There’s a subplot involving Summer’s sister that I couldn’t have cared less about, both because the sister is annoying and it unfolds too predictably. It’s kind of all over the place, and not all of it works. The book is neither as tightly written nor plotted as Stuart’s best. But the longer they find themselves on the run from the Shirosama’s ruthless minions, the more Taka finds his resolve regarding Summer’s ultimate fate threatened. When Summer reveals that the bowl on display isn’t the real one, but actually a replica, she earns herself a reprieve until she reveals the location of the real bowl. Taka’s mission is to stop the Shirosama’s plans, and if that means killing Summer to prevent the cult leader from getting to her bowl, then so be it.

But he, who claims to be with the Japanese Department of Antiquities, may be an even greater threat than her abductors.

The mysterious Takashi O’Brien comes to her rescue. But she learns the hard way the Shirosama doesn’t play fair when it comes to getting what he wants when she’s kidnapped from the museum where the bowl is on display. She just knows there’s no way she’s forking over the bowl to the creepy crackpot. Summer doesn’t know his reasons, of course. While the bowl holds great sentimental value to Summer, it holds even greater meaning to the fanatical Shirosama, who plans to use it in a ceremony to spark a global apocalypse, purging evil from the world. Then her flaky mother falls under the spell of the Shirosama, head of Hollywood’s latest fad religion, the True Realization Fellowship. The nanny was killed shortly afterward, and the bowl remained in Summer’s possession, one of her most cherished belongings. When Summer Hawthorne was a child, her beloved Japanese nanny gave her a beautiful ice blue bowl to look after until she returned. It’s kind of a mess, but an agreeable one. The third in Anne Stuart’s Ice series, it’s not as good as the first book, Black Ice, but much better than the second, Cold As Ice. Oddly enough, although I thought Ice Blue suffered from a number of problems, I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Ice blue by anne stuart