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Black Magic Lover
She vowed never to return...but a dangerous force is pulling Laura home. A chilling call brings Laura back to the Louisiana bayou where her mother vanished twenty years ago. She has no memory of that terror-filled night - or of the man who saved her. When she meets enigmatic Drew he awakens a hunger Laura aches to fulfil, unaware that the handsome psychic is part of the sinister magic that stalks her...All his life, Drew has been haunted by visions of death. But Laura's return stirs something deep inside him - a passion that can free him from the darkness. Yet unless he can halt fate, Laura's doomed by an ancient prophecy. Can Drew again vanquish the evil that demands Laura's sacrifice...or will the demon haunting them take all?
Paperback
First published September 1, 2010
About the author
Cynthia Cooke
119 books282 followersCynthia Cooke is an acclaimed USA Today Bestselling author, with a prolific career spanning two decades. Since her debut in 2003, Cynthia has captivated readers worldwide with her compelling storytelling. With over 40 novels to her name, she has enchanted audiences in 12 different countries through her works published by esteemed houses such as Harlequin, Entangled Publishing, and Amazon Kindle Worlds.
Recognized for her mastery of heartwarming small-town romantic suspense, Cynthia fearlessly guides her readers along the razor's edge of anticipation and intrigue. Her immersive narratives leave no room for rest and take you on a thrilling journey that will keep you on the edge of your seat long into the night.
Take a leap of faith and immerse yourself in Cynthia Cooke's world, where the heart races, emotions soar, and love conquers all.
Twitter - https://twitter.com/CynthiaCooke5
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/cynthia.cook...
Recognized for her mastery of heartwarming small-town romantic suspense, Cynthia fearlessly guides her readers along the razor's edge of anticipation and intrigue. Her immersive narratives leave no room for rest and take you on a thrilling journey that will keep you on the edge of your seat long into the night.
Take a leap of faith and immerse yourself in Cynthia Cooke's world, where the heart races, emotions soar, and love conquers all.
Twitter - https://twitter.com/CynthiaCooke5
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/cynthia.cook...
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
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August 22, 2022
Bayou Whispers is a stand alone romantic suspense by Cynthia Cooke. This story takes place deep in the Bayou of Louisiana filled with voodoo magic and things that go bump in the night. This book is crazy, edge of your seat awesome. I found myself rushing through it to see what happens next. Especially towards the end when everything was reaching the peak! With every book I read of Cynthia’s, I fall more in love with her writing.
Laura Larame is twenty eight years old. She lives in San Francisco. She has struggled since she was eight years old trying to piece together her shattered memories of what happened when she was eight, what happened to her mother and how she almost drowned in the swamp of Louisiana. When she receives a mysterious phone call telling her to return to Lionsheart, her childhood home, she can’t help but go. She needs to finally remember, to find out what happened twenty years ago. She needs to know what happened to her mother.
Drew Michel is about to turn thirty years old. He lives in Atlanta and is a successful lawyer. He was ten when he rescued his best friend, Laura, from the swamp and saved her life. It’s the last time they saw each other, both sent away to boarding schools. His mother wants to give him a birthday celebration she is calling the “awakening,” and has insisted he come home. On the very day he returned, his childhood best friend shows up on their door step. Is it coincidence that they both returned to Lionsheart after twenty years away on the very same day? Or is someone, or something at work here, trying to finish something that was started twenty years ago?
“Change is riding on the wind, my children. I can feel it in my bones.”
This was pretty much non stop all the way through as Drew and Laura try to find the answers they seek. They are fighting against voodoo, ancient dark magic, and fate. During it all, they are also falling for each other. They are stronger together as a team than they are apart. But with every truth revealed, Laura finds it more and more difficult to accept these things that are so hard to believe. And she doesn’t know who to trust. Is Drew truly who and what he says he is? Or is he somehow involved in all of this too? This really was so good! I loved Drew and Laura together.
Bayou Whispers is a rewritten and revised second edition, originally published as Black Magic Lover in 2010. It looks like it was also published in 2018 as Her Dark Lover.
For more about this book and so many others, come and visit me at Carol's Crazy Bookish World.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Carol...
