ISBN: 0778320243
Publisher: MIRA Books
Release Date: Feb 2004
List Price: $6.50

Reviewed by Terri Richison

A

great story! Karen delivers a compelling plot that will touch the heart of any parent with a child in a sports program. Her characters quickly became like family members to me.

When Rachel Forrester’s husband of seventeen years flakes out on her and their two children, she must pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. And since hubby fell for a pair of fake boobs -- that just happened to be attached to his partner’s wife -- their financial security goes down the tube and Rachel and children are forced to move in with Rachel’s mom.

Unfortunately, Mom’s hunky, next-door-neighbor is the last person in the world Rachel would choose as a neighbor.

A high school counselor, Rachel has struggled for five years to come to terms with the suicide of a patient. She worries over her inability to help the young man; what did she miss? Why hadn’t she recognized the signs that he was suicidal? Why hadn’t she saved him?

The boy’s father, Cameron Ford, is her new next-door neighbor, and he has made it no secret that he blames Rachel for the death of his son.

Rachel’s children seem drawn to Mr. Ford and forge a friendship with ‘Cam’ in spite of her instructions to stay away from him. She worries about Cameron’s motivation in the developing relationships; his son had been fifteen when he died, the same age as her son. Both boys’ parents had divorced when they were fifteen. Both boys had been promising athletes. Both had received special attention from the high school coach -- attention that almost guaranteed sports scholarships.

Both boys’ grades dropped. They became surly and withdrawn. Was there more going on than the obvious – something other than hormones, divorce and moving away from the only homes they had ever known?

Will Rachel’s professional inability lead to the death of another child -- this time her own son?

Or, is the problem external? Maybe buried deep within the secrets of the sports program at the high school: secrets that may threaten the life of both her children. Her nine-year old daughter disappears from her bed and her son vanishes from a baseball game.

Her children are missing, yet no one saw anything happen!

Don’t miss this book -– Karen delivers a splendid story!

Terri Richison writes women's fiction and is pursing a goal of publication with Silhouette Intimate Moments. Telling stories is a life long passion that started when she was a little girl, listening spellbound to the wonderful stories told by her Grandmother, who walked behind a covered wagon from Tennessee to Texas, encountering Indians and other hardships along the trail. Terri works part-time for a small law firm and is a full time slave to her one-hundred pound Lab and two fourteen-year-old Shelties. She has been happily married for over thirty years to her real-life hero, a man who shows her everyday that romance is alive and well.