The Key

In THE KEY, artist and schoolteacher Kristie Matthews yearns for a simpler life. The day she moves into her new apartment, she sustains a dog bite necessitating a trip to the emergency room. Jon Clarke Griffin, who is at the farm to visit his friend, Jake, takes her to the hospital. While she is in the Emergency Room, a stranger hands her a key telling her to keep it for him but to tell no one she has it. She ends up befriending the elderly stranger as he is hospitalized recovering from a heart attack. She has no idea she is putting herself in danger as well. Meanwhile Kristie breaks off the relationship with her lawyer boyfriend, Todd Reasoner and soon thereafter begins seeing Clarke Griffin. Soon a series of peculiar events including a break-ins, make Kristie wonder what she has gotten herself into. The three books in this series, set on the Zook's Amish farm, each have an element of suspense in addition to the romance. Each story is told in first-person from the heroine's point of view. Gayle Roper is a master at storytelling! I also heartily recommend THE DOCUMENT and THE DECISION as well as THE KEY - it's been a long time since I read all three books in a series back-to-back, but I really couldn't put these down.