After I Dream

By Rachel Lee

Book Overview

THE DEVIL, THE DEEP BLUE SEA... Psychologist Callie Carlson lives in the lush Florida Keys. Some call it paradise. Callie, a young woman who fears the sea, calls it hell. Now her brother has found a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446606545
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: Forever
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.0" x 1.0" x 4.8"

Customer Reviews

Dark intense thriller!

Rachel Lee is one of the great writers that came up through Silhouette Intimate Moments and she also writes very humorous contemporary novels under the name Sue Civil Brown. I recommend those if you are in search of a giggle or three.After I dream shows the pattern of Lee's writing. She always has a man that has been scarred inwardly, almost to the point of being 'crippled', but love and inner grit triumphs against all.This is a a great mystery. Chase Mattingly, a former navy seal, is a professional diver, yet on this last dive for an insurance company something goes terribly wrong. He begins to hallucinate and nearly pulls off his helmet before they can get him to the surface. Two months later, Chase is hold up with a gun in a small A frame in the Florida Keys, waiting for the 'monsters' he saw on this last dive to come for him - or to use the gun on himself before his insanity claims him.The next door neighbor has problems, too. Callie Carlson has raised her brother since she was fourteen when the father died at sea. She hates the sea, blames it for taking everyone she loves from her, and now her brother wants to start a fishing service for tourists. After an argument, brother dashes off in a huff on his boat with a friend. Callie is sick with worry because a storm is coming in. She bumps into Chase and he suggests they call her brother on radio. Brother is safe and thrilled to have found a half sunk boat he plans to claim as salvage. The next they know, the boys are being charged with murdering the owner of the boat. Suddenly, Chase begins to question his fears of insanity claiming him, when he discovered the partially sunken boat was at the precise point where Chase had his last dive.That is just the beginning of their troubles. A great suspenseful read with well drawn characters.

Romantic suspense

This is an excellent read. It deals with two people coming to grips with their past and coming together to save a man who is on death row. It's gripping and makes you think about the issue of the death penalty. Carey is strong, but dealing with her beliefs in the justice system and her past with Seamus. Seamus is also dealing with griefs of the past and trying to come to grips with his past with Carey. This book deals with alot of issues from the death penalty to the pain of alcoholism. I loved all of Rachel Lee's 'Conard County' series, but this is the best of her books by far.

Suspenseful

The story of a sister raising her brother and putting her life on hold could have been just another hardluck tale. But, the intermingling of the Navy Seal's problem and the brother's discovery of the sabotaged ship work very well. By adding the romantic twist between Callie and Chase, Ms. Lee places the icing on the cake. Held my attention from the very beginning.

Terror in the Deep

There's something about being at sea that heightens the suspense of any story - one is isolated and at the mercy of the elements and whatever evil lurks, with little chance of timely rescue. However, there's nothing like a deep sea diving setting to REALLY bring out the terror in a suspense story, which is what makes Rachel Lee's tale such a page turner.Chase Mattingly is a beached SEAL and former deep sea diver who had a psychotic episode at almost 200 feet under the surface. Unable to live with the shell he has become, he withdraws from society in order to sort out whether he'll ever be able to be whole again, or whether he ought to just end it all instead. Despite his deeply ambivalent feelings about the sea, he ends up living on the water in south Florida, across an inlet from Callie and Jeff Carlson. Callie is an obsessive-compulsive psychologist trying to take a vacation; in contrast, Jeff seems to be the eternal Peter Pan younger brother whom Callie appears doomed to have to rescue throughout his life. When Jeff is accused of murder on the high seas, Callie and Chase are thrown together in a search for answers to the questions of who, why, and how, two charter fisherman were murdered out in the open ocean. There are too many coincidences between what happened to Chase, and what Jeff may have stumbled upon at sea, for both to have been random events... As they try to sort out what happened, a romance develops between them: Chase, a hero with mental and physical disabilities, and Callie, a heroine who doesn't realize she's a bundle of neuroses until almost halfway through the story. An interesting match, indeed.Rachel Lee's language in this novel is something to behold. Aside from imparting some very interesting information about deep sea diving, she creates a beautiful and terrible metaphor of the sea as a living and breathing creature. The reader can feel the press of deep water as it slowly tries to crush the diver, and hear the whispers of seductive promise and death in the waves. The scents and sounds of Key West make the land setting come alive in counterpoint. This book kept me up on edge until almost 2 AM, even though I had my suspicions about whodunnit fairly early on - it didn't matter, I knew there was a scary climax coming, and I was right. This is a good story for lovers of romantic suspense, and a keeper for me. I definitely look forward to her next story later this year!

Another entertaining read from Rachel Lee

I was so pleased to find this latest release. Romantic suspense has become a favotite of mine lately, and Ms. Lee's latest book was wonderful to read. Hopefully , without giving too much away, the hero Case, a former SEAL, is recuperating next door to Cally after a salvage dive gone wrong. Suffering from nightmares, a debilitating fear of the dark and halucinations as a result , he somehow finds himself offering his aid when her brother and his friend are arrested for murder and grand theft after salvaging a sinking boat during a fishing cruise. Oddly enough, the sinking vessel was located very close to the site of his near fatal dive. A coincidence? Cally feels the sea will take away everyone she loves and this latest incident just seems to prove her right. While I had a pretty good idea who the villian was pretty early on, this was still a great story. Both of our main characters had serious fears to overcome on the way to saving Jeff and his friend which made them very real to read. I'll be sure to pick up her next work.