Somnium - Keri Lake: A review

A work assignment in Kittery, Maine should be routine for Allie Lynch; nothing more than to prove herself as a brilliant engineer. Instead she finds herself torn between two men: a gorgeous military guard, Colton Briggs, and her devilishly handsome colleague, Drew Costa. To resist temptation, Allie does the only thing she can: she throws herself into her work.

But fate has other plans for Allie. Women are going missing all around her, Allie is struck with a series of life-threatening mishaps, and she becomes the obsession of a local deranged psychopath.

Thrust into a dark world that she can hardly fathom, Allie must fight for her very survival, open her mind to new realities – and open her heart to the possibility of love. Because both of these men are trouble – but one is a greater danger than she could ever imagine …

I fell for this book. Hard. 

Maybe it's because of my own personal situation, maybe it was inevitable, I don't know and I do not care. I fell in love with this book the way a smoker inhales his first puff of the morning. Okay, so maybe it's more an addiction than true love, but the passion is the same. 

I was caught in the very first chapter by the suspense the author immediately works in. As the mystery built up, though, it was the emotions of the main character, Allie Lynch, that really kept me reading. For one thing, her reactions to her "real life" moments were hilarious, charming and adorable. You know, those situations that would totally happen to someone in the real world, but that authors sometimes avoid writing about because it detracts from the dignity of their main characters? Keri has no fear - she bandied those situations about like they were more excerpts from a personal diary than fiction, and it really worked to make the main character likable and down to earth. 

Even more than Allie's...I don't want to say goofiness, but shall we say "blush-inducingness", was her emotions to the two main men in her life. The way Keri describes the leading males, and the feelings that pop up in Allie whenever one of the two, or both, are around, that's what really got me. To the point where I would fight in hair-pulling, nail-scratching hand-to-hand combat with Allie to get one of their attention. Um...yum! Keri's descriptions were impeccable. Skin-crawling, oil-feeling-in-the-stomach at times, and then a jump to words infused with such desire I was amazed my Kindle didn't melt. 

Keri went with the decision to self-publish, and I strongly feel she has proven a very valuable lesson of writing. It's not the publisher that makes the book, but the passion of the writer. The cover art is beautiful, the story even more so, and it is with bated breath that I wait for Requiem to be ready.