A contemporary story, paranormal style, with an alien king fighting to save his own people and protect earth, along with shapeshifters, time-travel, erased memories, flying spacecraft, mating cycles, a hidden base in the Teton mountains, and a plain little female geologist are a few of the elements that make up Parallel Attraction. It’s a lot to wrap your mind around in 295 pages of romance considering it is also the setup for Deidre Knight’s new Parallel series.

Kelsey Wells is a graduate geology student working in the Teton Mountains, an area that draws and fills her with a pervasive sense of melancholy she can never quite understand. After witnessing an aerial explosion of some sort as she stands on the shore of Mirror Lake one night, Kelsey watches a darting light travel over the water until it stops as it reaches her side. The light intensifies and changes into the image of a man who looks to be a soldier and somehow knows her name. Even though he is badly injured, Kelsey realizes that whatever he is has just pervaded her entire body and seems to have touched her very soul.

Although he is the king of Refaria, it is a title Jared Bennett does not want and tries to ignore. He prefers to be known as Commander of the Refarian rebellion on Earth where his people continue their long-term struggle against their enemy, the Antousians. Fighting and military strategies are all Jared has known since he was a young child and he refuses to give time or attention to anything other than the rebellion. He has never desired a lifemate, although the annoyingly persistent elders insist as the last of the royal line that he must bond and procreate, preferably to a mate of their choosing.

One night after a near fatal crash of his aircraft over Lake Mirror as he flees the enemy, Jared, fearing that the vital codes he holds within his body may fall into enemy hands, desperately bonds with a woman he is strongly drawn to standing on the shore. She doesn’t know that he left the all-important codes within her or that she is now critical to the Refarian cause, putting her in great danger. Jared can only surmise that the intense attraction he feels for the woman he has never met yet knows is Kelsey Wells is due to the temporary bond he has forced between them. At first I was rather confused by this aspect of the story and then realized I had missed two important pages before the prologue in which the Refarian lifebond and their sealing of souls is detailed. This explanation coupled with the fact that the opening pages feature Jared and Kelsey meeting at Mirror Lake at the ages of thirteen and fifteen will help the reader understand a portion of this confusing plot.

Despite the many directions the story seems to take, the dilemma of Jared and Kelsey’s suitability as a couple is the primary emphasis. From the time of their bonding, both know deep down they are meant to be together although Jared initially fights the attraction, arguing that it is only the bond at work. But retrieving the data from Kelsey quickly loses out to the spiritual and physical aspects of their bonding. With the war raging around them, Jared and Kelsey engage in a battle of their own – they are almost instantly in love yet spend a considerable amount of time waging a battle of words. Statements of love conflict with those of an offensive nature often on the same page and, when I look back, it is no surprise that it took me three attempts over a number of weeks to read past page 120.

A sudden change of events that occurs before the midpoint of the book was both surprising and very tender in turn. I was taken aback by an abrupt change of pace with so many new and rapidly developing aspects to the plot at this point, but as I forged ahead, I discovered one of the better segments of Parallel Attraction, even though it also represents a separation of the leads for approximately 100 pages. Basically the suspense/action portion of the book occurs during these middle pages that also provides more details on the bigger conflict I am sure will run throughout the series.

If you are interested in this book, you may want to check out Knight’s website, which offers an impressive presentation for the series, as well as interviews with each of the major characters. Scott and Thea, both significant secondary characters who are given ample space to detail their background within these pages, will each have their own book. However, these character setups as well as the introduction to the Refarian plight, did come at a cost and took away from the overall effectiveness of Parallel Attraction.

Jared and Kelsey’s face-to-face interaction was flat, sappy, and as a reader, I was privy to too many of their thoughts, which held up the action as well as made me wonder, “Now where were we?” By far, the most romantic moments occur during that 100 page separation when Jared and Kelsey can only communicate with their souls.

Besides being bombarded by plot elements and torn apart by an abrupt yet temporary change of action, I found I could not generate much interest in the fact that Jared and Kelsey are long lost lifemates and it all left me a little exhausted. Paying too big of a price as the first of a series, Parallel Attraction has failed to entice me to buy the next in the series.