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Playing Dead    by Julia Heaberlin order for
Playing Dead
by Julia Heaberlin
Order:  USA  Can
Ballantine, 2012 (2012)
Softcover, e-Book

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* * *   Reviewed by Mary Ann Smyth

As if life weren't hard enough with her father just a few days in his grave, Tommie McCloud receives a letter from a woman claiming that Tommie is her daughter. How the blue blazes could that be? She had a mother, one who raised her and loved her and her sister Sadie. The writer states that Tommie had been kidnapped when a baby.

Tommie's brother Tuck died in a car accident many years ago and her mother is slipping into dementia. Her father is now dead and this crazy letter digs up a past Tommie didn't know she had. It reveals to Tommie that she is the daughter of a mobster who was a brutal killer. And her mother is supposedly waiting for a man who would never see daylight again, being in prison for life.

Her world now revolves around discovering the truth. It's a hard task even for a woman such as Tommie who is as tough as nails. She unlocks secrets from the past that she's not sure she wants to know. Her on-again off-again relationship with Hudson is rekindled, but Tommie is not sure this is a good idea. Life sucks.

And then she finds a secret that almost blows her off her feet. It makes a great ending to a really good read.

Playing Dead by Julia Heaberlin is a debut novel that makes me wish for another book from Heaberlin right now. Lie Still is the next one and I shall have to be patient waiting for it as it is still in the writing stage.


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