The two novellas that led up to the novel was a perfect set up to the romantic suspense J. R. Ward crafted with Consumed. With romantic suspense the story has to consist of both a romance storyline as well as whatever the mystery is with one taking the lead over the other. Consumed played it well with the arson case taking the lead after alot of the setup for the romance was accomplished with the novellas. The depth in the relationships and the real problems that are not out of the realm of normal made the characters not only believable, but the reader can empathize with their situations. Not every book has characters the reader can understand or put themselves in those shoes, but J.R. Ward wrote a cast of real and flawed three dimensional people.