"The pages will burn you!"

Anne Stuart is one of my favorite writers. I grew up in a family of alpha males so I rather have a soft spot for them, and no one creates the Alpha/Gamma rogue better than Anne Stuart. Whether in shorter series romance, dark & sexy contemporaries, paranormals or mysterious historicals, she creates some of the most vivid "bad boys with black souls and even blacker hearts" that set off females flight or fight response, that clang the alarms for us to run as fast as we can to some safe harbor, but yet they draw us against will like a month to a flame. Don't think there is anyone better at conjuring up the sexy, steamy dark magic and she is in peak form in MOONRISE, my all time favorite of Stuarts. It is a keeper, one I have read several times and will read again... it's just that good.

Protected and sheltered Annie Sutherland is fast finding out her life was built on nothing but a tissue of lies. Her manipulating, driven father has just been murdered and she is scared and running for her life, for answers to the question of who murdered him. He was the former head of a CIA elite hit squad (though she does not know these as her question begins). He always told Annie, if anything happened to him to seek out James McKinley.

Annie does not have an easy time following her father's instructions, because James has dropped out of site. With much trouble, she tracks him down to an isle off Florida and the welcome is not one for which she would have hoped. At the back of her mind, Annie remembers only too well, her sexual attraction for James, the dark, tight-lipped 'pet' of her father. He was always neat, trim and oh so perfect. What she finds in Florida is a man she hardly recognizes. He is unshaved, drunk and scarily bordering on paranoia. He is hiding out expected "them" to come for him and execute him as they did Annie's father. He is a man haunted by demons, but are they all in his mind? Gone is the conservative bureaucrat and in his place is the tortured fugitive. Suddenly the Texas accent James had always carried is laced heavily with an Irish Brogue, hinting this man and his dark past hold many secrets.

Nearly immediately, Annie and James running for their lives. Thrown together on a trek that leads them to Ireland and then back to the State, they hide out by crossing the US in a RV. Annie knows her only hope is to trust James. But can she? There are too many lies, secrets and half-truths between them, and secrets still driving James. Annie starts to see her father was not the man she believed, and that he used her, manipulated her right down to choosing the man to whom she was once married. Her ex-husband offers to help Annie and James, but can she trust him any more than she can trust James?

As with all Stuart's writings, the sexual tension and steamy love scenes burn up the pages. She provokes you to walk on the dark side with a man who has sold his soul, a killer...to step in Annie's shoes and realize how drawn she is to James despite all the misgivings, despite dirty secrets she learns. Slowly, Annie begins to realize she cannot trust James. Though her lover, James might also be the man assigned to kill her.

Stuart crafted a knock out of a book that should not be missed. MOONRISE is a book that will not leave you when you put it down. It's haunting, spun with a power and force few writers ever achieve. And to prove it is not a fluke, read NIGHTFALL and RITUAL SINS.

Reviewed by DeborahAnne MacGillivray
Posted March 31, 2003