Rita Brooks is a psychologist who has plenty of problems of her own. Her biggest issue is a failure to develop and maintain an intimate relationship with a man until now. She knows she’s found “the one,” even though he’s hundreds of miles away. There is the fact they’ve never met face to face. Maybe that’s what makes their relationship work. Only emails and calls are no longer enough. Rita is ready for the next step in Tina Wainscott’s romantic suspense novel, WHAT SHE DOESN'T KNOW.

Rita Brooks is a buttoned down type of gal. Her hometown of Boston suits her. How could she fall for a smooth talking Southern gentleman from New Orleans, but fall she did. Now, all she has to do is meet him, and just maybe, love will follow, then who knows. Suddenly, everything literally goes black when a car crash puts her in a coma. The last thing she sees before the impact is a feathered mask, a Mardi Gras one. While in the coma, a man tries to communicate with her giving her cryptic messages and horrific images. She tells no one. It is never good for people to wonder if the head doctor is crazy too. The accident, along with the blond man haunting her dreams, plus the fact her potential sweetie is ignoring her emails and calls adds up to one bad day. Then he walks through her door, a man wearing the face of the man in her dream, demanding answers and making accusations.

Christopher LaPorte was always the lesser son, the bad prince in all the family dramas. That’s why he stayed away from his family and New Orleans. He figured everyone liked it better that way. It worked for him to until his brother jumped from a balcony. Now he’s determined to find out what would cause his charismatic brother to hurl himself from the gallery of the family home. He believes Rita Brooks is at the bottom of it. The woman is definitely hiding something.

WHAT SHE DOESN'T KNOW moves fast creating a sense of urgency. Using the colorful backdrop of New Orleans during Mardi Gras develops the complexity of the story. The antagonist while interesting is at first mesmerizing, but tends to bog the story down near the end when info dumping pages of backstory about how he became so twisted. There are a few glitches in the story that shouldn’t bother most readers. The chemistry between Christopher and Rita works. They both grow through the novel providing a satisfying conclusion.

WHAT SHE DOESN'T KNOW is a novel worthy of mysterious New Orleans. This is an early novel of Miss Wainscott. It makes me want to investigate her newer works. I would recommend this book. It kept me riveted on the plane with two crying babies, and a snorer nearby.