WHEN THE HEART LIES by Christina North-a review

AVAILABLE AT : Amazon

ABOUT THE BOOK from Goodreads: Released January 15, 2013

The biggest secrets have a habit of catching up with you…

Romance novelist Kinsley Wentworth has a knack for approaching life as if she was a character in one of her novels. Kinsley is desperately in need of love, the one thing missing from her marriage.

Bad decisions can have terrifying consequences…

After a failed attempt at reconciliation with her estranged husband Nick, Kinsley meets Wayde online, while he’s allegedly searching for her missing brother, and they develop a friendship. Wayde convinces Kinsley that he will help her find her estranged brother if she moves to Florida with her young son, but Kinsley soon finds herself trapped in an abusive and potentially life-threatening situation.

A knight in shining armor…

Unknown to Kinsley, she is not totally alone; she has a protector. Jackson, a private investigator hired to watch over her and her son, is always close at hand. A little too close, Jackson is falling for a woman in a hopeless situation.

A fairy-tale happily ever after?

Kinsley is convinced she can forgo her own need for love to provide her son with a traditional family. But Jackson is determined to give Kinsley the space and time she needs, confident she will figure out that he is the reality she has been looking for all along.

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REVIEW: WHEN THE HEART LIES is not your typical romance novel. If anything, it is a contemporary suspense novel with a little bit of romance and a little bit of sex and a whole lot of betrayal, revenge and heartbreaking pain.

When The Heart Lies is a study in bad family dynamics-the Wentworth family take the title of dysfunctional family to a whole other dimension. Stuck in a loveless marriage to a man who continues to drink and womanize, Kinsley Wentworth searches for a way out-but she soon finds herself a virtual prisoner to an abusive man she met on the internet. And to complicate matters, she has taken her young son with her hoping for a fresh start and a new beginning.

As the storyline develops we uncover the many sides of Kinsley Wentworth-a woman who wants desperately to be loved but finds a different kind of love in all of the wrong places. Kinsley is a woman familiar to many people but at the same time, we would probably throw our hands in the air and give up trying to help. Placing herself into a situation that risks both her life and her son’s forces a close family member to hire a private investigator to keep an eye out for her safety. But all too soon, Kinsley will begin to fall in love with the man sent to guard and protect her from her own life choices. And the reality of her situation worsens when she becomes a prisoner in a war of blackmail and revenge.

WHEN THE HEART LIES is a well-written, heartbreaking, introspective and suspense filled storyline that will have many readers angry at some of the choices our heroine makes. It was difficult at times to watch as she placed her young son in jeopardy by refusing to get help when every means available to her were at her disposal. She could almost be diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder with her feelings of emptiness, impulsiveness and attempts at self-injury. We watch as Kinsley struggles to accept that her relationship with her husband is not built on love or trust, yet she continues to flail in her current emotionally abusive and highly dangerous situation without so much as attempting to ask for help from the people she meets in the small Florida town.

My only complaint-the first half of the story was slow. So slow that at times I considered not finishing the novel. But this is where the build up of Kinsley’s current situation began to take hold. At times I wondered why and how but in the end, everything will be explained and the agonizing revelations and truths –although I guessed earlier on in the story about each and everyone- are surprising and not without some head shaking and heart breaking pain. WHEN THE HEART LIES is an amazing debut novel by Christina North.It was well worth the struggle in the first half of the book.

Copy supplied by the author.

Reviewed by Sandy