Ends & Starts
PLOT…
Ends & Starts sees our friends branch out from their sweet little home of Woodston Bay. Starting off with a camping trip on Taminga Island, our group celebrate the end of high school and Logan’s recovery before embarking on their adult journeys.
Early on, Ducky decides to move twenty-minutes north to West Lake city in order to be closer to her university campus where she is studying midwifery and begins enjoying her independence. Logan now spends most of his weeks twenty-minutes south of their home town, working a full-time apprenticeship in a tattoo parlour called Skin & Bones on the Coolah Heads coastline.
She is able to easily sell him on the idea of her apartment abode, despite his worries about the extra distance. They are practically buzzing with excitement, now that they are working together to figure out a new routine that suits them both. Ducky’s biggest concern is finding a job to maintain her new living arrangement and Logan’s is trying to keep up with the wit and banter of his hilarious new workmates.
After Orientation Week, Ducky decides to join Logan on a night out — one last hurrah before her first semester of uni — when pure evil knocks their perfect life off its course. Ducky clammers to struggle through this tragedy on her own, while Logan is left to figure out what he can do to do to make things go back to how they were.
After too many lies and secrets our duo are torn apart and forced to go their separate ways.
Fated lovers will always find a way back to each other, but what if the cruel incident that went down that night is still too much for them to move past, even after all these months? What if the torment and anguish and pain they have both been suffering has merely marinated into a thicker loathing and danger, after all this time?
EXTRA DETAILS…
This whole book is just one big 😩 emoji for me. As confronting as it was to write (and will most likely be to read), I felt the need to push through and get it done. The things that happen in this book are unfortunately all too real and happen in real life way more than we’d like to admit to ourselves. I had some very deep discussions with my husband during the writing process about what was going on with my characters and, in the end, Logan’s reactions ended up being based heavily on the hypotheticals that came up in these conversations.
The devastating effects that are caused by the trauma in this story are what certain people close to me have personally gone through and I tried to do this justice in the plot. A few friends, who were able to read Ends & Starts pre-publication, admitted they felt that the way Logan reacted in this book was a little far fetched. They humoured me and asked their partners the same hypothetical questions I’d put to Jarrod, and (to my author-brain’s relief) the partners said they would have responded to the scenarios in the exact same way our bratty boy, Logie did.
I have no doubt that Ends & Starts will be a hard, heavy read for the majority of my audience, but I also have hope that someone who may relate to this story — either from what Logan has to deal with, what Ducky goes through, or even how Oliver and Claire are effected by it — finds comfort in knowing that there are options available to recover 🤍 I’m also praying that it may bring about some awareness on these topics and issues in younger readers.
WHY YOU’LL LIKE IT…
In case you’re still reading and I haven’t scared you off with the sad and depressing plot, I want you to know that this is my favourite work that I’ve written so far.
“But, Kit, it’s only your second book.” You fool! I have about ten works on the go, remember?
Firsts & Lasts is forever my baby and I have some really fun titles underway on my Google drive, but Ends & Starts is my absolute favourite book to date. As painful as it is at times, with its miscommunications that will have you jumping teams with each POV change, it also has some of that gorgeous Logan & Ducky romance that I carried across from the first book, as well as the classic banter to make you smile.
I really hope you get the chance to give it a read. If you’ve read it already, I would love to hear your thoughts on it, and if that last chapter made you cry as much as I did each time I did a round of edits, please also let me know 🥲
All my love and thanks for your support!
Kit Hindmarsh x
