Cassie Maddox is pulled back into a murder investigation when a young woman who could have been her twin and had been using her former undercover alias is found dead.

This one stretches suspension of disbelief even more than the previous novel. Come on, even if you looked exactly alike, who in their right mind would think they could impersonate someone's voice, personality, and opinions enough to deceive the housemates? And to have her boyfriend detective and former undercover boss also consider this a plausible tack to solve the crime. The very premise grates and insults.

To TOC, 1/22/12.

Came home from our TOC Chinese New Year lunch with me; If I like the first one I'll give this a try.

I really do have too many books. Don't know when I'd get around to this one, so I'll let it go.

Released at our second annual pop-up Skygate OBCZ during the 2012 Hawaii Book and Music Festival.

This book was set free to find a new reader; I'm so glad you've found it!

If you are able to make a journal entry to let me know you've found my book that would be terrific.

If you're new to BookCrossing, I hope you will take some time to explore this wonderful free and anonymous community of book lovers and learn about what it has to offer. If you decide to sign up, you may use me ( hyphen8 ) as your referring member, but that's certainly not required.

In fact, there are no requirements: this is now your book and you may do whatever you like with it. You're welcome to keep it for as long as you wish, and you can even mark it for your "permanent collection"...but you don't have to.

Please do feel free to make a journal entry when you're done with the book saying what you thought of it or what you plan to do with it next: if you decide to pass it this book to another reader or leave it for someone else to find, joining BookCrossing will allow you to follow the book's future travels whenever another reader makes a journal entry...who knows where it will turn up next?

Free your books - help spread the words!

Ok, I lied. I found this on someone's wishlist, so I'm pulling it OUT of the HBMF stack and will probably RABCK it some time in the future.

Mailed today as a wishlist tag book. Enjoy!

I received this great book as part of the Wishlist Tag Game, I am looking forward to reading it and then it can continue it's travels. Thanks for the "Tag"!!

This wishlist-tag book arrived in today's mail; many thanks! I enjoyed French's novel In the Woods, and look forward to this one!

I agree that the premise is hard to swallow, but I did enjoy this book. Maybe I'm with the Red Queen, able to believe six impossible things before breakfast {wry grin}.

While I would have liked to learn more about the unresolved mystery from the first book, I still enjoyed spending more time with Cassie Maddox, whose life was upset by the events of that book and who is currently spinning her wheels in a safe but boring job. On the other hand, she's in a happy relationship with Sam, another character from the last book, though the fact that he's still in the Murder Squad while she is not introduces a little bit of tension now and then.

But Cassie's calm life is due for another upset. Her old boss from undercover days, Frank Mackay, contacts her when a dead woman is found using Cassie's undercover identity - and resembling Cassie to an uncanny degree. Frank proposes an outrageous and risky scheme: they'll put it out that the victim isn't dead, but in a coma, and Cassie will impersonate her in hopes of learning who killed her. Unbelievable? Well, yeah - but then, the setup is such that a good deal of the work has already been done; the victim herself has been "impersonating" Cassie in her undercover identity, for reasons of her own. And effects found on the body include a load of video-snippets of her interacting with her housemates, a group of college chums who've formed their own tight-knit family and are sharing a large house in the area.

Cassie's reluctant, yet finds herself tempted to take part - against the wishes of her boyfriend Sam. She thinks it's because she wants justice for this girl who shares her appearance, but maybe it's her own restlessness... In any case, the plan goes into effect, Cassie studies her target intensely, and then - and then she steps into another world.

I really enjoyed this story, despite its unbelievability. The concept of bright but lonely people, separated from their own families for a variety of reasons, forging their own new family with close bonds, lots of bantering, and a delightful sense of belonging... it was very tempting indeed, even though I knew there were likely to be problems in the offing. Not least the fact that the housemates were among the obvious suspects in the murder...

Cassie does seem to get in over her head, seduced by the warmth and wit of her new/old friends - who seem to buy her impersonation. She also falls for the house, a rambling old mansion that the gang is slowly repairing, though it needs so much work that it could be a lifetime task. They explore the attics, discovering little treasures everywhere; they laugh and play and work together; and the whole setup is entrancing, quite literally.

But this happy state doesn't last, and there are cracks in the facade of closeness. It seems that Cassie's undercover persona wasn't the victim's first impersonation, and the motive for the murder might have involved a past life - or an attempt to betray this group of housemates. Local politics might be a factor too, as the house has been a target of vandalism for some time. But is Cassie still investigating, or is she becoming the character she's playing, more interested in defending her new friends than solving the crime?

Again, rather an unbelievable setup, yet the situation made me willing to accept it, and I liked all the characters so much that I really wanted it to work out - though as I like Sam and his relationship with Cassie I couldn't quite want her to simply give up on her own life and move in with the "Secret Garden" gang!

The resolution of the mystery was actually fairly straightforward, given what we learned about everyone, but I still found it heart-wrenching. Tempting as it is to live in an insular dream-world, it might not be a good idea...

I left this book in the Little Free Library near the playground in the park at around 3; hope the finder enjoys it!

*** Released as part of the 2016 Keep Them Moving release challenge. ***