Laura Larame is twenty eight years old. She lives in San Francisco. She has struggled since she was eight years old trying to piece together her shattered memories of what happened when she was eight, what happened to her mother and how she almost drowned in the swamp of Louisiana. When she receives a mysterious phone call telling her to return to Lionsheart, her childhood home, she can’t help but go. She needs to finally remember, to find out what happened twenty years ago. She needs to know what happened to her mother.
Drew Michel is about to turn thirty years old. He lives in Atlanta and is a successful lawyer. He was ten when he rescued his best friend, Laura, from the swamp and saved her life. It’s the last time they saw each other, both sent away to boarding schools. His mother wants to give him a birthday celebration she is calling the “awakening,” and has insisted he come home. On the very day he returned, his childhood best friend shows up on their door step. Is it coincidence that they both returned to Lionsheart after twenty years away on the very same day? Or is someone, or something at work here, trying to finish something that was started twenty years ago?
“Change is riding on the wind, my children. I can feel it in my bones.”
This was pretty much non stop all the way through as Drew and Laura try to find the answers they seek. They are fighting against voodoo, ancient dark magic, and fate. During it all, they are also falling for each other. They are stronger together as a team than they are apart. But with every truth revealed, Laura finds it more and more difficult to accept these things that are so hard to believe. And she doesn’t know who to trust. Is Drew truly who and what he says he is? Or is he somehow involved in all of this too? This really was so good! I loved Drew and Laura together.
Bayou Whispers is a rewritten and revised second edition, originally published as Black Magic Lover in 2010. It looks like it was also published in 2018 as Her Dark Lover.
For more about this book and so many others, come and visit me at Carol's Crazy Bookish World.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Carol...
August 21, 2010
Wow, great plot. Cynthia Cooke sucks you in to her thrilling novel. a must read!
April 12, 2011
A mysterious phone call drew Laura (love the name!)Larame(hate the name-sounds like Laramie and I kept thinking cowboys whenever I read it!)back to her roots in Lionsheart, Lousianna deep in the bayou where "Voudoo" holds sway. She'd left there as a girl when her best friend, Drew, rescued her from drowning in the swamp and something darker. Her memory closed down and she remembered nothing before she awoke in a hospital bed. She lived at boarding school until she was an adult never having heard from her mother again. Abandoned. Unlovable. Her need to know what became of her mother, and her memory had tortured her all those years but when the phone call came telling her she must return to Lionsheart and that her mother never left the bayou,she had to come! The first person she comes upon is her old friend Drew, now a handsome lawyer just visiting his mother. Is he someone Laura can trust or is her as enmeshed as everyone around her in the dark secrets of the past which are reaching out to snare her?
This seat of the pants flight through the murky haunted bayou doesn't stop long enough to catch your breath. Someone is out to get Laura, someone who wants her blood. But why? Revenge for something everyone seems to think her mother had done? Or was it something more sinister?
I enjoyed this tale enormously. The author certainly understands pace and the plot was good. The only things I could pick at were inconsistancies with the realities of the Lousianna bayou. She called these swamp dwelling characters Creoles. Creoles were the wealthy French people who lived in town. The poor swamp people are primarily Cajun. She called the swamp black, rotting, smelling like death etc which is a common literary trope, however inacurate. The Lousianna bayou is green, clean and beautiful. It smells fresh and ripe. But truth is less atmospheric than fiction so I forgive her. She also made Voudoun (not Voodoo) out to be a dark-magic bogeyman, which it isn't. If people are going to take these religions and make them evil, why don't they ever pick on Lutherans or Presbyterians too? Seems unfair. Again, it's a tired old trope to make wiccan/voudoun practicianers evildoers. It's a just a story so I shrug, but it still annoys me. As does Laura's stubborn flights into danger despite warnings. She reminded me of the heroines in the old movies who when someone is killing all the people off in a spooky mansion, suggests they all go off alone to separate bedrooms to get some rest.
This seat of the pants flight through the murky haunted bayou doesn't stop long enough to catch your breath. Someone is out to get Laura, someone who wants her blood. But why? Revenge for something everyone seems to think her mother had done? Or was it something more sinister?
