Dr. Sheila Tao is a psychology professor at Puget Sound State University, and Ethan Wolfe is one of her students and teaching assistants. For the past three months (and change), they have been sleeping together, but Sheila tells Ethan that things must stop because she has become engaged. She further suggests that he switch to a different adviser. This enrages Ethan -- how dare Sheila dump him? How dare she treat him like this? He threatens to release a sexually explicit video the two of them made together, until Sheila agrees to keep him under her purview.

However, Ethan isn't satisfied. In his off-time, he begins investigating Morris, Sheila's fiancé. He goes to Morris' business, posing as a potential interviewee, in an elaborate disguise, in an attempt to gather information on who he perceives to be his competition. After that, Ethan begins following Sheila, all to gain more information about her in order to carry out the master plan -- kidnapping her. He does this after one of her Sex Addict Anonymous meetings.

Although she has been with Morris for quite awhile, she has only recently disclosed her addiction to him. When she does so, she also comes clean about her affair with Ethan. On the heels of her admission, Morris is no longer that he can marry her. They decide to meet for lunch before the final pre-wedding meeting with the wedding planner, but Sheila never shows up. Through a series of events, Morris eventually reports her as missing. The police won't investigate, so Morris hires a private investigator. And in the meantime, Sheila is being held captive by a man who seemingly has no conscience.

This book grabbed my attention on the first page and it never let go. There were some parts where I couldn't turn the page quickly enough, as I raced to find out Sheila's fate or to find out what Ethan was up to next. A good thriller is hard to come by, because the author has to be careful not to make things melodramatic. The bad guy has to be bad yet not a caricature, and the victim has to be sympathetic, yet not pathetic. Ms. Hillier did an excellent job with this task, and I look forward to reading more of her work.

Book Summary

Dr. Sheila Tao is a professor of psychology. An expert in human behaviour. And when she began an affair with sexy, charming graduate student Ethan Wolfe, she knew she was playing with fire. Consumed by lust when they were together, desolate and depressed when they weren't, she realizes the three-month fling with her teaching assistant has to end. After all, she's engaged to a kind and loving investment banker who adores her, and her life is about to change for the better. But when she attempts to cut the affair dead in its tracks, Ethan Wolfe won't let her walk away.

Ethan has plans for Sheila, plans that involve posting a sex tape that would surely get her fired and destroy her prestigious career. Plans to make her pay for rejecting him. And as she attempts to counter his every threatening move without her colleagues or her fiancé discovering her most intimate secrets, a shattering crime rocks Puget Sound State University: a female student, a star athlete, is found stabbed to death. Someone is raising the stakes of violence, sex and blackmail...and before she knows it, Sheila is caught in a terrifying cat-and-mouse game with the lover she couldn't resist — who is now the monster who won't let her go.

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