Dancing in the Dark

Starred review from May 7, 2012
In a seamlessly plotted story, Moody (Losing Nicola) believably coveys the childhood trauma of Theodora Cairns, whose paranoid mother dragged her around the world in the first 11 years of her life and then disappeared for the next 10. Now an adult with a successful garden design business in the Cotswolds, Theo wants nothing unexpected, but when she learns the story her mother told her about her father is false, her view of herself collapses. Bestselling Irish author Fergus Costello, also troubled and doubting his writing ability, finds Theo fascinating, and they form an unexpected bond. The romance is drawn well, psychologically and physically. Each urges the other to face the separate pasts that haunt them. Through stream-of-consciousness narration, Moody forms complete characters of two wounded people looking to squash their nightmares and reach their dreams. Their quests bring freedom and reunion, sadness and understanding, and triumphant love. Moody has written another winner.

July 1, 2012
A successful garden designer, deprived of the idealized father her globe-trotting mother had presented to her, searches for his true-life replacement. When the mother who's raising you alone while moving from India to England to Italy is crazy, there aren't many constants in your life. But one thing Theodora Cairns has been able to depend on is the painting of her father, Col. John Vincent Cairns, with which she always traveled, until the day her mother packed her off from Rome to an English boarding school. Twenty years later, Theo suddenly discovers incontrovertible evidence that the man in the picture is actually Capt. Thomas Bellamy, baronet, painted by the celebrated artist Vernon Barnes. Who was Theo's real father, and why did dancer/choreographer Lucia Cairns go to such lengths to keep his identity from her daughter? It doesn't help that Lucia's still available for conversation, since she steadfastly refuses to name Theo's father. And Theo's sudden romance with author Fergus Costello, who has father issues of his own, seems to offer more distraction than support. Only a trip to her mother's old confessor, now an abbot in far-off Vermont, offers any hint of illumination, and Theo pays for her new suspicions with an unpleasant sense that she may have asked one question too many. Not much new or surprising here, although Moody, continuing her trajectory from mysteries to crossover fiction (Losing Nicola, 2011, etc.), provides an absorbing portrait of a woman struggling to find a new foundation for the identity she only thought she had.

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May 1, 2012
Theodora Cairns had an unusual and peripatetic childhood, following her dancer mother around the world. At times, though, it felt as if Theo was the parent, especially when her mother seemed irrationally fearful. Then, suddenly, when Theo was 11, her mother bundled her off to boarding school and disappeared from Theo's life for a decade. Even though her mother later got in touch, Theo never trusted her again, deciding to pursue her own life as a gardener. But the unresolved issues with her mother hang over Theo's head, and although she thinks the relationship could not possibly get any worse, it deteriorates even further when Theo learns that the painting of her father that her mother gave her years ago isn't her father at all. Distressed and feeling unwanted, Theo decides to find out who her father was, why he abandoned her, and if he's still alive. Her investigation leads her on a dark, emotional journey to a shocking conclusion. Moody is a consummate storyteller, whose well-structured writing, clear prose, and unusual plot add up to pure reading pleasure for romantic-suspense fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)