Periphery by AA DaSilva is a Salute Military Bookish Event pick #sciencefictionromance #romance #salutemilitary #giveaway
- N. N. Light
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
Title: Periphery
Author: AA DaSilva
Genre: Science Fiction Romance
Logline:
When a young widow falls for a mysteriously familiar stranger, she’s targeted by an agency intent on exploiting the ability gained after her near-death experience. When offered a chance to reconnect with her late husband, things get complicated…and dangerous.
Book Blurb:
Charlotte barely survived the accident that killed her husband four years ago.
Resuscitated a savant, she struggles to find meaning in her survival. When she meets Simon, a mysteriously familiar stranger, they are drawn to each other with undeniable magnetism. But Simon is contracted to a black-ops agency.With the agency on her heels, and Simon claiming her heart, Charlotte’s past and future collide when she's offered a chance to reconnect with her late husband.
As secrets are revealed, motives uncovered, and alliances are formed, Charlotte must choose…between the fate of the world and the fate of her heart.
Tagline: One Choice Can Change Everything.
Excerpt:
“So, the contract, you didn’t finish telling me about it,” I prompted.
His face darkened while he stared into the fire, flames dancing in his clear-blue eyes. “I have one job left,” he answered without looking up.
“How many have you done so far?”
He looked at me and said, “Too many.”
“Just one left, then? A deployment?”
“Yeah. I work as an intelligence agent of sorts. I can’t talk about it too much. It’s classified.” He looked back into the fire.
“Like a spy?” I asked dramatically, trying to ignore the eerie similarity to Jared’s highly classified deployments. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
“You could say that.” Sy looked up at me. “If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have signed. Sometimes I regret it, but then I think about all the positive things that have come out of it. I was able to help my brothers save the company, I was able to buy a home and a boat and enjoy my life after my accident instead of being confined to a wheelchair. If I hadn’t signed, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the surgery on my spine. I wouldn’t have been able to do all the things that have made the last few years of my life…the best years.”
“The VA wouldn’t pay for the surgery?”
“No. It was considered experimental at the time.” Sy looked up at me. “The contract pays unbelievably well per job completed. But now that I’m older, I realize there’s a cost that is not financial that I have to deal with.”
“You regret it?”
“When you always have to be ready to travel at a moment’s notice, it’s tough to put down roots. I just want to be done with the contract. The mission I went on in Afghanistan almost took my life, and until I finish this last job, I feel like I’m still tied to it. To that part of my life.”
I drew in a sharp breath. “I’m sorry. It’s like you had no choice.”
“Yeah, it felt that way at the time.” Sy looked intensely at me. “Meeting you was one of the things that made it worth it. I would have never met you if I hadn’t had the surgery.”
My face heated.
I leaned my head against the back of the chair and stared up at the infinite sky speckled with billions of stars. “Even the smallest choices we make can significantly change the course of our lives. I mean, are choices really half-chance? Or are there bigger components at play, like fate or chaos theory?” I stopped and internally reprimanded myself for coming a little too close to discussing my obsessive theories. Jess would be disappointed.
“Yeah, I think about it too.” Sy picked up where I left off without missing a beat. “One small decision has such a substantial impact on where you are now. The missed encounters, the close calls, it makes me wonder, as you said, ‘What if’? If I’d never enlisted, or signed into the contract, or ….”
“If I hadn’t gone to college in Rhode Island, or gone with Jared the day of the accident…”
We began listing events in our lives, big and small, that led to us being there at that moment, by the fire.
Sy looked thoughtful and turned to me. “Do you ever wonder if there’s another chance? That maybe somewhere out there, a place exists where you made different decisions and were living the consequences of them?”
“I think about it all the time…choices and chances. What lies beyond this life, or exists parallel to it, if you will. Einstein, Greene, and Hawking hypothesize that there is...”
“The multiverse,” Sy answered for me.
