Virtual Heart by Karin Huxman is a futuristic romance novel and is available from New Concepts Publishing

Megan Cooper is the owner of a company known as Virtual Delights.  Specializing in creating virtual worlds for the customers Megan's other agenda is to assist the work of surgeons in space. 

By using her virtual system they can recreate the conditions of performing operations in space and save the lives of those who are in need of their services - people like Megan's sister who died in space because the surgeons were unused to performing operations in anti-gravity.

Megan does not realize that her assistant Mark Newhouse has his own agenda.

Having loved Megan from afar Mark is sure that if he can show her he can be a hero she will return his feelings.  Sabotaging the project is the best idea he has ever had.  By trapping Megan in her own virtual world he plans to come to her rescue in the nick of time.  But when the project spirals out of control he is unable to bring Megan out of the virtual world and the longer she remains within the realm, the less chance there is of her coming out safely.

Meanwhile Jake Mason is also the head of his own company, a company that uses the psychic part of the human mind to access the virtual world.  Coming from a family of psychics that suffered scandal when he was just a child Jake's family used the power of the mind to block his early traumatic memories from him.  The whole family live as privately as possible and use their abilities to help newly discovered psychics.

When Jake and Megan meet for a disastrous dinner date Jake tries and fails to seduce her company secrets out of her.  When this fails he decides to use a little psychic manipulation and is surprised to find that Megan has considerable psychic abilities herself.  Although she does not use her abilities she has enough natural talent to block his probing mind from her own.

When Megan becomes trapped in her virtual world and face to face with a virtual saber-toothed tiger it is all she can do to remember that it is not real.  Her screams echo through the world and are heard by Jake Mason, in the person of her own virtual hero.  In next to no time at all Megan and Jake realize who each of the other is.  Somehow Jake's own experiment into his virtual world has combined with her own to trap them both in a virtual world that is partly Megan's, partly Jake's and completely unpredictable.

Unable to leave the other without inflicting sever pain on one or the other Jake and Megan travel from one world to another as their colleagues in the real world struggle to bring them back without causing brain damage.

Jumping from one world to another both Megan and Jake come to rely on each other and trust each other with their lives.  But before they can find a way out of the experiment each must face up to their own pasts and learn to let go.

Eventually they find that they are back in the real world and while Megan remembers clearly the whole adventure Jake appears to be suffering from amnesia and not only remembers nothing about the virtual worlds but he has also forgotten the friendship and love he had found with Megan.

But Megan is not going to give in as easily as that.  She decides to track him down and recreate their virtual love in the real world.

Fast paced and complex this novel moves through virtual worlds quickly and the reader is swiftly drawn into the story as Megan and Jake fight for their lives against their own experiments.

Well told, with some great verbal sparring between Jake and Megan, this is a completely engrossing novel that offers a whole new dimension to the idea of virtual reality and psychic abilities.  This book takes futuristic romance novels into a whole new world and should be read in one sitting if possible.  A virtual and real delight.
 

RATING : 
(if you need an explanation of the hearts ratings see my homepage)

Virtual Heart by Karin Huxman is available from New Concepts Publishing

Visit Karin Huxman's  Website