Ricki Thomas

Mary Miller was a woman scorned. Fifteen-year-old Mary was in love with her University professor, Harry --a married man. Mary and Harry had a clandestine affair which ended with the pregnancy of Mary Miller. All Mary wanted was to wreck Harry's marriage to Beryl and become Harry's wife. But Mary bore Harry's illegitimate twins, Ana and Andrew only to see both her children taken into adoption. Mary swore that if it took all her life, she would spend it finding her children and destroying the lives of those who tore her dreams to shred. Many years later, Mary swore to destroy the man who ripped her life and the woman who was her rival. Buying a psychic book from a charity shop, Mary posed as a physic, opening her home to desperate women who wanted to know about their loved ones who had passed on. To Mary's delight, Beryl walked into Mary's basement wanting to consult the spiritualist about the fate of her daughter, Sophie. This is where the story really begins and Mary finds out about Sophie. Mary now begins her plans for revenge.

Little did she know it, but her daughter Ana was adopted by Harry and Beryl who renamed the baby Sophie. Sophie married a man who abused her physically as well as mentally. When Mary learned she was her daughter, she put a plan in motion to bring her back into her life. As the story unfolds, Mary uncovers that her son is a police officer who happens to be the officer in charge of Sophie's husband's insurance fraud. It was Alan who first discovered that Sophie was a battered woman. Alan fell in love with Sophie unbeknownst that she was his twin sister. There are a lot of twists and turns in the story, making the story interesting in places. The book touches the theme of vengeance and violence and what it can do to people.

I thought that this was the worst book I had ever read. I did enjoy the story line and the twists up to the first half of the book; but the book was written so badly with lots of grammatical errors. Almost every page was full of grammatical errors. It seemed as if the author took the first draft of the book and published it. The Spanish in the book was taken literally from Google Translations; it did not sound right nor translated right. I am fluent in Spanish and know how to read and write it. Even in the passages where broken Spanish was spoken between English and Spanish characters, the Spanish used didn't translate right. I also didn't like the ending. I felt it was rushed. Also, I didn't think it was believable that Juan Murrilla, the Spanish doctor who attended the battered Sophie in Spain would fall so in love with Sophie so quickly that he decided to marry her in the space of a few days, move to England in the space of a month and leave his doctorate and family behind so swiftly.… (mais)