I enjoyed this tale enormously. The author certainly understands pace and the plot was good. The only things I could pick at were inconsistancies with the realities of the Lousianna bayou. She called these swamp dwelling characters Creoles. Creoles were the wealthy French people who lived in town. The poor swamp people are primarily Cajun. She called the swamp black, rotting, smelling like death etc which is a common literary trope, however inacurate. The Lousianna bayou is green, clean and beautiful. It smells fresh and ripe. But truth is less atmospheric than fiction so I forgive her. She also made Voudoun (not Voodoo) out to be a dark-magic bogeyman, which it isn't. If people are going to take these religions and make them evil, why don't they ever pick on Lutherans or Presbyterians too? Seems unfair. Again, it's a tired old trope to make wiccan/voudoun practicianers evildoers. It's a just a story so I shrug, but it still annoys me. As does Laura's stubborn flights into danger despite warnings. She reminded me of the heroines in the old movies who when someone is killing all the people off in a spooky mansion, suggests they all go off alone to separate bedrooms to get some rest.
September 16, 2010
Really good book with lots of twists and turns. Very enjoyable story. And different from my experiences with Harlequin novels.
September 12, 2026
This was a quick read, it did keep me on edge wanting answers, and guessing my own answers. But it ended suddenly, like that’s it all done, the end:
October 23, 2010
Searching for clues about the mother who abandoned her, Laura returns to her old home- and danger and voodoo lurk in the swamp.
When Laura goes home she meets Drew an attractive man who was part of the childhood she can't recall. They both feel an attraction and a connection and I liked that Drew is very sympathetic to Laura's plight.
What I liked less was his very repetitious thoughts that he can't get attached to Laura or act on his attraction because she is somehow marked for death (what he senses or how isn't really explained) and they have the same conversation over and over again in which hoping to keep Laura out of danger Drew tries to convince her to leave town and Laura repeats the same thought process of just having to find the answers to her mother's disappearance so that she can get past her abandonment issues.
It got really tiresome and put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm for the romance - when half time Drew is trying to push Laura away instead of developing an increasing sense of connection and building some intimacy between the pair.
I probably could have gotten past this if there had been bit of an epilog at the end, because the story ended abruptly when the main conflict was resolved and I still had some questions I'd have liked answered when all was said and done.
When Laura goes home she meets Drew an attractive man who was part of the childhood she can't recall. They both feel an attraction and a connection and I liked that Drew is very sympathetic to Laura's plight.
What I liked less was his very repetitious thoughts that he can't get attached to Laura or act on his attraction because she is somehow marked for death (what he senses or how isn't really explained) and they have the same conversation over and over again in which hoping to keep Laura out of danger Drew tries to convince her to leave town and Laura repeats the same thought process of just having to find the answers to her mother's disappearance so that she can get past her abandonment issues.
It got really tiresome and put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm for the romance - when half time Drew is trying to push Laura away instead of developing an increasing sense of connection and building some intimacy between the pair.
I probably could have gotten past this if there had been bit of an epilog at the end, because the story ended abruptly when the main conflict was resolved and I still had some questions I'd have liked answered when all was said and done.
August 23, 2014
A thriller and a romance combined, in a very good way. When Laura returns to the Louisiana swamps in search of a mother who abandoned her years ago, she also returns to childhood memories long forgotten. Was it just a coincidence that Drew, her old friend who'd once saved her life, returned to the swamps on the same day?
The mystery portion of this book, the search for answers that Laura can't quite find, is a non-stop thrill. The romance is super steamy. It did lose a star because it gets a bit repetitive, and because the whole "do I trust him" scenario is used too often in my opinion, but this is still a great book and one you won't want to put down.
The mystery portion of this book, the search for answers that Laura can't quite find, is a non-stop thrill. The romance is super steamy. It did lose a star because it gets a bit repetitive, and because the whole "do I trust him" scenario is used too often in my opinion, but this is still a great book and one you won't want to put down.
October 4, 2011
Possibly the worst book i have ever read. I would give it 4 stars for unintended comedy value just because it was so badly written.
December 2, 2013
a good book but ended kinda abrupt for my liking
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews