The Song of David
By Amy Harmon
Release Date: June 15, 2015
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Synopsis
She said I was like a song. Her favorite song. A song isn’t something you can see. It’s something you feel, something you move to, something that disappears after the last note is played.
I won my first fight when I was eleven years old, and I’ve been throwing punches ever since. Fighting is the purest, truest, most elemental thing there is. Some people describe heaven as a sea of unending white. Where choirs sing and loved ones await. But for me, heaven was something else. It sounded like the bell at the beginning of a round, it tasted like adrenaline, it burned like sweat in my eyes and fire in my belly. It looked like the blur of screaming crowds and an opponent who wanted my blood.
For me, heaven was the octagon.
Until I met Millie, and heaven became something different. I became something different. I knew I loved her when I watched her stand perfectly still in the middle of a crowded room, people swarming, buzzing, slipping around her, her straight dancer’s posture unyielding, her chin high, her hands loose at her sides. No one seemed to see her at all, except for the few who squeezed past her, tossing exasperated looks at her unsmiling face. When they realized she wasn’t normal, they hurried away. Why was it that no one saw her, yet she was the first thing I saw?
If heaven was the octagon, then she was my angel at the center of it all, the girl with the power to take me down and lift me up again. The girl I wanted to fight for, the girl I wanted to claim. The girl who taught me that sometimes the biggest heroes go unsung and the most important battles are the ones we don’t think we can win.
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Excerpt
I stopped a foot from her and reached out, taking one of her hands in mine. “Do you like this song?” I asked. Obviously she did and obviously I was stupid.
“I love this song.”
“Me too,” I whispered. I reached for her other hand.
“Accidental Babies.”
“What?” I tugged her hands gently, and she took a step. I was so close now that the top of her head provided a shelf for my chin, and Damien’s song was being drowned out by the sound of my heart.
“It’s another one of his songs. . . and I think I love it even more,” she whispered back.
“But that song is so sad,” I breathed, and laid my cheek against her hair.
“That’s what makes it beautiful. It’s devastating. I love it when a song devastates me.” Her voice was thready, as if she was struggling to breathe.
“Ah, the sweet kind of suffering.” I dropped her hands and wrapped my arms around her.
“The best kind.” Her voice hitched as our bodies aligned.
“I’ve been suffering for a while now, Millie.”
“You have?” she asked, clearly amazed.
“Since the moment I saw you. It devastated me. And I love when a girl devastates me.” I was using her definition of the word, but the truth was, my sister was the only girl who had ever devastated me, and it hadn’t been sweet agony.
“I’ve never devastated anyone before,” Millie said faintly, shock and pleasure coloring her words. She still stood with her arms at her sides, almost like she couldn’t believe what was happening. But her lips hovered close to my jaw, as if she was enjoying the tension between almost and not quite.
“I’m guessing you’ve left a wake of destruction,” I whispered. “You just don’t know.”
Finally, as if she couldn’t resist any longer, she raised her hands to my waist. Trembling fingers and flat palms slid across my abdomen, up my chest, past my shoulders, progressing slowly as if she memorized as she moved. Then she touched my face and her thumbs found the cleft in my chin, the way they’d done the first time she’d traced my smile. Hesitantly, she urged my face down toward hers. A heartbeat before our mouths touched she spoke, and the soft words fluttered against my lips.
“Are you going to devastate me, David?” she asked.
“God, I hope not,” I prayed aloud.
Anticipation dissolved the lingering space between us, and I pressed needy lips to her seeking mouth. And then we melded together, hands clinging, bodies surging, music moaning, dancing in the wreckage. Sweet, sweet, devastation.
“Too late . . .” I thought I heard her whisper.
Robin’s Review
Just over two years ago, in May of 2013, I read novel titled A Different Blue. A Different Blue was my first novel written by author Amy Harmon, and reading this New York Times Bestseller signified the beginning of my love affair for her writing. I worked backwards, reading everything she published prior to A Different Blue. Since then, I have read each new novel released by Amy Harmon. I am now delighted to be reviewing Harmon’s latest work, The Song of David.
