"I read this book in three hours! It was that good!"

I am sorry to say that I avidly consumed this book in three hours. I simply could not put it down. I always feel guilty when I read a book this quickly because I know the author works long and hard to write a book but sometimes when a book is this good I cannot help myself.

Melanie Lynn Prescott has had numerous jobs since moving to New York. For the moment she's walking dogs when she runs into her ex-boyfriend Todd. Todd gives her a present of some sweet Givenchy shoes, knowing her passion for handbags and shoes. Surely he has an ulterior motive for this. When he tells her that he misses her and wants her back, Melanie is quite skeptical. Still as they are walking to the park with the dogs, a dark and dangerous looking man hands Melanie a manila envelope. Then he walks away. What is this all about? Not known for her patience, Melanie immediately opens the envelope and inside is a piece of paper with a coded message.

Melanie is shocked but she's also intrigued because she is really into cryptology being a math major with a minor in history. She even played this strange online game called Play.Survive.Win once where she could be an assassin, a protector or a target but she got bored with the puzzles when she figured most of them out fairly quickly.

Todd persists in his invitation so Melanie tells him she'll come over for dinner. When she gets there she tries to crack the code to the strange message while they eat but one thing leads to another and they wind up in bed. This infuriates Melanie who gets up in the middle of the night and sleeps in the bathtub. The next morning, she finds Todd dead with his brains splattered all over the bed. She panics and runs home where she finds a man waiting in her apartment. He tells her his name is Matthew Stryker and he's her protector.

This is just the beginning of this amazing adventure that keeps Melanie and Matthew one step ahead of her assassin throughout the entire book. Julie Kenner never fails to deliver an exciting read no matter what the subject!

Reviewed by Kathy Boswell
Posted July 10, 2005

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Summary

As if a recent break-up, scrounging for rent money, and lusting after designer shoes weren't enough to make graduate student Melanie Prescott's life challenging, suddenly she's practically living The DaVinci Code. A mysterious stranger is sending obscure codes and clues her way and she soon discovers she has to solve them in order to stay alive. With stakes like that, her dissertation on "the derivation and primary characteristics of codes and ciphers used by prevailing nations during wartime" is looking a little less important than it was yesterday. Right now she's just worrying about living to see tomorrow. The only bright spot in the whole freakish nightmare is Matthew Stryker, the six-foot tall dark and handsome stranger who's determined to protect her. Well, that and the millions of dollars that will be her reward if she survives this deadly game. And she'd better survive. Because that's a heck of a lot of money to be able to spend on shoes and handbags and sunglasses and dresses, and, well, it's hard to be fashionable when you're dead.