"powerful tour de force thriller"

Katherine Lawrence feels as if she is in the middle of a draconian nightmare as thugs, spooks or terrorists break into the house where she is living that belongs to her lover Ed Barnes, the deputy director of operations for the CIA. They tie her and her friend Lisa up and they torture Katherine trying to get her to tell them where the safe in the house is. She never knew Ed has a safe but they don't believe her but Katherine manages to get her mouth free of the tape so she can scream.

Her next door neighbor Don scares them off and takes her to the hospital where she feels like she knew him in another life. She also thinks she is losing her mind because when she looks in the mirror it isn't the face she remembers and when she takes a shower it isn't the body she remembers. For some reason she is afraid of Ed and with the help of Dan she loses the two agents he has guarding her. Ed soon picks up her track and when he finally gets his hands on her she feels she like she is living in the middle of a Hitchcock movie.

Readers will love OBSESSION, a stunning and powerful tour de force thriller. Katherine doesn't know what is real and what is a figment of her imagination but she has clues that all is not right. Her rings are loose, her clothes are not comfortable and the tiles where her head bashed the kitchen floor seem to have shrunk. Readers will eagerly wait to find out what is happened to the vulnerable and frightened Katherine. Karen Robards proves once again she is a stupendous storyteller.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted May 27, 2007

Summary

A woman survives a horrific attempt on her life, only to feel like a stranger in her own home, in the electrifying new novel from New York Times-bestselling author Karen Robards.

The house is all wrong. Her clothes are all wrong. When Katharine Lawrence recovers consciousness on the kitchen floor, staggers to her feet and looks at herself in the mirror, the beautiful face staring back at her is familiar—but wrong. Despite all the evidence—her pictures are all over the apartment, the clothes in the closets are the right size, and it's her hair caught in the brush atop the dresser—everything feels wrong.

Maybe the trauma of the attempt on her life has given her some kind of amnesia. She's twenty-nine, the special assistant to the head of the National Security Agency, and she's lucky to be alive. She also knows she can trust no one.

Before she can act on her instincts and run for her life, CIA Agent Nick Huston arrives on the scene. The CIA is conducting a special investigation of Katharine's boss, and the mystified woman in her "unreal" house is the key to the operation. But the real Katharine Lawrence has been whisked away for debriefing, and this expendable lookalike, Jenna Hill, is being used until the CIA gets the information it needs. But no one counted on Jenna Hill's outrage at being used. And no one—least of all Nick—could have anticipated the heat that flares between them as the game plays on.