DEEPER

Author: Megan Hart ISBN: 9780373605323 7/2009 CONTEMORARY/PARANORMAL Publisher: SPICE

Some lovers never leave you... Twenty years ago she had her whole life spread out before her like a mesmerizing map. She was Bess Walsh, a fresh-scrubbed, middle-class student ready to conquer the design world. And she was taken. Absolutely and completely. But not by Andy, her well-groomed, intellectual boyfriend who hinted more than once about a ring. No. During that hot summer as a waitress and living on the beach, she met Nick, a dark haired, local bad boy. He was, to put it mildly, not someone she could take home to Daddy. Instead, Nick became her dirty little secret; a fervent sexual accomplice who knew how to ignite an all-consuming obsession she had no idea she carried deep within her. Bess had always wondered what happened to Nick after that summer, after their promise to meet again. And now, back at the beach house and taking a break from responsibility, from marriage, from life, she discovers his heartbreaking fate—and why he never came back for her. Suddenly Nick's name is on her lips...his hands on her thighs...dark hair and eyes called back from the swirling gray of purgatory's depths. Dead, alive, or something in-between, they can't stop their hunger. She wouldn't dare.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

DEEPER is absolutely, positively, the best book that I have read in ages! I cannot say enough about this book. The writing is fabulous, the character's chemistry is combustible, and the storyline brought tears to my eyes more than once.

Bess Walsh is home again. Twenty years after she last stepped foot on the sand, Bess returns to the seaside town where she first fell in love. It's not that Nick was necessarily Bess's first love… it is that he was the first boy that she loved with such passion and irreverence. He was a bad boy who made her feel everything a good girl shouldn't, and when she leaves, she never dreams that Nick will disappear. Bess hasn't necessarily come back looking for Nick, but when she finds that he has been gone since that summer so long ago, something happens inside of Bess. Suddenly, it becomes all about Nick, this little adventure to try and right her life after her failed marriage. She needs the wind and the waves—and Nick—to make it all okay again.

But, Nick isn't there, and Bess's heart is broken once again. But then she goes to the beach, the place where they made love as silly, lovesick teenagers, and all of a sudden Nick is there with her again... a gift given to her from the sea. But maybe one of the most important lessons that a person can learn is that we can't go back; life can't play in reverse.

I am not ashamed to admit that I cried real tears while reading this book. Beautiful, poignant, and bittersweet, this book tells itself like a movie that is told on two screens—"then" and "now". I felt everything Bess was feeling; for a moment in time I was that love-struck teenager trying to understand what was going on in my life. Nick was my love and this was MY book. That's how strongly this book spoke to me. Megan Hart never disappoints me, but with DEEPER she went above and beyond. Fans of Megan Hart's books will never be sorry if they run right out and purchase this book the day it is published. As a matter of fact, that is exactly my recommendation for this book.

Kristal Gorman