Girls, You Have GOT To Meet Erica Voss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                          She is definitely from the Alex Forrest School  Of Psychosis,  but with a difference.   By the time the reader finishes La Pena's excellent  novel,  questions  will be asked abut the motives of everyone in this book, the ambiguity of the novel's title, and the culprit behind a climactic murder.

                                             That is all I am willing to reveal.  The story starts with a suburban, upstate New York couple, Stephanie and Patrick Kilgour,  who,  having  recently had twin girls, seem  like the perfect couple.  Well, you know,  when  things seem to good to be true, it is because they are.  

                                              For starters, it seems Patrick was married to a woman  named Lindsey, about a decade ago.   She never survived a car accident, where snow blocked a tube into which it had been inserted, and she died by carbon  monoxide poisoning.  This was while leaving to visit her relations for a holiday.  

                                                Lindsey had a good  friend,  Erica Voss,  who always suspected Patrick killed  Lindsey, and  has never let  him  off  the hook.  She disses him at the funeral, but, a decade later, when Patrick has moved on,  Erica returns into his life to  wreak havoc.

                                                 As I said, she is akin to Alex Forrest.  But in "Fatal  Attraction," it  was never suggested Alex had done  what she did before.  Erica  has gotten around.  She was a surrogate mother, who bribed a couple whose child she was carrying, and she went after a former coworker for money, before turning her attention  to the Kilgour's, the prime focus of  the book.  You have to hand it to Erica  for psychotic bitchery.  Alex Forrest never got around,  like  this.

                                                   There are surprises galore, including Lindsey's death, or, rather,  who engineered it, after I was so convinced of my conclusion.  And the last page delivers a stunner that satisfies,  brings the title's meaning into  question, and  raises even more.  I  kept  thinking  things over, at the end,  and I still am not  sure.

                                                     But, girls, as hateful as Erica is, you will just  LOVE her!  If Rebecca De Mornay were decades younger, it  would be a perfect role  for her.  I mean,  who wouldn't want to play Erica????????????

                                                      Shari La Pena  has done  it again.  Though I questioned the title at the start, I realized, at the finish, how brilliant it was!

                                                         Way to go, Shari!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!