Love and Vengeance is Deren’s third novel which is a fast-paced story of passion and betrayal, cunning retribution and unexpected terror. It is a story of the heart gone terribly wrong, the kind of book that appeals to the general reader of romance and suspense fiction.
Protagonist Jake Linden is a sensitive, sympathetic young man living in the big city. Coming from a poor and tragic family, kicked around and on his own since his early teens, Linden has had to use his good looks and personable ways to survive.
Popular with women, he’s developed a reputation as a real lady killer.
But he is also vulnerable in a way that can tear apart a man’s self respect. He is crushed when the only girl he ever loved betrays him. This acts as a catalyst and Jake becomes unstable, descending into a dark world of hate and revenge. He’s had enough of life’s slings and arrows and plots to even the score. Ironically, he becomes his own antagonist.
Linden uses his winning ways with women to gain access to various people who have wronged him in the past. These become his victims. As Jakes proceeds with his well calculated plans, we learn about the women and the relationships he has been through, the misfortunes and tribulations that have plagued him since childhood. We see how lost and disconnected from everyone he has become. But on the outside, many people see him as an attractive and stable man who is a positive part of society.
In his quest for vengeance, Jake finds true love and a way out of despair. But by then, it may be too late. Now, it is his sins of the past that threaten his one chance at happiness as he walks the fine line between Love and Vengeance.