Sleep No More

Susan Crandall

Abby Whitman was a sleepwalker as a child. The worst was when the lamp got knocked over and the house burned down, leaving her younger sister with terrible facial scars. The sleepwalking went away for many years. Still, to her the night is an enemy. She'll sleep during the day and create her flower arrangements for her business at night. Now her sleepwalking has returned.

Jason Coble is a local psychiatrist in their small Georgia town. His son and daughter are the most important part of his life. His ex-wife is a dry alcoholic and he knows she could slip back any time. When he meets Abby he feels an immediate attraction. She won't let herself get close to anyone. She hopes he can help with her father, who she believes is developing Alzheimer's.

One night Abby wakes up in her florist van crashed in the river. Her side window is broken out. When she gets out and struggles up to the road, the police are coming. She sees the motorcyclist dead in the road. Was she sleep driving? Did she hit him? She can't remember. But someone had used the young man's cell phone to call 911. She tells the truth - she can't remember what happened from the time she headed home earlier that evening. Now she's frightened that she's hurt another person with her sleepwalking activities.

Now someone is trying to attack and frighten her. Someone breaks into her home and leaves her a message. She keeps seeing a car and wonders if it is tailing her. It soon becomes apparent that someone is trying to frighten her or worse. And she has to deal with the flowers for the killed motorcyclist's funeral. Jason wants to protect her and help her discover the truth. Abby wants to reject him because no one around her is safe.

Sleep No More is well crafted romantic suspense. Susan Crandall has written a believable novel that is a thriller but not a chiller. She develops her characters naturally, bringing in their past and show how it affects their present, even when twined in with the new events from the present. Abby and Jason have family problems as well as the suspense story. Crandall brings them together to build the characters.

This is a good read when you're in the mood for romantic suspense that's mostly suspense with the romance on the side.

Notice:  Suggestive dialogue or situations

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