DO YOU BELIEVE?

Author: Ann Lawrence ISBN: 0765348888 5/2005 PARANORMAL/MYSTERY Publisher: TOR

Do You Believe in Evil? Rose Early is searching for her missing sister Joan. The only clue she has is a horror novel with her sister's notes in the margins. The author of the book lives only a few minutes away and Rose can't resist seeking him out. She understands why his book affected her sister: the author creates an evil so palpable it shakes even skeptical Rose. Vic Drummond, the writer, knew Rose's sister, and agrees to help Rose find her; Rose expected him to be reclusive and strange, but she didn't expect him to be quite so . . . attractive. As their search intensifies, Rose finds herself inexorably drawn to Vic, but it seems to Rose that their feelings for each other are being influenced by some outside force-she knows love at first sight doesn't exist. As they come closer to finding Joan, Rose and Vic journey from the local church to a mysterious sex club whose members dress in demon costumes. The more they learn about what Joan was doing in the days before her disappearance, the more questions they have, until Rose must decide: Does she believe in real evil? And does she believe in real love?

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

The concept of good and evil is always lamented by church goers and atheists, alike. I guess you don't have to be religious to believe in either. But what if the evil is within the church? That sacred place where people turn to for protection from evil. Where supposedly evil cannot enter. Ann Lawrence takes readers on that journey of thought in DO YOU BELIEVE?, and while she is at it, delivers quite a romance.

You should know this is a complex read. Not in the text or descriptions, but between the lines. I don't know if that is the author's intent or just my imagination kicking into overdrive, but I find good and evil in just about everything that is happening in the story. On nearly every page, and most certainly in every chapter. In the romance, there is the little matter of the fact the hero once bedded the heroine's sister. But in his defense, so did everyone else. There is corruption within the church building itself, within the attendees, and within the clergy. It's within the library, the cottage tourist traps, etc. Basically, if you look hard enough, you will find much more to the story than what is displayed on the surface. I love that!

And the sex? Wow! Very intense, pretty graphic, yet tasteful enough because you sense the characters are falling in love, yet are not exactly guided by that emotion. It is more like they are led by one or more of the seven deadly sins. Love fights for them, though, and that keeps them from falling into the trap some others have in their neck of the woods.

What a great book to get you thinking about everything you think you know about good and evil. Where it's found, how it's not as black and white as it seems, but mostly, how both exist in everyone.

Shannon Johnson