Wrong Mirror [Hardcover]

Karen Aylward had only two important things in her life--her twin sister and her son. Being twin sisters, Karen and Kirsty were sometimes able to read each other's thoughts or feel each other's pain.

Karen feels Kirsty is in terrible pain one night. She knows who Kirsty is with but she can't get to her soon enough and feels Kirsty die.

The following day, Karen answers the door to Owen Chissolm, father of Hall Chissolm, who was the man in Kirsty's life and who also was with her when she died. Owen tells Karen that before Kirsty had died she had confessed the one secret she swore to Karen she would never tell--that she, Kirsty, had given birth to Hal's son and given him to Karen to adopt without ever letting Hal know he had a son.

Agreeing to travel to the Middle East where Kirsty died in a terrorist attack and Hal was seriously injured, Karen took her son to meet his father for the first time in his life. Once there, she couldn't stop from exchanging bitter words with Hal causing him to swear he would do whatever it takes to get his son back.

Back in Sydney, Karen tries to go on with her life knowing Hal was going to do what he swore but the solution Hal had when he finally showed up was one she never thought he'd come up with--marry him and be the mother of his son and future children or give him up in a custody battle. Knowing she didn't have the resources Hal and his father had for a custody battle she agreed to the marriage knowing it would be a real marriage...not a marriage of convenience.

Karen and Hal were both wonderful in this story, both were strong individuals made stronger for their love for each other. Emma Darcy never fails to write a heartwrenching story that will tug at any mother's heart and soul.

FROM THE BACK COVER: He had robbed her of everyone she loved

To Karen Aylward, newspaper magnate Hal Chissolm was a monster. He'd refused to marry Kirsty, her pregnant twin sister, so that Kirsty had given up their son at birth--to be adopted by Karen.

Then Kirsty was fatally injured in a terrorist attack. And from her deathbed she had told Hal about their child. It was the first Hal had heard of him.

He wanted the son he had never known and he threatened to take him away unless Karen agreed to marry him. To her he had seemed to be a man of no feeling, yet clearly he was--and the feelings he aroused in Karen were equally intense ....

MY THOUGHTS: As usual my first thoughts were, ugh, hero gets it on with BOTH sisters? How in the world will Emma Darcy make this alright? Well, what can I say, she was able to remove the distate with her worderful storytelling. I don't want to spoil it for you but I really liked this book. The hero was definitely conflicted and even though the premise was what it was, I didn't really hate him for it. It was just an unfortunate incident the way things happened. As for the heroine, she was great. I like her devotion to her sister and her capacity to forgive. I like that she was not a ninny. She had backbone. I like that Darcy didn't focus so much on the nitty gritty relationship between hero and sister. If she did, then it would just put too much pictures in my head of the hero "whatevering" two sisters, lol. There was a couple of scenes/line where I was like, wow, hero actually said that. For a harlequin presents, LOL. The love scenes were kinda hot too =) Anyhow, a really good story and a keeper for me.

*SPOILERS*
The hero was in a relationship with a journalist who is one of identical female twins. She bore him a child without his knowledge and then made a gift of the baby to her married yet childless twin sister. She also maligned the hero through lies over how he did not want a child and would have insisted on an abortion had he known of the pregnancy. Of course, the sister believed her journalist twin. Also, in the six years the journalist was with the hero, not once did she introduce him to her twin, her only family.

The secrets are only revealed when the journalist was dying from a terrorist bomb explosion. The hero was with her during the incident.

Hero was seriously injured. From his hospital bed and in case he will not survive, he made the request to meet his son for the very first time.

Heroine is the surviving twin sister. She is divorced from her husband due to his inability to accept her adopted child. For years she hated hero, believing her sister's lies about his character. Now she hates him even more for fear he would take her son away (actually his biological son). She believes this justifies her behavior during their 1st meeting. It didn't matter that he was recovering from a major heart/lung surgery in a foreign county, she lets rip her contempt of him.

This elicits a burning antagonism from the hero over what he thinks is her part in stealing his child. Long story short, once his health is recovered, his revenge was to force her into marriage or he'd go to court to sue for full custody of the child. And yet, for all their hostility, every time H/h meets they both feel this strange sneaking sense of belonging. The heroine more than the hero questions and resists this strange attraction. Does he regard her as a substitute for sister? What exactly does he feel? But whatever their doubts, it isn't enough to prevent the consummation of their marriage.

The heroine eventually became preggers and gave birth to identical twins, the type called mirror image twins, each being half of same egg and therefore one unit. These type of twins are telepathic. Apparently they're so rare and fascinating that a scientist makes a study of the babies, much to the hero's disgust although the heroine grants permission.

Facts gleaned from the scientist's study, finally, act as the key to unlocking the oddities of the mirror image twins' behavior and, ultimately, to this rather confused romance.

Due to said telepathic abilities, it seems that the journalist twin who died had known from her very first meeting with the hero that he was destined for her sister, that they're meant to be together. But she wanted him so much for herself that for as long as she possibly could, she kept them apart. To compensate her messing w/ destiny, the journalist gave her twin the hero's baby. To compensate the hero, she tells the truth only as she id dying: that he has a son and he must promise to marry the surviving twin (the right mirror). Journalist told the hero she herself is the wrong mirror, has always known it, and it caused her plenty of secret agony which consequently lead to her wild dare-devil death-wish behavior while on assignment in war-torn countries. This mirror image twin mojo supposedly explains why hero at best could only 'almost love' the joournalist yet always stop short of the real thing because the real thing is destined for the right mirror twin.

Weird, is it? Scratching your head yet? wondering is this is supposed to be some quasi-paranormal claptrap? Welcome to the club. But, to be fair, I have heard it said that an author has license to write about anything, anything at all, and even get away with any subject, so long as the author keeps a tight grip on the story. Well, that is sadly not the case here. In this story, it felt as though the characters and storylines were careening drunkenly away from the author.

The characters' thought and emotional processes shifted and contradicted itself too often that it left me unsure how a character truly felt. From beginning to near end, the heroine alternates between fire, gloominess and longing for the hero, her mood changes were abrupt and unconvincing. The woman looks to be suffering a chronic case of pessimism and below normal mood and then, wham, out of nowhere the author has her 'giggling' over the supposedly cute funny antics played by mirror image twins and I'm stopped in my reading tracks because the giggle is waa-ay off. Something's not right with the character portrayal. As for hero's purpose, it turned murky once the heroine became pregnant. He confused me as to why he was feeling bad about his treatment of heroine. Within the circumstances of the story, his resentments/anger toward the heroine was within ballpark range, there was nothing cruel about it. His professed remorse felt out of place, contrived, confusing. The little boy David who the heroine obsessed over in first half of story suddenly has very little place in her thoughts once she got pregnant. It is almost as though the author forgot about David, as though she took a long break in writing and couldn't quite recall her original train of thought once she resumed writing. These characters failed to communicate what they wanted and why, perhaps because that character's earlier action/thought stupidly negated what they later claimed to want.

In the end, I decided the author must have come across the subject of mirror image twins in some tabloid, became infatuated with its ersatz peculiarities, found a sensationalist angle for a romance and just got to working. The result is this rather thin story.

All said and done, I still respect Emma Darcy so I gave this a kindly 3-star.