"Cover Me in Darkness"

Eileen Rendahl is the national-bestselling and award-winning author of the Messenger series and four Chick Lit novels. Her alter ego, Eileen Carr, writes romantic suspense. Her other alter ego, Kristi Abbott, writes cozy mysteries.

Rendahl applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Cover Me in Darkness, and reported the following:

Here is the entirety of page 69 of Cover Me in Darkness. It’s the start of chapter eight so it’s a short page, but very representative of the book as a whole in theme and tone.

The words sounded ridiculous, melodramatic, delusional. I couldn’t not say them, though. I had to tell someone. I had to get help.

Sam looked down at my hand in his and then back up again. “Amanda, are you sure? Couldn’t this have been an accident? A slip-up in the lab? Carelessness of some kind by someone?”

I slid my hand out of his grasp. I’d known he would probably react that way. Any sane person would. It still disappointed me. Emotions were so irrational; no wonder I preferred numbers. “Of course it could be. And whoever pushed me out into traffic this morning might have just been clumsy, and whoever broke into the trunk of my car might have just been playing a prank.”

My heroine, Amanda, spends a good deal of the book doubting herself, doubting her own perceptions, and doubting the people around her. In this scene, she’s talking to her late mother’s psychiatrist. At this point, he’s the only person she knows that shares her suspicion there was something not quite right about her mother’s suicide. He’s her only ally, and yet he’s not sure whether he believes her when she finally tells him that she thinks someone might be trying to kill her, too.

She’s very alone, but before she can sway someone to her way of thinking, Amanda has to decide that she believes what she’s saying herself.

Visit Eileen Rendahl's website.

--Marshal Zeringue