Don't Say A Word

A while back, I banned myself from going to library book sales, at least until I finish reading the piles of books I've got around the house.  Many of those books were acquired at library sales...especially since you can often get a bag for a dollar or two on the last day of the sale.

But, I picked up Don't Say A Word by Barbara Freethy at a library sale.  I was intrigued by the cover photo at first.  (I often do, in fact, judge books by their covers.)  I think at first I may have confused it with the movie of the same name.  You know, the one that has Brittany Murphy saying "I'll never tell," in that creepy sing-song voice.  But I digress.

In Don't Say A Word, Julia DeMarco is in the midst of planning her wedding, albeit a tad reluctantly, when she spots a photo of a child that looks like her.  A child staring through the gates of a Russian orphanage.  And the child is wearing a necklace exactly like one Julia's mother gave her.

As far as she knows, Julia is neither Russian nor an orphan.  Raised by her mother and step-father, she is part of a big family, and has been since she was four years old.  And yet, there are no pictures of her before that time, and she has no memories before her mother's wedding.

So Julia abandons her wedding plans and goes off in search of her past.  She finds Alex Manning, the son of the photographer who took the famous orphan photo.  Julia and Alex begin a quest that takes them back through a past that they didn't know they shared.

Plenty of intrigue and plot twists kept me reading Don't Say A Word far later than I should have at night, and nearly made me late to work a morning or two.