Customer Reviews

Look-alike (Harlequin Intrigue)

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From the proloque to the very end, the suspense in Rita Herron's Look-Alike permeates every page. Sheriff Miles Monahue meets and marries Caitlin Collier in record speed and she disappears just as quickly. When she turns up as dead, naturally, the husband is the first suspect. If that wasn't enough to complicate his life, out of the blue, Caitlin's look-alike appears claiming to have no memory other than being kidnapped and been held as a hostage against her will at some psychiatric hospital.

Miles feels compelled to unravel the clues and protect the woman who stirs such strong feelings in him. Is she Caitlin or Nora? How can she ever know when her mind is so clouded with the drugs given to her at Nighthawk Island --- when she has memories of both women ---when she feels so pulled towards Miles even though she has no memory of their marriage?

Herron packs so much suspense even into relatively short novel. The plot complication of 2 main suspense threads, the murder and the kidnapping, heightened both the suspense and the romance. Fantastic!

Sheriff Miles Monahue met and married Caitlin Collier within a month. Three days later she vanished and Miles was immediately a suspect since they'd had a huge public fight & breakup the night before she disappeared. Three weeks later his wife's body is found, apparently the victim of a serial killer "The Carver". Miles feels guilty because he hadn't been able to give his wife love and that might be why she was susceptible to a killer. Later that day, a woman shows up in Miles office, dehydrated, malnourished and in shock, who looks exactly like his dead wife, Miles had an immediate sexual reaction right off even though she is so ragged looking. "Caitlin" has little memory except that of being kept in a mental hospital, against her will, constantly drugged and receiving shock treatments.

Here are a few things that made no sense: This is winter: "Miles awoke in the heat of the night. It's cold in the room, the fire has burned down." It's either hot or cold, pick one. Miles talked about having "brought" Caitlan to Raven's Peak yet the bar they met at was in Raven's Peak. Miles was on his "morning rounds" then a few hours later on his "evening rounds". The cover of the book shows a woman with blond hair but the twins had dark hair.

There were vague allusions to Miles past but we never really found out about it. In the beginning of the book he was having severe headaches and light sensitivity, and wore sunglasses everywhere even when he got out of the shower. Again we never found out why.

Miles and Caitlin were married after "a night of drunken passion" and "their relationship was built on sex". Sam had met Kaitlin in a bar where she was singing seductively in a tight red dress and stiletto shoes. About nuCaitlan he said, "She was shy and tentative, so like the woman he'd fallen in love with." Huh? Next thing he thinks is that his wife had been manipulative and deceitful, then he'd been deeply in love with her. Then he thought he should be faithful to her in death even though she wasn't faithful to him in life. Then he didn't love her, then he would always love her, then not, and back and forth through the whole book.

Who was the twin? Caitlan, no Nora, no Caitlan, no Nora. By the end of the book I wasn't sure WHO she was. This book is part of a series so maybe if I'd read the whole series it would make more sense, although I doubt it, and I'm not about to buy the rest of the books to find out.

I can recommend Rita Herron's "Don't Say a Word".