It is said that everyone has a twin somewhere. Not identical twins who are genetically the same. A doppelganger…someone who is unrelated but looks the same. Scientists believe that, statistically, there are six people out in the world who look like each one of us.

If you’re on TikTok, take a look at @gvizzle_74 and @everydaytrace or @eddudez and @jt_laybourne or @notjennifergarner and (duh) @jennifergarner. Followers have looked at all of these creators and thought, whoa, separated at birth.

Probably 30 years ago, I met someone at a friend’s party who I swear to you still looks to me like Tim Allen. I’m not talking about a slight resemblance. I mean, he looks like Tim Allen. He told me that I look like Patricia Richardson. I don’t see it, but from that point on, we called each other Tim and Jill. (Home Improvement…if you haven’t seen it, check it out.)

My daughter recently met two girls at a speech tournament. Different schools, different families, definitely not related, but they looked like twins. (She showed me the picture.) A little closer to home, Corinne and one of her friends look more than a little related.

Corinne’s most obvious feature is her hair, so when I look for her from a distance—say, in marching band—I look for her hair first. She’s only 5’4″, and I have 55-year-old eyes, so her big head of curly black hair has always been pretty easy to spot…until Layla. Layla has the same big head of curly black hair.

I hate to admit the number of times I watched the band perform at a football game and mistook Layla for my own child. Luckily, Corinne and Layla are friends, and Corinne thinks it’s funny that it’s not so easy for me to spot her anymore. They get such a kick out of it that they decided to dress the same for Twin Day at school.

So what if you came across someone who doesn’t just look like you but also seems to be living a similar life? And what if that life isn’t great, and you find yourself in a position to do something about it?

That’s the premise of a book I finished recently. I had some challenges with it, but it’s a decent debut novel releasing in May.

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐
3 Stars for The Favor by Nora Murphy

288 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books
Publication Date: May 31, 2022
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press.

Publisher’s Description

Leaving would be dangerous. Staying could be worse.

Leah and McKenna have never met, though they have parallel lives.

They don’t―ever―find themselves in the same train carriage or meet accidentally at the gym or the coffee shop.

They don’t―ever―discuss their problems and find common ground.

They don’t―ever―acknowledge to each other that although their lives have all the trappings of success, wealth and happiness, they are, in fact, trapped.

Leah understands that what’s inside a home can be far more dangerous than what’s outside. So when she notices someone else who may be starting down the same path she’s on, she pays attention. She watches over McKenna from afar. Until one night she sees more than she bargained for. Leah knows she can’t save herself, but perhaps she can save McKenna.

Leah and McKenna have never met. But they will.

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Main Characters:

• Leah Dawson – attorney who lost her job several months before, married to Liam for 10 months although they have been a couple for four years
• Liam Dawson – high-powered and successful divorce attorney, owns his own firm, wants nothing more than for Leah to stay home to start a family
• McKenna Hawkins – pediatrician, stopped working many months ago after a miscarriage, married to Zack
• Zackary Hawkins – psychiatrist, forced McKenna to stop working after her miscarriage by blaming a virus she picked up at work, wants McKenna to stay home and focus on having a child
• Detective Jordan Harrison – lead detective, his partner Mallory Cole currently in a coma after an on-the-job incident where she was shot in the head

    

Trigger warning: domestic abuse, domestic violence

Nora Murphy’s debut novel has an interesting premise. Two women leading similar lives when a chance encounter unknowingly puts them on a dangerous path together. The story is told from the three first-person perspectives of Leah, McKenna, and Detective Harrison. There are also two timelines: Now (May 3-June 6) and beginning nine months prior, which explains how the characters got to where they are today.

As the story begins, Leah is at one of her five regular liquor stores. We learn quickly that she shops at a different liquor store every day, frequenting each one the same day every week. At her normal Friday location, she happens upon a woman who reminds her very much of herself nine months prior.

As Leah watches the other woman leave the store, she notices that she and the woman have the same car (different model years), they even look similar, and Leah feels compelled to follow her. She finds herself wishing that she was the woman as the woman entertains a couple of friends on her patio. And then the woman’s husband arrives, and Leah notices the woman’s reaction to his affection. As Leah pulls away to go home, she recognizes even more of herself in the woman, and this is really what begins her obsession.

