CHOOSE ME

4 stars out of 5

At best, this one is an intriguing meld of literary lovers with real life - at least in the eyes of a totally unhinged college student who's totally fixated on her self-absorbed college professor. At worst, it's a sometimes contrived story with characters their mothers would find hard to love. 

It begins with the apparent suicide of brilliant college student Taryn Moore, a case investigated by 34-year veteran detective Frankie Loomis of the Boston Police Department. Although it looks like an open-and-shut case, when an autopsy reveals the woman was pregnant, Frankie begins to have second thoughts. From there, scenes shift in time frame and character perspective, with each adding details that help readers understand how and why her death came about and who was responsible.

As a student, Taryn is extremely gifted; one of her passions is what she believes are incorrect "slants" on literary couples such as Romeo and Juliet that favor the male side of the equation. To that end, she believes that love is forever - no matter what - so she goes off the deep end when she personally experiences what she considers an unforgivable betrayal. Left with no one to smother with her undying love, she quickly latches on to the one male who encourages her and sings her praises - her English professor. He's married to and still in love with a beautiful, but extremely busy, medical doctor; can he resist Taryn's obvious charms and unrelenting pleas for his attention? And if he can't, what will happen to his marriage and his career?

Well, whether he caves or not is for me to know and other readers to find out. All I'll say is it's a not-so-merry chase for Frankie to ferret out the truth once the determination of murder is made. Clues are dropped here and there that arouse readers' suspicions as to whodunit, but it's not until close to the end that the truth emerges (for the record, initially I guessed wrong). The epilogue is relatively satisfying for all concerned, I suppose, although it seemed a little too rushed. And although it seemed the authors went to great lengths to rationalize Taryn's behavior (and most of her opinions on the distaff side of those aforementioned literary lovers were astute), I never for one second considered her anything but mentally ill - this coming from a card-carrying feminist. And as a bit of an aside, after I finished it I learned that the male co-author really is a college English professor and really does teach a class like the one taught here by fictional professor Jack Dorian. Writers are often counseled to stick to what they know most about, but in this instance, I'm hoping that the more lurid details were fabricated.

Overall, though? It's a fast-paced, engaging story that held my attention from beginning to end.

Choose Me by Tess Gerritsen and Gary Braver (Thomas & Mercer, July 2021); 290 pp.