"Fabulous romantic suspense thriller"

In San Francisco twenty-eight years old Julia DeMarco and her fiancé Michael Graffino visit the Palace of Legion of Honor where they will hold their wedding. While their planner is occupied and Michael is conducting business on his cell phone, Julia hears music so she investigates. She sees a photograph of a three or four year old girl looking through the gates of an overseas orphanage, who looks like her. The girl wears a necklace identical to hers and Julia wonders if the girl is her even though she never left the country.

Michael laughs at her thoughts. However, she decides to investigate starting with the photographer Joe Manning who died one day after he shot the Russian girl. She visits Joe's son, also a photographer, Alex who remembers his dad's dire warning to forget the picture; the next day dad was murdered. Still Julia needs to know who the girl is and begins to make inquires over the objections of her family and Michael. Unable to resist Alex assists her. What she learns will shake her belief system to its core.

DON'T SAY A WORD is a fabulous romantic suspense thriller with the emphasis on the amateur investigation as Julia slowly peels away the lies done out of love to protect her to obtain the truth. Julia is a great protagonist struggling with one revelation after another while disbelieving that people she loves and trusts fabricated her history. Two fabulous final twists involving the girl in the picture will leave readers saying the word to other fans about this fine novel and demanding more such tales from Barbara Freethy.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted September 15, 2005

Summary

Everything she's been told about her past is a lie ...

Julie De Marco is planning a perfect San Francisco wedding when she comes face-to-face with a famous photograph, the startling image of a little girl behind the iron gate of a foreign orphanage—a girl who looks exactly like her. But Julia isn't an orphan. She isn't adopted. And she's never been out of the country. She knows who she is—or does she?

Haunted by uncertainty, Julia sets off on a dangerous search for her true identity—her only clues a swan necklace and an old Russian doll, her only ally daring, sexy photographer Alex Manning. Suddenly nothing is as it seems. The people Julia loved and trusted become suspicious strangers. The relationships she believed in—with her mother, her sister, and her fiance—are shaken by new revelations. The only person she can trust is Alex, but he has secrets of his own. Each step brings her closer to a mysterious past that began a world away—a past that still has the power to threaten her life ... and change her future forever.