After the funeral of a dear friend, Sloane McBride knew it was time to go back home and try to find out what had happened to her mother twenty three years before. Clara McBride had vanished one night, after a fight with her husband Ed, who had never fully addressed the issue. Only Sloane, then five, had witnessed parts of the argument between her parents while her brother Randy was at a friend's for the night. If Paige, Sloane's best friend from high school, welcomes her with open arms, the same cannot be said for Sloane's former boyfriend Micah, or Sloane's brother and father. Is Sloane the only who cares about what happened to her mother?

BEFORE WE WERE STRANGERS is a romantic suspense where the romance and the mystery form a very intricate plot and all threads are essential to the fabric of the story. Brenda Novak establishes the set-up while we familiarize ourselves with the characters and fragments of the story gradually come to light. Nothing ever jumps at you, but you know it's only a matter of time before a spark will ignite the powder keg. While the pace is not quick, it is nice and steady, which is what this type of story needs as there are several main characters of almost equal importance and every one needs to be explored.

Ms. Novak excels at characterization, and often during the course of the book, it's hard to predict how the protagonists will behave, and who is on whose side. Even though Sloane and Micah form the romantic couple -- and the romance is terrific and entirely convincing -- it's Paige who really stood out for me. She is as multidimensional as any living person; she made me feel every emotion -- good and bad -- and I'm really not sure if it was intended that way: as far as I'm concerned, she is the star of BEFORE WE WERE STRANGERS. I did not particularly like Paige "the fictional resident of Millcreek", but I loved the literary creation that is Paige; I appreciated beyond words the complexity of the character and how she fascinated me from her introduction until the very end. I wasn't entirely thrilled with how BEFORE WE WERE STRANGERS concluded. Without giving away spoilers, I can't say the ending was rushed, but it felt somewhat compressed, and until the very last pages, I was afraid some issues would be left dangling. In spite of this, BEFORE WE WERE STRANGERS is another Brenda Novak novel that deserves to be read for anyone who enjoys a solid suspense with a little romance.