I’ve always been fascinated with the occult. Tarot, clairvoyance, sÈances--everything that a good Christian would frown upon. Sad but true, but I’m not repentant. Am I an expert? Can I do readings? No, not really, but that hasn’t dampened my desire to learn more about it. Yes there are people out there who have a natural ability--should I say it?--a God-given gift. And then there are charlatans out there who have no scruples about making you part with your hard-earned dollar. I’ve come across both.

Purple Haze reflects on the difficulties a psychic may undergo when trying to warn loved ones of possible outcomes. Especially when those loved ones ridicule that part of your personal make-up through ignorance and maybe fear. Structurally, this book can be taken in two different ways. Psychic romance or suspense. It has the stock-standard hero and heroine, antagonist, and secondary characters. I had originally thought that it may have had an underlying reference to Jimi Hendrix because of the title, but unfortunately (for me) that wasn’t the case.

There is much emphasis on psychic phenomenon and an underlying current of suspense. Having said that, I found this book very difficult to read. For me, these elements didn’t gel together. The heroine, Heather Highmark, has a gift. She can ‘see’ things that have had and may occur. She was taught to read the cards and accept her intuition, but throughout the book she is constantly second-guessing herself and her abilities. The hero, Langdon Cruise, is a rich-boy-turned-cop who has the hots for Heather. He’ll do anything to get her to go out with him. And then you have the antagonist who is a psychopath going around killing members of a recreational bowling league in Cross Point, Michigan.

The storyline sounds fantastic. Psychic heroine helps local police find psychopath while fending off attentions from hero. At the beginning we are introduced to the antagonist and her alter ego. We automatically see that her mind is warped and twisted. Enter the heroine. She senses something is not right and cannot quite put her finger on it. As the story progresses, she is introduced to the alter ego but doesn’t make the connection between the two until near the end of the book. The hero is thrown into the mix, but he’s really not a hero. He doesn’t really do much in this tale. Take him out of the picture and he wouldn’t really be missed. Was he needed for the obligatory sex scene that would make this book fit into the genre of romance? That is what it felt like to me. It was as if the sex scene was thrown in as an afterthought instead of a natural flow of events.

What made this a difficult read for me was the abundance of errors I found as I read. We go from basic grammatical mistakes to questionable adjective choices to inconsistent dialogue from one POV to the other, amongst other inconsistencies. Some thoughts were italicized where others were not, making this not only inconsistent but distracting. This really should have undergone another editorial run before even becoming an ARC. And then you have the lack of depth in the characters, being ‘told’ that this is so instead of being shown. If Langdon was so rich, why did he become a detective? Was it a sense of citizenship, because something in his past compelled him to take this career path, or just so he could blend in with the community--be one of the boys? There was no real feeling to the characters, no enticement to get to know them better. While the visions Heather had, to me, appeared realistic, the reading of the Tarot was not. It felt like the cards were manipulated by the author to give a reading that she felt would fit in with the storyline.

I would’ve liked for Heather to turn some cards that made absolutely no sense to the reading, without a reasonable explanation to explain it away. It would’ve lent more to the suspense side of the story. I had a lot of difficulties participating in this book. It felt like this was not an easy book for the author to write. I know there are people out there who would disagree with what I have said, and have taken this into consideration when writing this review. Writing a romance that encompasses suspense and a psychic element cannot be easy. Purple Haze has all three elements--romance, suspense and psychic phenomenon. If that is what interests you, then go for it. For me, the book was predictable and dare I say it?--boring.

Reviewed By Emilie Spargo
© August 2005