DANCING WITH FIRE

Author: Susan Kearney ISBN: 9780765358455 7/2008 SUSPENSE Publisher: TOR

Accident or Murder? Dance instructor Kaylin Danner has sacrificed her opportunity on Broadway to help her father raise her younger sisters in Florida. When her father's laboratory blows sky high and his priceless formula for a revolutionary new fuel disappears, Kaylin is left with nothing but her father's business partner Sawyer Scott and a cache of deadly trouble. Life or Death? When the Danner home is vandalized and her sisters threatened, Sawyer and Kaylin team up to unmask the killer terrorizing her family. Sawyer's bent on pursuing both Kaylin and the missing formula, but Kaylin fights the attraction, believing Sawyer's a dreamer like her father-and in her experience dreamers end up dead.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Susan Kearney's DANCING WITH FIRE slips into supercharged mode with an explosive start, maintains the smooth intensity throughout with one deadly incident after another before sliding to a terrific ending.

With a speed-of-lightening flow and an extremely appealing romantic couple, DANCING WITH FIRE is quite a charmer. The love dance between Kaylin Danner and gorgeous scientist/nerd Sawyer Scott begins as a simmer but roars into a blaze as their attraction develops. This pair's chemistry is one of the highlights of this novel... a good thing Ms. Kearney gives this couple lots of time together.

Despite the maybe suspicious death of Kaylin's father at the beginning and the other dangerous happenings, the mood of DANCING WITH FIRE is not somber, at least not entirely. In fact, whether Ms. Kearney intended to or not, this story is full of humor. Kaylin insists, for example, on investigating her father's death because as a devotee of TV crime shows she thinks she knows what she's doing. With Sawyer helping, these two amateur investigators stumble and bumble their way into some crazy situations.

With plenty of twisty turns, pulsing action and some interesting secondary characters added to the relentless suspense and two great leads, DANCING WITH FIRE is highly recommended.

Debbie Jett