Mistaken Twin is a 2018 book written by Jodie Bailey. Released as part of the long running Love Inspired Suspense line.
Jenna Clark has been living in a small town of Mountain Springs, North Carolina. However she has a Dark Secret that she is actually Genevieve Brady who is on the run from her abusive boyfriend Logan Cutter. Everything goes well until she is attacked in her work place by an assailant who knows her real name, or so she thinks.
After being saved by local policemen Wyatt Stephens, things take a suspenseful turn when Jenna realizes her attackers aren't after her, but rather her twin sister, Amy Brady. The problem is that Jenna has been under the belief Amy has been dead for several years.
Tropes Included:
- Always Identical Twins: Slightly averted. The primary thing to distinguish Jenna and Amy is their natural hair colors and a slight difference in the faces. Unless someone is up close and knows them both, it's easy to mistake one for the other; it is well established that most people who saw Jenna thought she was Amy with dyed hair.
- Chekhov's Skill: Erin (Wyatt's cousin) is offhandedly said to work as a volunteer firefighter in her spare time. When Jenna's studio is set ablaze, Erin is one of the firefighters to come to her rescue.
- Dark Secret: Jenna carries one that she had a new identity created to escape the wrath of her physically abusive, human trafficking bastard ex-boyfriend. While when other characters learn of it they are sympathetic, Jenna herself regards it still as a dark secret until she starts to open up more.
- Domestic Abuse: Jenna was the victim of this by Logan Cutter.
- Driven to Suicide: This is what happens to Jenna's mother. In this case the thing that drove her was that life wasn't actually a fairy-tale and after many failures of Really Gets Around she gave up.
- Embarrassing First Name: Jenna and Amy were both displeased with their mother's choices for birth names, Genevieve and Amaryllis.
- Left Hanging: This book leaves the plot of what exactly happened to Amy Brady hanging. However, author Jodie Bailey has revealed a sequel will be published starring Amy herself.
- Love at First Sight: Wyatt reveals he felt this for Jenna the first time he saw her. But he takes a while to accept it.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: At first Jenna believes her sister Amy died in a car crash. She later has it revealed that this was actually an intentional murder. Then once again she learns the whole thing was a set up to put her in witness protection. So they staged a set up to look like a murder then restaged it to look like an accident.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Jenna's abusive ex boyfriend had a name like Logan Cutter. His business partner, however, got a completely mundane-sounding name by comparison.
- Posthumous Character:
- At first within the first several chapters Jenna thinks her ex-boyfriend Logan Cutter is responsible for the attacks on her life. However she learns he has been dead since before the book's plot began.
- Averted with Amy Brady who is assumed to be this at the first chapter but turns out to be alive.
- Really Gets Around: Jenna and Amy's mother went through many men in hopes of finding a Prince Charming and found none.
- Serial Killer: There is one in this book but only as a backstory. Erin was targeted by one. This one was the wife of a soldier who died overseas during the war. The wife blamed the unit for her husband's death and started a serial killing spree of the wives of members of the unit. She killed Amber Ransom, wife of Rich Ransom. Then targeted Erin, fiancée of Jason, who was also a member of the unit and failed. Whether she targeted and killed others is unstated.
- Twin Switch: Mixed with a Fake Twin Gambit. Jenna pulls this off at the safe house by pretending she is Amy to try and save Wyatt's life much to his chagrin. Mind you the whole plot started by having people mistaken Jenna for her twin but this was the first time in the plot Jenna willingly played along. At the time she also wasn't sure if Amy was even still alive herself given that she went AWOL and was Left Hanging.
