"Wild, steamy ride into the Florida Everglades"

On a day seemingly like any other, Mala Bey is driving her car on Alligator Alley, a highway that cuts right through the Everglades. A stranger on a motorcycle passes her car and a connection is made. Mala is immediately attracted to the stranger, a man she has never before seen. When she sees his motorcycle slide off the highway and into the swampy forest, the connection between her mind and his begins. The stranger, whose name is Laird Jaeger, talks to and seduces Mala through her thoughts. Their passionate affair begins, even if he isn't there in the flesh to participate.

Laird is trapped in the swamp and his identity is slowly stripped away through mystical forces that are never fully unraveled. He is the savior of the Seminole people and his modern life slowly fades away almost as if it never existed, as if Laird Jaeger never existed. Instead he is Thunder.

At no point can THUNDER be confused for a romantic love story. It is a tale of passion, violence, crudity, domination, and obsession. Mala's life, actions, and future are controlled by her relationship with Thunder. Their connection is strange and complicated, but never explained, so that even at the end, the reader is left feeling confused and incomplete. Although their relationship is about domination, graphic sex, and even some humiliation, the author tried to inject love into the mix toward the end, which felt hollow, but was probably felt to be necessary to satisify readers. It did serve to alleviate the feeling that Maya was a very carnal nymphomaniac who would do anything for sexual satisfaction, and meant that she was actually in love with the object of her desire.

At fourteen chapters, THUNDER is fast-paced and intense. The reader's emotions are grabbed right from the start and the mystery surrounding Thunder and Mala keeps the attention through the last page.

Reviewed by Kelley Hartshorn
Posted October 20, 2002

Time travel.

Summary

A savage Florida storm brings them together. But before Mala Bey can respond to the challenge in Laird Jaeger's black eyes and muscular body, he's sucked into the Everglades. She fears for this shadow man's life and despairs of seeing him again, but that night, his essence, his power, reaches out to ensnare her... He seems to exist only in her sex-starved imagination, and yet his message is overpowering. He needs her as much as she does him. Only she can save him. Beset by equal amounts of fear and the need to feel him inside her, she begins a search that takes her into the past...toward her warrior mate.