“Yes! The theory of the multiverse—that multiple realities exist, that there could be different versions of you and what your life could be, based on different choices out there, somewhere.” I stopped and closed my eyes, then continued speaking. “I can’t help but wonder, are we given different scenarios, different choices, and ultimately different outcomes, that test our character, our strength, our virtue, all during a set of lifetimes within a multiverse?”
“I know that theory.” Sy leaned back and looked up at the stars. “I know it really well.”
“Reading those theories helped me stay sane after the accident, I guess I became a bit obsessed with the idea after what I’d been through. I wish there was a small window we could peer through, to see what life would look like if we’d made just one or maybe two different choices.”
“A window,” Sy repeated, considering my statement. He reached for my hand, then stopped, holding my gaze intensely.
It wasn’t every day two people who’d experienced the trauma of a near-death experience got to talk about it with someone who could truly relate to surviving against the odds.
“Sy, did you notice anything about yourself change after being resuscitated?” I sat up and leaned toward him.
“Yes. It’s very hard to put into words, but… my intuitiveness has improved. I can see more…as if a bridge was built inside me, connecting me to parts of myself I couldn’t access before.”
I thought for a while about what he said. He seemed to have a better grip on himself after the accident, while I had a better grip on a hard-to-grasp science to help explain my life and internal changes. I wondered if there was any meaning to it all, or if dying just awakened parts of us that were always there but lying dormant.
“And you, Charlotte?”
“No gifts here, just the curse of savant syndrome involving lots of numbers and physics.”
“Gifts can feel like curses until we learn how to harness them.” He brushed the back of my hand with his fingers.
I closed my eyes and focused on the pleasantness of his touch. Had I given too much away? I opened my eyes to find him staring at me, and I had a sudden urge to ask him if he felt the strange familiarity I felt. Was it the resuscitation? The near-death experience that drew us together?
I decided to break the strange magnetism that loomed between us by grabbing my journal. Maybe if I showed him some of the equations, the impossibilities that occurred... no. Maybe I’d just show him my uncanny sketch of the accident. Maybe if he could see how hard I worked to make sense of everything, maybe he’d mention the magnetism first. As I got up, my footing gave out, and I stumbled.
Sy hopped out of his seat and caught me by the waist before I could hit the grass.
“I’m sorry! I never drink, I was sitting the whole time, I didn’t realize…” I grasped his arms to steady myself.
Sy’s arms remained around me, and I looked up to meet his blue eyes, the fire reflecting and dancing in them.
He brushed my cheek lightly to remove the wayward hair from my face. “You amaze me, Charlotte—” He drew a deep breath. “—I wasn’t expecting you.”
I stilled in his arms.
“Not merely a theory, you are my chaos,” he whispered.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
Author universal link: https://linktr.ee/aadasilva
What makes your featured book a must-read?
A triple award-winning speculative romance, Periphery is an edge-of-your seat read that’ll take you on a journey of love, strength, and endless possibilities. "An intelligent, thrilling, and thought-provoking experience from start to finish." -N.N. Light’s Book Heaven
"Gripping and emotional..." -Literary Titan (Literary Titan Gold Award recipient, 2024)
"This book put me in a choke hold!" -ARC Reviewer
Chanticleer International Book Awards: First Place Winner (Shelley Division, 2024)
Speak Up Talk Radio Firebird Awards: First Place (2024)
Giveaway –
Enter to win a $20 Amazon gift card:
Open Internationally.
Runs May 20 – May 28, 2025.
Winner will be drawn on May 29, 2025.
Author Biography:
Born and raised in New England, AA DaSilva has a degree in clinical laboratory science and brings her love of science and writing together via science fiction. When she’s not writing or working in the lab, she can be found with a book in one hand, and a cup of iced coffee in the other. She resides in Massachusetts with her husband, two sons, and pup Didi (who looks suspiciously like an Ewok).
Her award-winning debut novel, Periphery, is a science fiction love story that explores fate, strength, and the choices that determine our destiny. Periphery’s sequel, The Bleed-Through Effect, is releasing July 2025.For the latest updates on new releases and events, sign up for email updates at aadasilva.com and follow her on socials.
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