My Soul to Keep

In her third installment of the Dylan Foster series, Wells crafts a dark Christian supernatural thriller with lighter romance notes. Southern Methodist University psychology professor Dylan Foster fears that Peter Terry, the demon who stalks her, is on the move again. Nicholas, her friend Maria Chavez’s five-year-old son (conceived after Maria was brutally raped in an earlier book), is snatched at a birthday party in a park near Dallas. Five-year-old birthday girl Christine Zocci, who witnesses the abduction and is hyperattuned to the supernatural, ends up in the emergency room after she mysteriously goes into cardiac arrest. Her clues about Nicholas’s kidnapper may enable Dylan to find him—unless time runs out. Wells does a fine job developing Dylan’s character, but is less successful showing the terror of the kidnapping and Maria’s response, which seems far too calm. The suspense builds nicely, however, and the demon’s use of a rattlesnake (real or unreal? Dylan isn’t sure) will give ophiophobic readers appropriate chills. When the Day of Evil Comes and The Soul Hunter should be read first to follow the plot line; as a stand-alone this may be confusing. Christian readers who like their suspense with a heavy dollop of the supernatural should find this series to their taste. (Feb.)