HIDDEN IN LIQUID

Maria’s debut paranormal romance tells of one woman’s smooth journey from loss to love.

Ever since Marisa Marie Bordeaux-Landon was a baby, she’s had a mystical, sisterly connection with the moon, whom she calls “MoonGlow.” Now Marisa is 42, widowed, and an empty nester, and MoonGlow guides her to buy and restore a supposedly haunted house on the North Carolina coast. There, Marisa submits to MoonGlow’s lover, the ocean (aka “Great Liquid” or “High Tide”), delving into it in order to confront her own fears and explore secrets from her past lives, which he holds in his depths. Marisa’s childhood friend, Caroline Mardas, soon joins her in this ritual, along with new neighbor Terri Roberts. MoonGlow and High Tide help all three women to re-experience events from their past lives so that they may all better understand their present. It later becomes clear that unless Marisa can resolve the “karma” from her past life working at a New Orleans brothel in the 1800s and her marriage to former customer Daniel Ryan, she won’t be able to have a new life with handsome Nathan Rynn. Marisa’s inner monologue, through which most of this tale is told, has an intriguing, lulling quality. However, its odd phrasing can sometimes be confusing: “It was relayed to me that during this time, Daniel had continued on to inform me that he had a made a business deal with Madame.” High Tide, as a character, has an appealing, erotic physicality (“I felt his liquid projections taking hold of me as if I were his prey”) that’s missing in the scenes between Nathan and Marisa (“He kissed me all over. My body surrendered like never before”). Overall, though, this conflict-free journey will roll over readers like waves in the surf.

A bump-free story of seaside soul connection.