Marquise Walker has vanished without a trace. There are few clues and much speculation on her sudden disappearance. But the truth is more terrifying than anyone can even imagine...Maggie McCrae would do anything to find her identical twin sister - even if it means stepping into her unfamiliar shoes. Walking through Marquise's wild, uninhibited life is a revelation for Maggie, proof that she knew very little about her twin's darker side and her connection to the only man Maggie ever loved, Thane Walker. Now he's the man she shouldn't trust, a man who could be her best hope...or a cold-blooded killer...The deeper Maggie digs, the more she is drawn into the web of her own past...to a twisted family legacy of desperate deceit, betrayal, and revenge...each secret bringing her closer to a final, shocking truth - and to the identity of a killer who's closer than she thinks...
Lisa Jackson is the number-one New York Times bestselling author of over ninety-five novels, including the Rick Bentz and Reuben Montoya Series, the Pescoli and Alvarez Series, the Savannah series, and numerous stand alone novels. She also is the co-author of One Last Breath, Last Girl Standing, and the Colony Series, written with her sister and bestselling author Nancy Bush, as well as the collaborative novels Sinister and Ominous, written with Nancy Bush and Rosalind Noonan. There are over thirty million copies of her novels in print and her writing has been translated into twenty languages.
Before she became a nationally bestselling author, she was a mother struggling to keep food on the table by writing novels, hoping against hope that someone would pay her for them. Today, neck deep in murder, her books appear on The New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly national bestseller lists.
With dozens of bestsellers to her name, Lisa Jackson is a master of taking readers to the edge of sanity—and back—in novels that buzz with dangerous secrets and deadly passions. She continues to be fascinated by the minds and motives of both her killers and their pursuers—the personal, the professional, and the downright twisted. As she builds the puzzle of relationships, actions, clues, lies, and personal histories that haunt her protagonists, she must also confront the fear and terror faced by her victims and the harsh and enduring truth that, in the real world, terror and madness touch far too many lives and families.
As a fan of Lisa Jackson, I have to say this one was a disappointment. This is a release of a book written many years ago. Almost from the beginning, I found it annoying - the names of the characters alone drove me up the wall - Marquise, Pomeranian ... smh. In addition, the characters were unlikeable. The only one who had any redeeming qualities was Maggie, and even at times, I wish she had a stronger backbone. The first half was okay. I wanted to know what happened but after a while, it just felt long and drawn out. Quite honestly, when I finally got to the ending, my first thought was - this could have been done a novella instead of a full-length novel. There was no real mystery and the conclusion was a let down. The author chose the obvious solution and the reasoning behind it was trite and uniinspring. With so many books on my tbr list, I can't believe I wasted time reading this one.
It was more of a romance than a mystery/thriller. I wouldn't even classify it as romantice suspense because there wasn't much of that either. Obviously, this one fell flat for me. This is my honest opinion in exchange for the earc.
Thank you #netgalley and #kensingtonbooks for the earc.
Maggie and Mary are twin sisters ... seemingly they are nothing at all alike.
Mary (Marquise) is not a nice person ... starting when she lured her sister's boyfriend away by saying she was pregnant. Turns out she was pregnant, but it wasn't Thane's child. She has gone on and become a TV star.
Mary has disappeared and the link that has always allowed them to communicate no matter the distance is telling Maggie that Mary is really in danger.
She has no choice but to turn to Thane ... if Maggie can trust him. The deeper she digs into her sister's life, she more she discovers things she's never known.
And now Maggie may be the next person to disappear ...
This is not the author's best work. I have read many of her books and not been disappointed .. until now. The characters are not deeply drawn ... and hard to feel much of anything for either of the sisters. Thane seems to think that everything between him and Maggie was complicated by Mary saying she was pregnant with his baby. He tried to do the right thing by marrying her .. but evidently he had already cheated on Maggie . So what does that make him. The plot was okay, although it's been done many times. Here's hoping her next book will be more on par with what I know she can accomplish.
