Release Day!!! The Disappearing Girl Is Now Available

The Disappearing Girl is now live on Amazon.com!

Kindle edition: http://www.amazon.com/The-Disappearing-Girl-ebook/dp/B00CMR7GFQ/

Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Girl-Heather-Topham-Wood/dp/1483906779/

Goodreads link for The Disappearing Girl: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17609789-the-disappearing-girl

The Disappearing Girl Pinterest Board: http://pinterest.com/woodtop255/the-disappearing-girl/

Summary:

Kayla Marlowe is slowly vanishing…

Last year, Kayla’s world imploded. Her beloved father died, leaving her alone with a narcissistic mother who is quick to criticize her daughter’s appearance. During her winter break from college, Kayla’s dangerous obsession with losing weight begins.

Kayla feels like her world changes for the better overnight. Being skinny seems to be the key to the happiness she has desperately been seeking. Her mother and friends shower her with compliments, telling her how fantastic she looks. Kayla is starving, but no one knows it.

Cameron Bennett explodes into Kayla’s life. He’s sexy and kind—he has every quality she has been looking for in a guy. As Cameron grows closer to Kayla and learns of how far she’s willing to go to stay thin, he becomes desperate to save her.

Kayla’s struggles with anorexia and bulimia reach a breaking point and she is forced to confront her body image issues in order to survive. She wonders if Cameron could be the one to help heal her from the pain of her past.

New Adult Contemporary-Ages 17+ due to language and sexual situations.

Excerpt:

I began to lose pieces of myself over the winter break.


I had returned home from college to spend time with my mother and younger sister until the spring semester began in January. Christmas was a trying affair; only the second one our family had endured since my father died a year and a half earlier. His stocking still hung from the mantle, his armchair left empty while we opened gifts—and his ghost ever present.


My father’s death left my mother with a permanent scowl etched into her flawless features. My mother was beautiful in a way that made strangers assume she was a famous actress or a world-class model. Her hair was naturally dark with auburn highlights, and her eyes were the color of emeralds. Jaws dropped when it was revealed she was a housewife. Pitiful expressions betrayed their thoughts: what a waste of beauty.


My younger sister, Lila, and I were a disappointment to my mother because of our ordinariness. We both had straight brown hair and the same murky brown eyes as our father. No one stopped to compliment us on our stunning looks. Since middle school, boys would ask to come over to our house to glimpse my mother sunning in the backyard, clad in a skimpy bikini and rolled onto her back with the strings left untied. The boys’ eyes would volley between my mother, Lila, and me, their thoughts leaking into their expressions: a beautiful mother didn’t always guarantee a beautiful daughter.


Dad had always been our biggest advocate, shushing my mother’s criticisms and making outrageous claims about how Lila and I were the greatest beauties that ever graced the planet. I never realized how much of a buffer he was until he was gone.


I had my own personal countdown for when I’d be able to return to my college campus, because each day brought a new barrage of insults from my mom. I tried to sympathize; she was drowning in her own misery, but all I craved was an escape. My father was the one great love of her life and his death undermined her chance of ever being happy again. Although she ate up the attention other men gave her, my father was the only man that could melt her iciness. My father would tell us about how all the boys in their small hometown were too intimidated to ask my mom out on a date—the walls around her seemingly impenetrable. My dad may not have been the handsomest man to ever ask her out, but he was the most devoted and kind.