If I Want You
by Rachel Brimble
When local journalist, Tori Peterson, fails to prevent a child abduction outside her niece’s school, her horror and guilt sparks a vow to do whatever it takes to get little Abby Brady home to her parents.
While Tori battles the vile memories of her own kidnapping as a child, she accepts the help of widowed father, Mark Bolton. As he and Tori join forces with the local police, their attraction and intimacy grows…along with their fears for Abby.
Links are uncovered between Abby’s disappearance and Tori’s kidnapping, and Tori is forced to accept the monster who held her captive is back. But this time, Tori is all grown up, and there is no way she will let him hurt another little girl.
What the majority of people don’t know or understand, is that when a child’s taken from everything they know, their traumatized emotions soon bypass the initial fear and move onto a horrible acceptance that they might never be found. A soul destroying, deep-embedded realization that maybe their mum and dad don’t actually love them as the child thought… otherwise they would come and find them.
This was my first chance to read Rachel Brimble’s work and I plan to repeat the experience as often as possible as I found her narrative to be well-crafted, stimulating, and easy to follow. Ms. Brimble adroitly maintained the tension and suspense as I felt the urgency and turmoil within my own body that a missing child would invoke. The main characters were intriguing yet deeply damaged by past traumas. Tori proved more difficult for me to warm up to or appreciate, as she was extremely prickly, distrustful, snappish, driven, and obsessed to the point of arrogance. I empathized with the saintly and sexy Mark, and it is just hard for me to resist a sweet and thoughtful man who works with his hands. The storyline was interesting and engaging while Ms. Brimble’s writing was thoughtfully insightful, observantly detailed, occasionally steamy, and held my attention throughout.
When I’m not writing, you’ll find me with my head in a book or walking the beautiful English countryside with my family. And in the evening? Well, a well-deserved glass of wine is never, ever refused.
Rachel is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association and Romance Writers of America, and agent represented in the US .
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