For fans of this author, this is not her normal Romantic Suspense. It's more of a Psychological Drama.
Many thanks to the author / Kensington Books / Netgalley for the digital copy of this psychological drama. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
Mary Theresa, now known as Marquise and Maggie are twins and used to be close as children when they could communicate telepathically. Now Marquise works as a TV-show host in Denver while Maggie has retreated to the countryside in Idaho with her 16-year old daughter. Then one evening, Maggie hears her sister’s voice in her head; “It was Thane, he did this to me. Don’t let him get away with it.” She tries to hear more, but there’s only silence. A few hours later, this Thane stands on her doorstep. Her sister has been missing for days and the police think that he may have killed her. Before settling down as a true-crime writer, Maggie worked for a PI and she wants to use those skills to find her sister.
From the first word, there’s a strong reaction between Maggie and Thane and it’s obvious that there’s a lot of unfinished history between them. A prediction? Inevitably they will end up in bed together. It’s the classical ‘from enemies to lovers’ template. There’s a strong sexual undercurrent in this story, as seems to be customary with this author. It doesn’t bug me, but I’m sure that there will be people that don’t like the sexual content in some chapters. Not that there’s something indecent or shocking in those sexual encounters, think of Karen Rose type of interludes, but some people seem to be easily offended. If you are, this book is not for you. But if you’re looking for real erotica, this won’t be it either. In the first place, it’s crime fiction though with an added romance. The author clearly knows how to build up tension and suspense with several well-found twists and turns in the plot. Not all characters are likeable. The missing sister is a cold-hearted bitch, if you ask me. In the past, Marquise has betrayed Maggie in a ruthless way, but despite all that passed between them, she still packs up to go and search for her. Her feelings towards Thane are ambiguous. She’s still in love with him but won’t admit it to it. On the other hand, she doesn’t trust him because he’s keeping more than one secret from her. There’s also a daughter who acts and thinks like a typical teenager and complicates her mother’s life more than once. The story is told in a dual timeline; the events now and the things that happened when the girls were 17. The ‘now’ also must be taken with a pinch of salt as the book was first published in 2006. Some elements as smoking and cell-phone covering may feel a bit out-dated therefore, but not to the extent of interfering with the story. I thank Netgalley and Kensington for the free ARC they provided and this is my unbiased, honest review of it.
While feeding her horses, a voice floats through Maggie’s mind. It had been years since she felt it for the last time. Her twin-sister’s voice. Her sister is in trouble. And she’s blaming her ex-husband, Thane Walker, the man Maggie had fallen in love with years ago. Not long after she hears the voice, Thane shows up on her doorstep; just before she disappeared, Marquise and Thane had gotten into an awful fight, and now the police believe him to be their number one suspect.
Mary Theresa, now known as Marquise, has disappeared without a trace, without the tiniest clue as to where she went. Maggie ships her daughter off to her in-laws while she heads to Denver with Thane to search for her sister. Plenty of suspects: from ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends, current boyfriend, co-workers, supposed friends… Did someone ‘help’ Marquise disappear? Was she kidnapped? Was she murdered? Or did Marquise do what she’s done before; disappear for a few days only to reappear as if nothing was wrong? No ransom note, no body. The police are digging, and so is Maggie. But she doesn’t understand what she finds, for her sister has a dark side that Maggie never knew about, and doesn’t want to believe.
**I was disappointed with this story. You’re first introduced to Maggie and her daughter, Becca. She’s in some small town in Idaho, escaping a troubled past, dragging her daughter with her. What happens at the beginning is quite promising - however, it doesn’t stay that way. Thane shows up, wanting her help. She ships her daughter off, heads to Denver with Thane, and begins learning things about her twin sister that she never knew. Suddenly, she has no clue who her twin sister really is.
