Hope Tarr, The Haunting

The Haunting

Hope Tarr

Harlequin Blaze, Apr 2007, $4.75

ISBN: 0373793219

In Fredericksburg, Virginia, life has been hectic over the last few weeks for Maggie Holliday. She obtained an assistant professorship in the history department at the University of Mary Washington, defended her dissertation, and bought an 1850 Victorian house. Her high TLC maintenance boyfriend Richard the famous DC psychiatrist is unhappy with what he considers her neglect, but she is elated, especially when she goes up into the attic.

However, the professor is stunned when she explores her attic only to find a man wearing a Civil War uniform who seems familiar to her although she would swear she never met him before. He insists she is Isabel and he is her Ethan. As he begins to take her to levels of ecstasy that she has never felt before, the former frigid female falls in love, but Ethan never stays around as he constantly vanishes into thin air. Maggie considers that she is either insane or he is the ghost of her former lover in another life as he insists they are; either way there is no future unless one of them can cross the great divide.

THE HAUNTING is a charming, paranormal romance starring two likable protagonists whose chances of making it together seem a time-crossed impossibility though fans will root for Maggie and Ethan to find a way. Subgenre readers will enjoy this second chance at supernatural love between the ghost and the professor.

Harriet Klausner