Book Blurb Friday #8

It feels good to get back to blogging with Book Blurb Friday, hosted by Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing in the Buff! Each week, she posts a pretend book cover. The challenge is to write a blurb of 150 words or less to go with it. I really struggled with picking one quote this week...so finally settled on two.

And thank you so much to Sioux of Sioux's Page for the award! I hope to pass it along in the coming week along with Donna's "Sisters of the Quill" award, which I never got to pass along before my dog got sick.

Here's my Book Blurb Friday, at 139 words.

~Soul of Stone~

Annie thought she had married the sweetest man. But right after the wedding, it seemed as if her husband’s pleasant exterior crumbled. It wasn’t until much later that she realized appearances were all that mattered to this effigy of a human. Like a statue of Narcissus, the husband she had once loved knew only how to pose in order to manipulate others like chess pieces. Underneath it all, her husband was stone cold evil who never truly loved, but viewed others solely in terms of himself.

When she filed for divorce, Annie learned about the rest: the cheating, the tens of thousands of dollars he’d stolen outright, and always the lies he used to cover it all up. Yet again, he portrayed himself as the victim. She learned that divorcing a Narcissist means the worst is yet to come.

…most people are unsuspecting and are unaware of the degree to which they are being taken advantage of, used and abused. This unawareness is not due to a general lack of intelligence in people, but to their tendency to project their own range of normalcy onto others. Hence, their disinclination to suspect someone so profoundly depraved to be in their midst, carrying on an existence that is fundamentally and thoroughly alie (sic). But the character disordered conveniently regard this trait as evidence of intellectual inferiority and will take a twisted delight in the knowledge that they have so many fooled. ~Doug McManaman, “Narcissism and the Dynamics of Evil.”

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

An evil soul, preducing holy witness,

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,

A goodly apple rotten at the heart.

O, what a goodly outside a falsehood hath!” ~Shakespeare, Act one, Scene 3, Merchant of Venice