Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts - a Review

Written by Laura Benedict, Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts is a story that never slows down and gives you time to become bored. Roxanne, Delilah, and Alice are young girls who have decided that they want boyfriends. Instead of going about finding a boyfriend the normal way like all of the other girls, they play a deadly game and try to conjure boyfriends up out of thin air. Roxanne, the most outgoing one of them, has made her own combination of a satanic/Santerian ritual that they perform. Something strange happens to Alice, but she seems to recover.

No boyfriends come along, but they lay their eyes on the new priest at school, Father Romero. Roxanne uses this priest to get what she wants, then between all of them, they succeed in jeopardizing his career and destroying his life. He is forced to leave the school and eventually the priesthood. The desire for retribution eats at him. He enters the Santerian religion and embraces its dark rituals of revenge. His obsession with Roxanne never leaves him, though.

Two of these ladies marry when they grow up, one decides to stay single. The one who stays unmarried, Roxanne, is an artist consumed by her work. Her specialty is sculptures of blind children, each one paired with a bird of prey. Why are the children blind? “They're blind because there are some things that children should never have to see.”

Alice is married, but her marriage is crumbling out from under her. She is a poor little rich girl who was married for her money. Since she is unable to get pregnant, her husband falls in love with and impregnates another woman that he works with.

Del is married and trying so desperately to be the ultimate wife and perfect stepmother.

Then Varick steps into each of their lives. Each one of them is, in turn, seduced by this dark and mysterious man.

Who is Varick and where did he come from? He is the man each of them has dreamed of, yet he is so cruel. Still they cannot pull themselves away from him. The lives of each of these characters – Roxanne, Alice, Del, Father Romero, Varick – becomes become entwined in an amazing way.

Does Varick become involved with each of them because of the spell cast years ago by three schoolgirls? Or does he become involved with each of them because of the revenge that Father Romero so desperately wants?

When the story ends, you are left with the question 'what if'? What if Father Romero had forgiven these girls instead of seeking revenge? Would Varick had still come into their lives? Or would he have appeared even if there was no one who held anything against them? And did all of this happen because of what they did when they were just girls?

Laura Benedict does a great job drawing the reader into the story and into the lives of each of these women and the other characters in the story. If you are a fan of horror/thriller novels, I highly recommend this book to you. I bought my copy of this book from eBay. If you would like your own copy, I have provided a link to Amazon below.