But then the story gets kind of lame. There’s a flashback to when they were teens. While Maggie was the loner, the one who prefered to be by herself, Mary Theresa was becoming the wild child. The twisted family legacy was rather awful in a disgusting way, not horrifying. Yes, there was deceit and betrayal, but there was no originality to it. Horrible enough that Maggie wants to truly believe that nothing happened and she suppressed it. Mary Theresa sleeps with Thane while he’s drunk, pretending to be Maggie, then claims the baby is his - when it actually wasn’t. And it goes on and on. At one point, I was screaming “enough already!” Mary Theresa becomes the bad person; uses men to get where and what she wants, blah, blah, blah.
Mary Theresa was screwed up in the head, had been since she was a teenager. Even when she tries to make it right at the end, her vision of things was still skewed. Maggie… OMG, I’ve never met such a naive character. I mean really naive; not an inkling of what her sister was really like? Suppressing something so ‘horrible’ that she refuses to remember it? She was sixteen, for crying out loud! I can understand if she’d been twelve, but sixteen? And Thane - a charmer? I never felt the ‘charm’. And his biggest secret he was holding back had to do with the possibility of a seventeen-year-old son out there somewhere, that Mary Theresa had given up after they split, and she was trying to extort money from him. The threat was, either loan me the money or you’ll never find your son? *biggest eyeroll I can make* And the one who set up the disappearing act/killer - unoriginal to say the least. The one character I liked that seemed to have any common sense: Becca. For a kid, she was smart. She figured out her cousin was using her, what her aunt and uncle were up to, and headed straight for her mother the second she figured it out. While it was stupid how she did the latter, I still thought her the smartest.
After the story is finished, Ms. Jackson writes to her fans. The sentence: “A fun-loving triangle!” had my jaw dropping. Fun-loving? It was sick and twisted, not fun-loving! Ugh.
Two identical sisters, except one is missing. Maggie leaves her quiet life in Idaho to search for her missing twin starlet sister, accompanied by her sister's ex husband, who used to be Maggie's boyfriend, Thane. It's a twisted, warped story. There are lots of curves amd bends in the story road. I liked Thane the best. I didn't care for Mary Theresa, who is self absorbed. I battled between liking and disliking Maggie. The plot held my attention because I absolutely had to see what happened. Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington for he advance copy.
I usually love second chance love stories but I just could not get pass the betrayal by Mary Theresa. Thane was really not very likable at all. One thing that stuck in my mind was after the 'incident' between himself and M.T he tells her not to say anything to Maggie....like really? could you really live with yourself knowing that you screwed her identical twin sister and not say a thing?? Maggie's whole psychic vibe from her sister was also very annoying. And....everything just tied up way too neatly as one big happy family.
Thanks for another Goodreads Giveaway! I always enjoy Lisa Jackson. I was surprised this was a give away as i had read it already. Redundancy makes this book 100 pages too long. Exciting ending boosts the appeal.
It's okay, but not great. I'll finish it but the characters are not very sympathetic or even likable most of the time. I think it may be because the character traits are a little too much to the extreme: 1. The male lead (the macho guy) is a little too pushy. He really doesn't have the right to be so angry at the world, when most of what went wrong in his life is his own fault or a direct result of his own actions. 2. The heroine needs to face reality. Why is she finding it so hard to accept that her twin is a manipulative, spoiled, self-centered, liar who believes the world revolves around her and her needs? She grew up with the twin, no one should know better than Maggie how self-absorbed and evil Mary Theresa is. Why is this so hard to accept? 3. The bratty teenager is just a little too bratty and obnoxious. I almost wanted her mother to smack her a few times. I really hope she improves a little. 4. Too much repetition with the "secrets" thing. And I was tired of people commenting how Maggie looked so much like Mary Theresa... they are identical twins. Isn't that the definition of identical? 5. And the suggestion of Maggie pretending to be Mary T ("walking in her shoes")was a little unclear. Maggie did nothing to act like or assume her sister's identity. She just went to everyone in Mary T.'s life and interviewed them. She made no attempt to pretend to be M.T. So, why the big scene about how dangerous it would be? She didn't do anything!
