"Love at First Sight - And a Ghost Too!"
The day before she was to leave for home in Toronto,
Canada, Sally Carter skipped the last walk of her Wales
Walking vacation to sit and have a coffee at the Celtic
Café. There her attention was drawn to a beautiful young
woman dressed in a Victorian era outfit sitting by the
window, crying over what looked to be a hand-written
diary. When she questioned the waitress who stopped by her
table, the waitress was adamant the window table had been
vacant all morning. Leaving the café Sally again saw her
mysterious lady and raced after her until she simply
vanished. Not wanting to waste the last moments of her holiday, Sally
entered a museum and saw her mysterious lady, only the
young woman was in a photograph dated 1896 and her name was
Isabelle Linden. Intrigued Sally wanted to discover more
of this woman and was directed to contact a local authority
on the Linden family - Professor Dan Conway who convinced
her to extend her holiday to do a bit of sleuthing and for
him to convince her of his love. *** I was immediately drawn in by the book summary with the
image of a Victorian lady weeping over a diary — an image
only seen by the heroine of the story. Seeing as how this
was a contemporary setting, I was overjoyed to think -- ah,
a ghost story. Well, it does have something of a haunting,
and the puzzle of who the shade was and why it appeared to
Sally is part of the fun and something I am not about to
reveal. Now as to the very steamy part of the romance in the story,
I can only say for those who believe in "Love at First
Sight" (and who doesn't want to) this gem by Anita Birt is
definitely a treat. While I didn't quite get a 'feel' for
Sally, other than her fear of being hurt again after being
dumped by her husband of twenty-two years, Dan's character
definitely came across as so hot, I would have been
thrilled to be the object of his intentions and attention. This was a short story at 121 pages, and paced very well,
and while I might have wished for a bit more of the
paranormal element to have been brought more to the
forefront, the steaminess of the romance clearly made up
for it. All in all, I found it a pleasant read and loved
the vivid imagery of the various locales and sights to see
in Wales.
Reviewed by Marilyn Rondeau
Posted February 15, 2008
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