Review of NO ONE TO HEAR YOU SCREAM, by Julia Madeleine

Justine Jameson has her share of problems. She's a teenage single mother of an infant baby, recently moved back in with her father and stepmother after the failure of her relationship with the baby's father. Her parents' relationship is hanging by a thread, as is her father's business.

And that's not the worst of it. Justine hears things; voices in her head warning her of a horrible fate awaiting her child, warning her she is incapable of caring for a baby, making her fear for her very sanity.

When the dysunctional family buys a recently foreclosed home in a tiny, isolated New York town, things go from bad to worse for Justine. Her father works long hours attempting to save his business, her self-involved stepmother disappears for long stretches at a time, and Justine feels isolated and alone until she meets Rory Madden, a bad-boy Irish expatriate who sweeps her off her feet.

But Rory Madden may not be exactly what - or who - he appears. His past is one of violence and deception, and his motives are unclear, at least to Justine. When she discovers a strange text message on her stepmother's cell phone, a deadly chain of events is set into motion that threatens everything Justine Jameson holds dear, and death and destruction lurks around every corner.

NO ONE TO HEAR YOU SCREAM is Julia Madeleine's second book, and it is written with an eye for detail that draws the reader into the plot. As the wheels of apparent coincidence and ill will begin to turn faster and faster, the suspense builds until the reader is left turning pages in a breathless attempt to discover who - if anyone - will survive a violent showdown.

The characters are layered, developed fully and richly, and every one of them has a secret which influences their actions. It is this fully developed characterization which, more than anything else, draws the reader in and makes him care about the outcome of the book, which remains in doubt right up until the very end.

Julia Madeleine is a name to watch, and NO ONE TO HEAR YOU SCREAM is a winner.