Allegiance

Gail Copeland’s Allegiance opens with the protagonist already off-balance. Someone she trusted has betrayed her, and the rest of the book is a slow rebuild of who she actually is when stripped of the certainties she had been operating under.

The man who comes into her life is one of the people she has the most reason to be careful around. The romance and the suspense are tangled. You can’t have one without the other.

Copeland writes briskly. The chapters are short. The point of view stays close to the heroine, which keeps the reader inside her uncertainty rather than letting us see the answers she can’t.

Readers who like Sandra Brown or Allison Brennan in their suspense mode will find a similar register. Romance fans who want lower stakes might find this one heavier than expected.