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Wow! Another month has come and gone and with it another reading challenge …. has been accomplished! WOOT!

Yes, I did complete my March challenge from Reading Romances! Just as an overview, participants made choices from the topics of reading a book whose author either has a three-word name or carries an official middle initial. OR…

We could choose from the themes of reading a book set in Scotland or with a Highlander character or a book with a medical theme, plot, cover , or setting.

OR… we could choose from the special events of March which is International Womens’ Month (so we could read a book that has a single female figure on the cover) as well as the Reading Romance’s Blogiversary (and we could choose a book that had been reviewed or featured at the blog)!

In case you don’t recall (and really why would you?) 😉  I chose the International Women’s Month theme and went with MIND READER  by Vicki Hinze! I’d also hoped to get to one of Karen Hawkins latest, but alas, life intervened (She’s on the to-be-read list for this weekend!)

The basic overview of Mind Reader: Caron Chalmers is an empath. A mind reader cursed with imaging only victims. She sees what they see, feels what they feel, endures what they endure and has since she was seven. But even with all the sensory perception and insights, sometimes she fails to save victims in time.

Sometimes she interprets the signs wrong—and a year ago, she did exactly that. She messed up and a victim died. Caron nearly died with her. Her “gift” shut down.

Now it’s back. There’s another victim—this time a child—and because of the mistake made last year and the shut-down, her police contact, though aware of her many successes, isn’t willing to stake his career on her. Yet he can’t dismiss her and calls in help from a private investigator, Parker Simms: a man with a past as bleak as Caron’s and a specific agenda of his own: proving Caron Chalmers is the fraud he believes her to be.

In a hostile alliance, Caron and Parker seek the truth . . . and discover a labrynth of lies and deceptions that require skills and experience they have and trust they don’t but must somehow find before the child becomes another victim lost. Yet trust never comes without costs, and some are too steep to pay. 

The situation grows desperate. Time for the child’s survival grows short . . . and for Caron and Parker, who must live with the consequences of missteps and wrong moves, the unthinkable happens: Stakes that couldn’t get any higher soar.

Well, let me assure you those stakes did keep amping up. Just when I thought it the situation (murderous characters or twisting emotions) couldn’t get worse, Hinze made sure they did. Which makes for a great thriller! This book intrigued me right away, but most importantly, it kept me engaged the whole way through. I appreciate what a ‘clean’ book this is, the author doesn’t lean on gratuitous sex or foul language to set a mood or scene, but I found myself hopefully anticipating the romance would work out between Caron and Parker as much as I was cheering them to catch the bad guys and unravel the terrible plot.

If you’re into romantic suspense, I bet you’ll enjoy Mind Reader!

Live the adventure!