You've Been Warned

July 30, 2007
The Patterson bestseller factory has turned out another high-drama thriller, this time in collaboration with Honeymoon
coauthor Roughan. Kristin Burns, a New York City nanny and aspiring photographer, is devoted to the two children under her care, but her desire for their father, Michael Turnbull, leads her to a risky, torrid affair with him. Kristin's anxiety about her guilty secret is heightened by a series of frightening nightmares centering on a vision of four body bags being loaded onto gurneys in front of a prominent Manhattan hotel. Her nightmares also feature recurring encounters with dead people, including her father and the pediatrician who abused her as a child. Kristin's breathless, superficial narration doesn't generate a lot of reader sympathy or interest in figuring out the source of her macabre experiences.

Kristin Burns is a wannabe photographer who is just skirting success. Since a girl's got to pay the bills, she takes a job as a nanny to the children of a handsome businessman and his porcelain-cold wife. Of course, the inevitable happens--they fall in love. At least Kristin does, and that's when things get creepy. The female perspective of the story is well portrayed by Ilyana Kadushin. She has just enough of a frightened tremor in her voice to communicate the scariness of the situation that develops. When she describes the dead people Kristin sees, dead people who repeatedly warn her of danger, it sounds real. Kadushin's delivery is perfect, adding to the fear and ultimate despair of the story. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine