"A powerful, cautionary thriller, a reminder that the road to hell is, indeed, a slippery slope. And DeYoung does a fine job of mapping the way.”—William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author, for The Day He Never Came Home
On the evening she met exonerated murderer Thomas Danver, Melissa Burke let him help put her five-year-old son to bed before coming back upstairs to enjoy the dinner party. Thomas was so nice, and a pediatrician. She didn’t know anything then about his wife’s suspicious death...
Relocating with her 5-year-old son to a new city after an ugly divorce, Melissa Burke isn’t looking for a new relationship right away—only distance from her ex, and space to rest and heal from the emotional scars of a broken marriage. But an unexpected relationship is exactly what she finds at a friend’s dinner party when she meets Thomas Danver, a charming widower who asks for her number at the end of the night. Intrigued, Melissa learns from her neighbors that Thomas is a dedicated father of two girls, one of the most respected pediatricians in the city—and an exonerated murderer.
Thomas’s first wife went missing three years ago, presumed dead, and Thomas was eventually cleared of her murder in an investigation that became a local media sensation. But while some still believe he killed his wife, Melissa’s friends insist that he was unfairly targeted by the police and couldn’t hurt a fly. Attracted to Thomas and also fascinated by the case, Melissa agrees to one date—and finds herself quickly swept into an obsessive, whirlwind romance.
But when Melissa receives a chilling, anonymous threat—or perhaps it's a warning—she begins to question how much she truly knows about the man she’s falling in love with. Is he really innocent?
"Stay Away From Him had me hooked from the first line. The characters are complex in a way that makes it impossible to tell who to trust. I stayed up late reading because I had to know the ending and was surprised by every twist." —Tasha Coryell, author of Love Letters to a Serial Killer