She kept watching the words.
A thriller needs to hold the interest of the reader from the very beginning. It needs to engage with them, hold them in rapt attention, and prevent them from putting down the book.
She could not have gazed at him with a more rapturous intensity if she had been a small child and he a saucer of ice cream.
He sat by her, watching every gesture she made, as if he would paint her portrait afterward.
You always look like someone's sucked the life right out of you when something fascinates you. -Tris
The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination.
He had them as spellbound as a room full of Ewoks listening to C-3PO.
In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary?
