"Gothic at its finest!"

I must say that Evelyn Rogers has got the gothic flavor in her books down to a science! That must be the reason why I enjoy them so very much! This one is just exceptional! It has all the delicious spine tingling elements that make a gothic so compelling!

This is the story of MaKenna Lindsay. She mistakenly fell in love with the wrong man who then proceeded to dump her for a wealthier more beautiful woman. She runs away to a cottage by Carnal Cove called Elysium. She found the deed in her mother's things after her mother's death.

Strange things happen while MaKenna walks on the beach or even while she is in her cottage. Not only that, but she meets a mysterious man named Nicholas Saintjohn, an ex- sea captain who lives in the big house on the cliff. He is very angry to find her there and tells her to go away! When MaKenna sees a ghost walking on the beach, she thinks she's really lost her mind. What does this all mean?

When Nicholas asks MaKenna to instruct his six year old son to play the piano and study art, she at first refuses but then has a change of heart and decides that she needs to solve the mystery of this man and his solemn son. Her biggest problem is will she lose her heart to both of these damaged souls?

This is the gothic genre at its very best. It is my fervent hope that Evelyn Rogers will keep writing these page turning gothics for years to come.

Reviewed by Kathy Boswell
Posted December 7, 2002

Summary

"I am a man without conscience," claims the dark stranger who accosts her amid the pounding surf and tearing winds of Carnal Cove. Taunting her with legends of the place, Captain Saintjohn accuses her of being a seductress herself. Little does he know that Makenna Lindsay has come to the isolated Isle of Wight to escape just such temptations. But her troubled mind seems to conjure equally disturbing hallucinations at every turn: the piteous crying of an abandoned child, the silvery figure of a ghostly woman in white. But is her enemy her own imagination or the all-too-tempting promise of passion with a lover as wild and remorseless as the sea itself?