In the same chapter, the POV turns to McKenna, who frequents the same liquor store as Leah on Fridays, but in McKenna’s case, it is to purchase a six-pack of beer for Zack. This particular Friday, she also purchases some wine and snacks to share with the friends that Leah sees her with.

Even before we see anything happen in the lives of these women, there are Sleeping with the Enemy vibes. Successful and controlling husbands who want their wives to stay home, and successful professional women who are caught off-guard and feel trapped by the changes in their spouses.

I was intrigued, and I like the way the author intertwined the story lines. Books with a POV change typically change from one chapter to the next. In this case, we regularly have chapters here that are a point in time, and we get multiple perspectives before moving on to the next chapter. I really liked that. I found myself engrossed in the back stories starting nine months prior, seeing how both women came to unwillingly leave their professions.

That said, when Harrison comes into the story line, which is just under 40% of the way through the book, it starts to drag down a bit. One thing in particular that I don’t understand or care for is the introduction of a storyline with his partner, who is hospitalized and in a coma after an on-the-job incident where she was shot. There are 20+ references to the partner, five of which call her “Detective Mallory Cole” and one “Mallory Cole.” Keeping in mind that this is a first-person narrative, no one talks like that. I can see it on first reference, but when he’s narrating to us about his partner, after the first reference, it should just be “Cole” (which all the detectives call her) or “Mallory.”

Harrison seems to be more than a little fond of his partner. He visits her at the hospital regularly, talks to her about his cases. But there’s no value to having her in this story except to explain why he’s working alone. There is absolutely no need to have him keep going back to talk to her even if this is a setup for a future book where she comes out of the coma.

More in the spoilers below, but I’m giving it 3 stars. I almost went 3.5 until I started writing up the spoilers. All in all, this is a decent debut that I think could be better, and I am hopeful that the author’s next novel will be better.

***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***

There is a lot to unravel here that would be difficult without spoilers.

Let’s start with Leah, who we know frequents a different liquor store every day. She is clearly an alcoholic. With the amount of alcohol she consumes, though, I find it hard to believe that she would have the wherewithal to basically stalk McKenna and drive around her neighborhood without being stopped by police.

She has the awareness she needs to leave her cell phone at home to avoid her husband tracking her (with one notable exception). She prepares dinner for her husband every day. She breaks into his office, finds his access codes for the safe, and remembers to clear the browser history on his computer. We’re supposed to believe that he has no idea what she’s up to. By the end of the book, we find out otherwise, and I’ve heard of functional alcoholics, but she seems too functional to be believable. I mean, she literally gets away with murder.

Now McKenna. Once her husband is dead, McKenna becomes obsessed with Leah…finding out who she is, what her circumstances are, and eventually planning to return “the favor” by killing Leah’s husband. She does everything wrong. She doesn’t act like a grieving widow, which we know she’s not. She starts to stalk Leah, and this is one of the things that drags the book down. It’s just repeating the stalking that Leah did in reverse. And apparently McKenna never gets followed by police, who haven’t been able to determine whether she should be a suspect in her husband’s murder. No one keeps an eye on her. She knows she’s not the killer, but Harrison knows she’s hiding something and yet she is allowed to just go about her business.

And finally Detective Harrison. His narrative slows the story down because he trying to solve crimes that we already know the background of. I found it frustrating to listen to his thought process and his continual comments about how Mallory Cole would know how to get this information or that information or have this or that conversation. And the whole time I knew he was wrong! If he had solved the case, I might have been able to let it go, but we basically went through his chapters for nothing. We know that he knows both wives were involved with the murders of both husbands, but he can’t prove it. He can’t quite put the pieces together, so he moves onto the next case. We could have gotten his conversations about their husbands from Leah’s or McKenna’s points of view.

The final chapter is an epilogue of sorts, taking place “two weeks later.” McKenna has partnered with a former classmate to open a private medical office, and Leah has been invited back to her job. Both have gone back to their maiden names, and they are introduced by Leah’s boss. McKenna and her friend are the firm’s new clients, and Leah will likely be involved in some of the work. Again, is this a setup for them to be a part of the next book in a series? Is Harrison going to eventually solve their cases with the help of his partner when she comes out of a coma? I just don’t know.

I would have ended the book without the last chapter. Both women got away with murder…vigilante justice, but still murder.

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