Official release date for Incredible Beauty will be 2nd July, 2013. Below is the cover (and the NEW cover for SMRW!), and some excerpts. If you haven't read So Many Reasons Why, a little birdy has told me it will be on sale sometime before the release of the sequel, so keep an eye out for that.

 

(unedited and subject to change)

The blackness is terrifying. I so badly want to open my eyes, but I can't. My eyelids are so heavy it feels like they are made of lead, and every time I try to open them I can't. I strain to recognize the voices around me. I can hear them clearly. Someone is holding my hand. I try to concentrate. T...he smoothness of the skin, the slightly raised freckle on the side of the thumb and the unevenness of the nails.

It's Simon. He bites his nails when he gets nervous, something I am forever telling him off about. A tiny fragment of my anxiety disappears knowing he is here with me.

My heart starts pounding as I remember bean. I hope she's okay. I can't feel her moving, and at this stage I have no way of knowing whether she is still inside me, or even alive. I try to squeeze Simon's hand, but again, I can't. Instead, I concentrate on the sound of him inhaling and exhaling.

 

Something beeps continuously next to me, almost like a ticking clock, but louder. Something hard and uncomfortable is wedged down my windpipe. It makes me feel like dry retching, but of course, I can't.

By now I've figured out I'm in hospital. The sounds of the machines, Simon's had grasped in mine, the distant chatter of other people, there is no other explanation. At least, not in my mind.

How long have I been like this? Hours? Days? Weeks?

I don't know, and it's the not knowing scares me, as does the fact that I am aware of what is going on, yet I can't communicate. Every few minutes I hear the vibration of his phone, the same vibration that wakes me up every morning just as his alarm is going off.

I wonder who he is texting? Is it Claire?