This book didn't leave much impression on me, beyond irritation with the characters. It wasn't really a bad read, I just got tired of Maggie continually refusing to believe the worst about her sister or that Thane loved her, not M.T.
I can always know that when I read Lisa Jackson book I get a little bit of everything. Romantic tension, mystery, thriller and a plot driven by character development. The narration goes between the present and the past.
Maggie is raising her teenage daughter alone in the great state of Montana. Widowed and contemplating her marriage and her relationship with her daughter, you know right away that she is vulnerable and complicated. Her daughter and her are in the middle of an argument, daughter storms off and then she hears her twin sister's voice Help me! Only you can help me. It was Thane. He did this to me! Maggie hasn't seen her sister in years and Thane was her first love that is also her sister's ex husband. Complicated!!! Sometimes reading about complications just makes your own life seem so much nicer! It gets more complicated! Thane shows up at her door asking about her sister. The plot is set- Get ready! Set Go! Can the two work together given their history to find her sister who may or may not be in danger. The whole horrendous history of the sisters, man troubles, family troubles come into light looking for the sister.
Maggie conveniently sends her daughter to her husband's family in California and goes with Thane to Denver to find her sister. Denver not only gives her answers but more questions about the dark life her sister led. Nail biting and surprising.
A special thank you to Kensington Books and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review.
2.5* The reviews for this book are very divided and I can see why. It's described as "twisted" and is called a thriller, but it felt a lot more like a romance book with a mystery plotline added in than a thriller.
The plotline was fine, but it was definitely more reminiscent of a family drama/romance than it was a thriller. I'm not sure I've ever read another thriller where so much time was devoted to waxing poetic about another character and how they're the only person you've ever loved, etc. The mystery itself was ok but felt pretty overdone. The twins idea was cool but I felt it was really under-used. Other than Maggie feeling connected to Mary Theresa/Marquise, the twin aspect didn't do a lot. It honestly just felt as though it was written in so that the idea of "twin telepathy" could be thrown around a couple of times.
This just felt really basic for a thriller. I'm sure Jackson has lots of other great novels out there, but for me, this book just didn't do it!
Always, I am honored to review a Lisa Jackson book. Lisa draws the reader in yet keeps the suspense going throughout this read.
Maggie, in her mid-30's, and her daughter, Becca' 13 have lived in rural Idaho for about 9 months. Hmmm - quite a change from Los Angeles... Maggie has a twin, Mary Theresa (stage name "Marquise"). Yet, Maggie "hears" her twin's voice asking for help.
Enter Thane, who had been married to.Mary Theresa. He arrives at Maggie's ranch. A total surprise to Maggie. (Maggie still has feelings tucked inside for Thane). She doesn't want to see him -she is afraid of dredging up old memories. Yet, Thane tells Maggie that her sister has disappeared -the police fearing the worst...
Lots of surprises and a truly enjoyable read!
Many Thanks to Kensington Books and NetGalley for the ability to read and review!
I absolutely loved this book! I look at other reviews and it is amazing that they are just mediocre. The characters were very easy to connect with and the story flowed well. There was a chapter that was a little slow when Maggie was getting to know Thane, but other than that things moved a a good pace. There was a point during the story when I was sure that I knew what would happen in the end, but just seeing how we would get there was still exciting. As usual with a great mystery writer like Lisa Jackson she blew me away with how she tied things up at the end. 4.5 stars ⭐️
Some wonderful characters, and a creative storyline! I adored the character Thane in this story, he was so well woven I could just envision this gritty, hard beautiful cowboy. I was not crazy about the character of Maggie her personality seemed to be a bit lacking in depth. The story itself takes us through a search for Maggie’s twin sister who she is mostly estranged from. We learn of a past of lies and deception from her twin resulting in a very distanced life. But when Mary Theresa seems to be in trouble Maggie goes to help. I adore this author but I found this book to be quite slow for one of her stories. Not much happened till the very end. I did enjoy reading about her reconnecting with Thane. There were also strange tangets like the aunt trying to get custody of Maggie’s daughter which randomly fizzled out. Overall this was an ok read. I also enjoy the Wyoming imagery woven in. This is worth a read curled up with your Kindle as long as your not expecting fast paced suspense.
