Twin dilemma

(Image courtesy Simon & Schuster)

‘No One in the World’
by E. Lynn Harris and RM Johnson
Simon & Schuster
$25
305 pages

Everybody gets the same allotment — 24 hours in a day. And yet still it seems hard to get everything done. Cloning sometimes sounds tempting. Double you, and you might actually get ahead.

Cobi Winslow just found his doppelganger in the last place he’d ever think to look. And in the new book “No One in the World” by E. Lynn Harris and RM Johnson, it might be the last thing he ever does.

Cobi Aiden Winslow always had whatever he wanted — except for one thing.

From the moment he was adopted, he had maid service in a mansion in the best Chicago neighborhood. He had nice clothes, a law-school education, cars and antiques, but he didn’t have his father’s acceptance.

Cobi was gay, and his father hated it.

But that acceptance was never going to come. Cobi’s parents were killed in a plane crash, but not before telling him that he had a long-lost twin brother. Absent a father’s love, a new-found brother was all Cobi could think about.

Sissy Winslow learned about the family business at her father’s elbow. She thought it would be hers someday, so when her parents’ will was read and her brother got half the shares, she was stunned. Cobi didn’t know a thing about Winslow Products. He was a lawyer, not a CEO.

Worse yet, the will stipulated that Cobi had to be married to a woman by his 34^th birthday or his share of the stocks would be sold.

A takeover was imminent.

Cobi turned 34 in 25 days and there was no woman on the horizon.

Quickly thinking, Sissy Winslow devised a plan to save the business. As she searched for a stylish, smart, society, Winslow-worthy woman who could be bought, Cobi searched for his twin brother.

But as Cobi was finally reconnecting with a part of him he never knew about, he was also inviting trouble. Though he’d been successful in hiding it thus far, there were suddenly too many people who knew he was gay.

And that knowledge was going to cost him.

Author E. Lynn Harris has been gone two years now, and in his preface, co-author RM Johnson says that he and Harris collaborated on this novel before Harris’ death. So is this book reminiscent of Harris’ other books?

“No One in the World” is spicier than you might be used to. There’s an underlying feeling of threat that’s irresistible and though you might think you know what’s going to happen, you’d be wrong. There were times, granted, when I thought the story briefly got a little silly but it unfolds with plenty of surprises which makes for an engrossing read.

If you’re looking for something quick to take on vacation with you this summer, you can’t go wrong with a book like this. “No One in the World” will grab you in a second. You’ll want to read it all day.