Chicago and Triple Aces Ranch - Present Day

The Network is a government agency shrouded in secrecy, whose agents give body and soul to their jobs. Justine Fielding is one of their agents, and this is her story.

Justine and another Network agent, Dez Luttino, grew up together. Dez’s father, Dennis Ominiski, was convicted of selling government secrets, and seventeen-year-old Justine and Dez, proficient in computers, were helping Dez’s father commit his crimes, unbeknownst to them. When Dennis Ominiski was captured, The Network offered the two teenagers a chance to join the agency -- they accepted. Dez joined to get away from the shame of what his father had done, and Justine to get away from an overbearing and overprotective father whose behavior thwarted her plans to marry the man she loved. Samuel Ominiski took the name of Dez Luttino, and Gina Calhoun became Justine Fielding.

Six years later, Justine, a Communication and Systems Analyst for The Network, is given a new assignment. Her father, Reggie Calhoun, has been killed in a house fire along with two innocents, and someone has picked up where Dennis Ominiski left off, selling government secrets. The Network has confirmed that satellite communication between the seller and buyer is coming from the Triples Aces Ranch. Are these two events linked? The number one suspect is Alex Lynch, the love of Justine’s life. Justine must return to the ranch, her childhood home, and in doing so finds that the heart and soul she promised to The Network has never truly stopped longing for Alex Lynch and the life she had known as Gina.

UNDER THE SPELL is Ms. Wiesner’s fifth book in the Incognito Series. The agents in The Network are forced to give up so much -- children, family, and friends -- but in spite of their superiors, The Network’s hard nose rules, and their own self-restraint, they cannot help but long for a sense of normalcy. It is an intriguing premise that keeps going strong through each book, and UNDER THE SPELL is no exception. An example of how The Network works: because one female agent had an affair with a fellow agent and got pregnant years ago, now all female agents are sterilized.

Justine left her father’s ranch expecting a life filled with more freedom but, ironically, ended up in a different type of cage. I loved the contrast between the twenty-first century technology, the coldness that is so much a part of Justine’s life as an agent in The Network, and the one at Triple Aces Ranch. Justine’s old friends are hardworking, honest, and salt of the earth cowboys and women, and when readers contrast that with the people who make up The Network and its constant intrigues, where no one is ever really free to completely let down his guard, it is hard not to sympathize.

Readers will love Alex Lynch who has pined for Gina all these years but is not about to let her return to claim the ranch he loves.

With plenty of chemistry between its hero and heroine, nice dialogue and suspense, I recommend UNDER THE SPELL. Love may not triumph over all, but can it find a small place in the lives of those who are most deserving?

Nickole Yarbrough