Dinah McCall also writes under the name Sharon Sala. I’ve enjoyed many of her books under both names, so I was looking forward to this one. The set up for the plot of this book was intriguing, but I could never warm up to the relationship between the hero and heroine, and certain plot elements seemed weak, unnecessary and implausible.

Ginny Shapiro and six other little girls (why were they all girls?) were part of a hypnosis experiment while they were first graders. No one except the school principal and Emile Karnoff, the man in charge of the experiment, was aware of the situation. When the school burned down, all the girls went their separate ways, and no one bothered to follow up with the children.

Fast forward to the present time. All those girls have grown up and have seemingly normal lives, except that – one by one – they receive phone calls and whatever is said to them drives them to commit suicide. Ginny’s close friend Georgia, who was also a part of the experiment, starts receiving letters from the families of her former classmates, and finds the information horrifying and disturbing. She tells Sullivan Dean, an FBI agent, and also attempts to warn her friend Ginny. Sadly, Georgia does not receive help before her own time comes.

Sully knows that Georgia could not have killed herself, and begins investigating the situation on his own. When he realizes there is only one person left, he races to track her down. Ginny has finally received Georgia’s warning, and left town for her own safety. Sully becomes captivated with a picture of Ginny when he enters her apartment looking for her.

It doesn’t take Sully long to track Ginny down, and he stays with her for her own protection while another FBI agent is assigned to the case. Through a series of unbelievable and unnecessary traumatic events, Ginny and Sully fall in love very quickly. In a matter of days, in fact.

Amongst all of the trauma surrounding Ginny and Sully, the reader is treated to a subplot involving Emile, the hypnotist, and his dysfunctional son and wife. I kept wondering about why the author spent so much time with these characters, when at least half of this subplot was completely unnecessary. To say which part would definitely constitute a spoiler, but I can say that the choice of villains is limited, and the final unmasking and reason behind the deaths was not a sufficient or satisfactory explanation for me. I still want to know more about the why.

Ginny spends much of the book riding the edge of hysteria and falling to pieces. For a journalist, a profession I think would have high amounts of stress where one is required to have a thick skin, she certainly seemed extremely fragile. Sully spends most of his time feeling guilty for not having protected her adequately. I never felt like I got to know either one of them, and therefore did not connect with their relationship. The hysteria and frantic pacing seemed a tad excessive to me when the main threat to Ginny is from a phone call, and there was no evidence that the villain was actively following her around.

I wanted to like this book more than I did, since I have enjoyed other books by this author. But neither the romance or the suspense worked for me. My suggestion would be to try something else from this author’s extensive backlist, like the Desert Island Keeper Jackson Rule.