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TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU
by Lauren Kelly
Ecco, April 2004
240 pages
$22.95
ISBN: 0060565519


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Intellectual and distant Lara Quade receives an anonymous and pricey concert ticket in the mail and she's intrigued to think that she might be the interest of a romantic, wealthy stranger. But her seatmate turns out to be a poor, but strangely familiar young drifter who introduces himself as Zedrick Dewe and says he also got the ticket anonymously. There's something magnetic and dangerous about the young man and, without understanding why, Lara permits him to accompany her to her home where he roughs her up and steals the only thing she had left of her father who had died many years ago.

Lara decides that she can't permit the young man to get away with what he did to her, but before she can track him down her boss at the Institute for Semiotics, Aesthetics and Cultural Research at Princeton, where she works as a research fellow, is beaten to within an inch of his life and Lara receives her boss's tie in the mail. Is it a warning?

Though she senses that Zedrick Dewe is more dangerous to her physical and mental safety than she can imagine, she can't help but go after him.

Cutting back and forth over 20 years, mentally and physically scarred Lara is caught in memories of her past. Born Lorraine Quade, she grew up with a father who abandoned her family and who ultimately wound up in prison for murder, with a broken brother, and with an alcoholic mother who tried to kill all of them when she couldn't stand her life.

Fully a psychological novel, dwelling and delving into Laura's horrible past, there isn't really much suspense in this story. Anyone who has spent any time reading mysteries knows what happened by the broad clues that are thrown at the readers, but the way that the book is written, the unusual and intense characters created and intensely-built circumstances make this an engrossing and morally unsettling read.

The book jacket says that Laura Kelly, the author, is a pseudonym of a best-selling and award-winning writer. The craftsmanship with which this story is told backs that statement up. Beautiful and isolated, equally self-destructive and fearful, Laura Kelly has crafted a realistic and complex protagonist in TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU.

The conclusion of TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU left me actually gasping with surprise. It's a fast read, but the memories of it will stick with you for a long time after you set it down.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, June 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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