Julia is a bookseller in New Orleans surrounded by her first editions, employee Jacob and a sister who works part time. She has received six threatening letters. These letters have a sinister overtone all dealing with Biblical references to evil needing to be punished by death. On the face of it Julia should have nothing to fear. However, Julia has written a popular novel of erotica under a pseudonym. Although her sister knows, Julia has not confessed all to her father since he is running for the highest position in his church, and she believes public knowledge of her authorship would harm his candidacy.

Julia and John had met in high school day when he was the bad boy and she was the young smitten teenager. John realizes she does have something to worry about and half-heartedly agrees to look at her security system, which is fairly substandard. While checking out her apartment over the bookstore, the stalker enters below and leaves a nasty message to scare Julia. The message is lifted from her book, so now Julia has to confide all to John.

The prior threatening letters topped off by the revelation that the stalker is focused on her book now narrows the field to someone who has discovered she is the author.

Three types of tension drive the book forward. The suspense and mystery of the identity of the escalating stalker is pitched against John’s drift toward alcoholism, both set against the inevitable sexual attraction between John and Julia.

The principal characters although predictable are fairly well developed, however the secondary ones are fairly shallow. The dialogue is also predictable.

Castillo does a good job with the sense of immediacy in the growing threat to Julia’s life. John’s battle with alcohol is centered on his angst and is retread often.

The romance between Julia and John catches fire quickly. Castillo is a good tight writer, maintaining tensions and credibility well. However, in the romantic suspense genre, there is not much new with this plot expect perhaps the addition of the battle with alcoholism.

--Thea Davis