It’s Romance Saturday here at Shiny Book Review! And as it also happens to be Valentine’s Day, what could be better than Aaron Paul Lazar’s suspenseful romance DEVIL’S LAKE?

I’ve deliberately held Lazar’s romance for Valentine’s Day precisely because it’s the best romantic suspense novel I’ve read in quite some time. Twenty-something Portia Lamont was abducted two years ago, and has finally broken free from her terrible captivity. Beaten, nearly broken, and dangerously thin, she gets in her captor’s truck and makes her way home to her parents’ Vermont horse farm.

Once there, she runs into Boone Hawke, a kind man she’s known since childhood, who’s been running her parents’ farm due to her mother’s cancer treatment in far-away New York City. As Portia can barely stand the sight of any man due to the nature of her captivity (let’s just say she was assaulted multiple times, sexually and otherwise, and be done with it), she nearly faints…but after Boone coaxes her to eat a little something, she does. She refuses to say anything about what happened to her…it’s all she can do to stand.

Boone decides the best thing to do is to allow Portia to get some rest. She does, and as she sleeps, Boone calls Portia’s parents and sister, Grace, to let them know Portia’s returned home — but is far from well.

Over time, Portia regains some of her old strength and health. Only then does she open up and tell Boone and the others that she thinks she killed her captor, a sociopath known only as Murphy, in her break for freedom. They hide the truck she’d driven up to the farm by driving it into the deep end of a lake; after that, Portia tells the Sheriff that she hitched from Wisconsin, where she’d been being held in a deserted, remote cabin — a lie, but Portia’s afraid that she’ll be hauled to jail if Murphy is dead.

Boone and Grace’s husband, Anderson, manage to figure out who Murphy is. He’s Charles C. Murphy from Baraboo, Wisconsin, an avid fisherman and former high school football star. They decide to leave for Wisconsin to try to find the cabin Portia’s told them about, and do so before Portia can get up to try to stop them. Once they get there, they find the cabin, exactly as Portia described it — but Murphy is long gone.

Not long after Boone and Anderson return to Vermont, they find a graffito spray-painted onto the family barn that indicates Murphy must be nearby. But worrying about Murphy isn’t the only problem; it seems that Portia’s mother, Daisy, has taken a turn for the worse, and needs to get to the hospital very soon. But as Portia, Boone and Anderson start to return to the house, gunfire rings out. Murphy’s found them.

The rest of the plot, I leave for you to read. But I believe if you enjoy romantic suspense and big bad guys decidedly getting theirs, you will enjoy DEVIL’S LAKE. There’s some twists and turns here that surprised me a bit (most particularly Grace’s actions late in the book, of which I will say nothing more); there’s also some sweet, innocent romance between the wounded Portia and the man who’s loved her since childhood, Boone, along with some slightly more spicy fare between Grace, a former drug abuser, and her long-suffering husband Anderson.

The best thing about DEVIL’S LAKE is its emotional honesty. I fully believed in Portia’s journey back from a living Hell. I also believed in Boone’s quiet, steady love for her. And the way Portia’s parents reacted — compassionate and caring, they never once blame Portia for the mess and only want Murphy brought to justice soonest — is the way you’d want anyone’s parents to react after such a traumatic event. Portia’s brother-in-law Anderson was a nice surprise, and all the other good guys, from the local doctor to the sheriff and his deputies, were all fine as well.

But the best part of the book, to me at least, was Grace — Portia’s sister. Sassy, opinionated, and smart, she is openly flawed but doesn’t care one whit about what anyone else thinks. Grace was refreshing, and I’d love to see her whole story someday as I’m betting her road back from drug abuse would be quite a page-turner in its own right.

Bottom line? DEVIL’S LAKE is a very solid, suspenseful romance from beginning to end, and I enjoyed it immensely. It’s a bit raw in spots, but ultimately it ends in a heartwarming happily ever after that I fully believed in.

Grade: A.

–reviewed by Barb