I got this book from a friend, after telling her I'll read anything.. well, that was before I decided that life is too short to be reading bad books. Now, most of the time, I move on if the book doesn't grab my interest.
That was the case with this book. 65 pages in and I finally said 'forget it'! I just couldn't get into the story, I didn't care for the style of writing, and I just don't think I'd be glad I stuck it out and finished it.
A good book with good characters. Twins Mary Theresa and Maggie were super close, until they hit those teen years but never in a million years did Maggie ever think her twin would hurt her this way.
Now with a stage name and in L. A. Mary Theresa has gone missing. What has happened to her and by whom? And to make matters worse Maggie must team up with Thane to help find out and clear his name.
I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I liked the characters but found myself a little annoyed with the relationship ... still, I raced toward the end and am looking forward to the next Lisa Jacson.
Interesting story of twin sisters - one very glamorous - one quite - romance - good mystery as one goes missing - murder - revenge - deceit - betrayal - some of it all up to the plot - well written with good descriptions -
I feel like a jerk giving this a 1.5, but when it comes to reviews, I try to be as brutally honest as possible. This book was disappointing seeing as how Whispers is one of my favorite books, definitely my favorite by Lisa Jackson. I’m baffled as to how this got such great reviews. I can’t believe how little ones and twos this book got seeing as how plot hole filled it was. Where do I begin... Mary Teresa, Mary, MT, Marquise. The woman has 4 damned names. Repeating questions 3 times per chapter. This drove me insane. No one talks in repeating questions that often. MT and Thane are assholes. Totally unlikable characters. Not much set up. I don’t know about these characters enough to care about them. Since everything is past tense, there’s nothing to really be surprised about. It’s like, ‘Well I know she survives so why do I care? I know they get married, so why do I care?’ I swear to God, people in this book act like they’ve never seen identical twins before. Why even bring up the idea of Maggie being MT. Anti climactic and didn’t have any purpose in the book whatsoever. Who the fuck is Eve?? She had like one scene. When it was like ‘OMG-Eve did it!’ I was like who?...the chick with a few lines??
Contradictions: (ie: my reason for giving the score I did. Also-a lot of these are direct quotes). 1. Estranged sister vs. My sister and I are very close. 2. Poured herself a shot then spilled the remainder of her drink. If it were a shot, she would have drank it in one swoosh. Something on the rocks would have been a better substitution as it would indicate she was sipping and then was set down to be spilled over. 3. Becca loves LA and wants to move in with her cousin vs. Becca hates LA and her cousin abandons her and her aunt and uncle act funny and pry all the time then on pg. 375, Becca loves LA again. 4. Becca really wants a tattoo vs. Becca didn’t care that she didn’t get a tattoo. 5. Ms. Vs. Mrs. McCrae. Towards the end of the book it was a lot more consistent, which helps a little, I guess. 6. Beginning of book Becca says her mom isn’t old vs. End of the book she says her mom is old. 7. The book starts off with ‘Thane lied’ a million times, but the only thing he lied about was not telling Maggie he had a kid and she didn’t even find that out until the end of the book. So what the fuck did he lie about?
The fact that there were that many contradictions is embarrassing.
My other reasoning for my horrible score: Double booking Henderson’s alibi. Pg. 424 and 434. I don’t have the book on me at the moment to double check the exact wording, but on pg. 424, Henderson races out of the office because he figures out who the bad guy is. Then on pg. 434, he’s meandering in his office when someone comes in and announces they have information about who the bad guy is. Did someone check and edit this book? How could this have slipped by so many people (including those who have impressed ratings) and no one noticed??