The Song of David is a new adult contemporary romance that is loosely tied by the characters to The Law of Moses. Moses Wright and Georgia Shepherd are the primary characters in The Law of Moses, but we are also introduced to the best friend of Moses Wright, David “Tag” Taggert. Moses and Tag have a very interesting background, and Moses plays an important role in The Song of David. If you want the full effect of The Song of David, I highly recommend that you read The Law of Moses first.
The Song of David is told from the perspectives of Moses Wright and Tag Taggert. Amy Harmon came up with a brilliant and unique way of telling this story. We are given a first person point of view directly from Moses, but Tag’s perspective is told by means of a series of cassette tapes which he specifically recorded for Millie. The cassette tapes are a fantastic medium for telling a story!
At the beginning of The Song of David, we learn Tag has gone missing. He has a beautiful girlfriend and a “Tag Team” of supportive friends. He owns several successful businesses. He has a promising career as a MMA fighter. But Tag disappears without a trace, leaving nothing behind but a set of keys, a cassette recorder and several cassette tapes. Moses listens to the cassettes with Millie, as they try to figure out why he has disappeared. Tag recounts his memories of Millie, and we experience how the two of them meet and fall in love.
Several nights a week, Tag offers pole dancing in the fight arena that is connected to his bar. Twenty-two year-old Amelie Anderson is hired by his bar manager to be a pole dancer in the arena cage. She’s beautiful, with delicate features, and a nice body. Her dancing is athletic, her smile is dreamy, and her eyes, large and luminous, but Amelie is also blind. It doesn’t make a difference to Tag that she is blind – when Tag meets Amelie, her smile takes his breath away. Silly Millie is the sweetest character. She may be blind, but she is very strong and positive, never lamenting her station in life. I think she may be my favorite character ever written by Amy Harmon.
I have never been disappointed with anything written by Amy Harmon. I know that I can always count on a unique and thought-provoking story with each new book that she publishes. I continue to be impressed with her talent and creativity, and the genuine or natural feel to conversations which take place between her characters. Nowhere are these attributes more apparent than in The Song of David. Her writing flows naturally in this story. Conversations including Moses, Tag, Millie and her younger brother, Henry are heartfelt and full of wisdom. Harmon constantly triggered my emotions while I was reading this novel. I want to point out a couple of excerpts that I feel are worthy of mentioning. If you read The Song of David, pay close attention to what Tag has to say about Heaven. And I cannot finish this review without mentioning the passage where Millie makes love to Tag. This is truly one of the most beautiful love scenes that I have ever read.
There is so much to love about The Song of David. One of my favorite things about this novel is that it felt like a continuation of The Law of Moses. Moses and Georgia get plenty of page time, and we are able to read more about their future together as a couple. I loved the mystery in this story. Harmon alternates between cassette tape recordings, which is their love story and everything leading up to Tag’s disappearance, and the discussion between Moses, Millie and other characters, trying to solve the mystery of his absence. After I finished reading The Song of David, I felt full of hope. The ending of the story truly left me smiling. I hope everyone who reads this review will read The Law of Moses and The Song of David. Both of them are 6-star novels, and The Song of David is now a 2015 favorite!
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Buy the song on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/song-of-david-single/id998774568
Music & Lyrics by Amy Harmon and Paul Travis – Song of David: iTunes
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Author Bio:
Amy Harmon is a USA Today and New York Times Bestselling author. Amy knew at an early age that writing was something she wanted to do, and she divided her time between writing songs and stories as she grew. Having grown up in the middle of wheat fields without a television, with only her books and her siblings to entertain her, she developed a strong sense of what made a good story. Her books are now being published in several countries, truly a dream come true for a little country girl from Levan, Utah.
Amy Harmon has written five novels – the USA Today Bestsellers, Making Faces and Running Barefoot, as well as Slow Dance in Purgatory, Prom Night in Purgatory, and the New York Times Bestseller, A Different Blue.
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