Amanda - Kay Hooper

A spellbinding tale of contemporary suspense that begins with a mysterious homecoming and ends in a shattering explosion of passion, greed, and murder. And all because a stranger says her name is... Amanda.Others have claimed to be Amanda Daulton, but now a beautiful, self-assured woman has stepped out of the shadows of the past, insisting she's the missing heiress to a multimillion-dollar fortune. One look is all it takes to assure the family patriarch that she's his beloved granddaughter. But others at the magnificent Southern mansion called Glory are not as easily convinced, others with much to lose from her sudden reappearance. Soon suspicion erupts in a chilling attempt on her life, and after the traumatic ordeal, she begins to have flashes of a nightmarish vision. What, if anything, happened twenty years ago to drive a mother and her nine-year-old daughter away from their privileged life? The struggle to find the elusive answer exposes a frightening trail of secrets—a trail that leads shockingly to the present and to the enigmatic woman who calls herself... Amanda.

While I am a great fan of Hooper's Bishop CSU series I had never tried her stand alone stories. I had heard good things about this one but the blurb never really convinced me till a couple of weeks ago when I finally decided it was time to get the older books out of the TBR pile.

I am very happy to say that despite my worries this was a very good read and I was actually surprised by the ending twist. In the beginning this felt a bit like some of Anne Stuart's romantic suspense stories but never really gets that dark and despite the Gothic aspects the characters are fairly straightforward.

In the romance department I did feel that they fell for each other too early. I never felt like they knew each other well enough. But other than that I did like the story and the suspense part worked really good for me. Most characters seems as mysterious and/or as disagreeable as one expects from a Gothic and it's obvious from the beginning that there is more to Amanda than what they are thinking.

Grade: 4/5