On the first page of Matt Richtel’s debut novel, a man at a Starbucks-esque coffee bar is handed a note that tells him to “Get out of the café – NOW!” One line after he reads it, the place explodes.

No wonder this thing is titled HOOKED.

Thanks to the note, health journalist Nat Idle is one of the lucky survivors of the explosion. Was it an act of terrorism? Why was he forewarned? And isn’t it weird that the attractive woman who slipped him the note reminded him of his girlfriend, who died in a boating accident four years prior?

That girl – Annie, the daughter of a technology baron – was the love of Nat’s life, and the deeper he digs to solve the mysteries surrounding the café incident, the more he finds his past coming back to haunt him. His investigative nose leads him to an odd, near-paranoiac plot involving surprising sexual affairs, inexplicable headaches that drive some to suicide, and rats with shaved heads.

When it comes to making good on his title, Richtel knows how to work it. From the start, his story proves every bit as hypnotic as the book’s optical-illusion cover. Two-thirds in, when all is revealed and the story takes a wide swing into sci-fi territory, a little luster is lost; what was original becomes more formulaic and thus a little tired, but not enough to derail the momentum entirely.

As good as Richtel is at building suspense right away, I must commend him more for the flashback chapters that depict Nat and Annie falling in love. Their actions and dialogue comprise a realistic and accurate portrayal of the initial joys involved in finding your soulmate, and it’s hard not to feel a little contact high in your heart. The romance depicted here is real, not sappy or fantasized. That alone gets you more invested in the characters and keeps HOOKED afloat. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.