innocent by Deanna Roy

Publication date: October 1st 2013

Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance

Synopsis:

“Our baby died on prom night, and nothing was ever the same again.”

Corabelle doesn’t feel like any of the other college girls. On what should have been one of the happiest nights of her life, she and her boyfriend Gavin watched a nurse disconnect the ventilator from their seven-day-old baby. During the funeral two days later, Gavin walked out and never returned.

Since then, her life has been a spiral of disasters. The only thing that has helped is her ability to black out whenever the pain gets too hard to bear, a habit that has become an addiction.

When Gavin shows up in her astronomy class four years later, he is hell-bent on getting her back, insisting she forgive him. Corabelle knows she can’t resist the touch that fills the empty ache that has haunted her since he left. But if he learns what she has done, if he follows the trail back through her past, her secrets will destroy their love completely. And once again, she’ll lose the only person who always believed she was innocent.

**Tissue Alert ~ you're gonna need 'em**

"Do you believe in second chances?"

Oh good golly - I'm reeling after finishing this book. Stunned. To say Forever Innocent affected me deeply would be an understatement. It affected me on such a visceral level. This is a story that impacted me and I'll be feeling it's effects for awhile.

"I don't know how to be happy."

-Corabelle, Loc 1932, eARC

Corabelle Rotheford is a broken young woman. At 22, she's experienced so much - things no one should have to endure. She had love - that deep, soul-mate, forever kind - but after losing their baby, Gavin walked away. Corabelle is surviving the only way she knows how. Four years later, she's still not recovered from the loss of Finn or Gavin. She leads a mostly solitary life. She has a few friends but really tries to keep any emotion out of the equation. She just wants to finish her degree and head to grad school. She agrees to take an astronomy class with her friend and co-worker, Jenny, not realizing she was about to experience a supernova.

"Bloody hell. Life seemed to be throwing us at each other.

Hadn't it done enough already?"

-Gavin, Loc 523, eARC

Gavin Mays is a broken young man. He, too, had the love of his life - a love brighter than all the stars in the heavens. But after suffering the loss of Finn, Gavin lost it. And then became lost - doing the best he could to survive. He, also, leads a mostly solitary life, with few friends and no emotional attachments. The anger, the regret, the guilt he carries are difficult to bear. He'd do anything to change the past. And then, like fate lent a helping hand, he sits down in astronomy class, only to look up and see his second chance.

"She was mine. She had to be. I had to get her to see 

that we belonged together." 

-Gavin, Loc 823, eARC

"I knew this was where I belonged, but there was 

no way to stay there. "

-Corabelle, Loc 760, eARC

"You didn't find someone you loved and lost a 

long time ago just to lose them again."

-Gavin, Loc 2799, eARC

Corabelle and Gavin, once again in each other's orbits, can't seem to stay away from one another. But while Gavin is hell-bent on making Corabelle realize what they have together, she feels the weight of her secrets. Gavin has secrets of his own but seems determined they stay in the past. The weight of the tremendous guilt and the depth of despair these two carry over losing Finn, the secrets they're each keeping from the other - and for Gavin, deserting Corabelle when she most needed him, is oppressive. There's so much history between them, so much water under the bridge, yet they both find themselves pulled toward the other. How do they get past the past?

Forever Innocent is told from both Corabelle's and Gavin's POVs, in both the present and flashbacks of the past. This was a brilliant way to relate their story. We get to see how their love began, we're witness to their pain over Finn, and we experience their reunion. And Ms. Roy does a phenomenal job of conveying the grief, the guilt, the anger that Corabelle and Gavin experience. It's powerful. I can't imagine what losing a child would be like. But I do have personal experience in coming close. Corabelle and Gavin were mostly existing, trying to cope while keeping their emotions locked down. When they reunite, it's explosive.

I was happy to find at 'The End' that this is not the end of Corabelle and Gavin's story. Their story, in my opinion, is just beginning...once more. So, do you believe in second chances? Yes, Gavin, I do. 

**I received an eARC of this book, as part of the blog tour, in exchange for an honest review.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Deanna Roy is a sucker for romance and drama and dumps hefty amounts of both in her novels. She is also a powerful advocate for baby loss moms and has founded multiple support groups for women, from teens on up, who endure this impossible heartache. Her other novels include Baby Dust and Stella & Dane: A Honky Tonk Romance.

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