If she only knew by Lisa Jackson has almost the exact same plot line. Without giving any spoilers about that book, the car accident scene of this book rings an awful lot of bells. How lazy is that to copy and paste an entire plot and what? Change a couple names? I thought better of you, Lisa Jackson. The ONLY reason this got half a star more from me is because it was at least semi interesting. Certain scenes prompted me to read what happens next. I like my friends too much to recommend this book to them.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Not a bad book. However, hero needed to wise up. He should have got rid of the inter years ago and stopped his pride fighting for Maggie. Also, Becca was a joke, she needed a slap, the way she spoke to her mum was horrendous, what I did not get was why Maggie allowed it?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Sooo... It's a bit jarring to go from a book that uses language as beautifully as The Innamorati to one that wields it a bit more like a blunt instrument, such as this one. I've read worse, but yeah. The difference was striking.
That said, to give credit where it's due, what Jackson lacks in subtlety, she does make up for in creating a reasonably compelling, mostly well-paced story. Again, I didn't guess the ending, but in this case, it was more one of those cases where I came up with what I thought would be a great ending, and she took it in a different direction. I liked mine better, though.
A few things I want to call out because they really annoyed me:
1. I really did not need to beaten quite so hard over the head with the fact that Thane exudes animal magnetism, raw masculinity, pure sexuality, or whathaveyou. But for the first several chapters, it felt like Jackson really wanted to make sure you didn't forget it, and reminded you every other page. It was a bit much.
2. Have the people in... Denver, I think it was, never heard of twins? Every single person Maggie met seemed blown away and confused by how much she resembled her identical twin sister. For those who may not have known Mary Theresa had a twin, I suppose it's somewhat understandable to do a bit of a double-take. But for the rest of them, what did you expect her identical twin to look like?
3. And finally, can we please collectively agree to remove the phrase "making love" from our vocabulary? It's pretty much always cringey in pretty much every possible situation, and it's especially weird when you're also describing it as purely lust-based with no emotional connection.
All that said, it was a decent brain-candy sort of read, and a solid choice when that's what you're looking for.
Twice Kissed by author Lisa Jackson is more romance than mystery/thriller. This book was first published in 2006 and I do not understand why it is being released again. I have read many Lisa Jackson books that were thrilling with suspense but Twice Kissed is NOT one of those books. I was disappointed at how shallow the mystery was written because I know this author has written some awesome thrillers. I could see where this book was headed by the second chapter, but I didn't anticipate a dollop of incest being thrown into the mix. Maggie Macrae has a twin sister, Marquise, who goes missing from her home and job. Thane Walker, who was Maggie's first boyfriend and her sister's current ex, arrives at Maggie's ranch to convince her to come with him to Denver to clear his name and help find Mary Teresia. Maggie's daughter is being rebellious since her mother moved them to a small ranch in the middle of 'nowhere' Idaho. If you want to read a romance with a little bit of mystery, and a lot of family drama, you will like the book. Publication Date: December 29, 2020 Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.
I wanted to read this book as i had found the plot interesting as i read in back cover. But once i started reading, i was disappointed. It was not as interesting as it promised to be. Starting part till where Maggie reaches Denver seemed interesting, but later on it was dragged too much with the feelings maggie and Thane have for each other, Becca staying with her cousin and then running away from there (this part didn't make any sense). There was a part where Maggie decided to walk in her twin sister's shoes. I expected her to appear in front of every as her identical twin sister MT and then find the truth. But nothing as such happened. Instead all she did was interview people who were associated with MT. :( Though i knew the ending is not going to be great or interesting i finished it just for the sake of finishing.
I wouldn't recomment this novel for readers who likes suspense/thriller.
Typical chick lit. The heroine is a mirror twin who's reverse image not only stole her 'true love' but also married him. She is now missing and the heroine plus hero (first love) are searching for her. They rekindle their relationship of years earlier as they evade the police and continue their search. Lots of genre twists and turns before the novel ends.
Another good suspense Read. I just don't get the nay sayers. I really like this author, her writing style, & imagination. Almost always the stories resolve (unlike other authors). I can always count on a good book from this author or her sister.