Finished: Bring Me Back (Paris) Psychological thriller that I finished in a day because it was such a page-turner. :-) A young man, Finn, who has been dating his girlfriend, Layla, for a year, pulls over at a rest stop one night on their long drive back from a vacation. He gets out to use the restroom and leaves her sleeping in the car with the doors locked. When he comes back out, she's gone, nowhere to be found. Of course, he doesn't tell the police everything, like how she had just told him she had slept with someone else so he'd dragged her out of the car and raised his fist to her. He doesn't remember if he hit her, though, because the next thing he remembers is coming back out of the restroom. He has dealt with anger issues in the past and his father had told him to walk away from situations, so he doesn't know if that's what he did, or something worse. An intense search never turns up any sign of Layla. Twelve years later, Finn, though he grieved for months, leading into years, has moved on with his life. He's living with another woman and has just proposed to her. The woman is Layla's sister, Ellen! It turns out that five years after Layla's disappearance, Ellen travels to town for the ceremony to declare Layla officially dead, and meets Finn. It takes some time, but they begin to grow close, etc. etc. So, right after they announce their engagement in the paper, mysterious things start happening. Little Russian nesting dolls, something that Ellen and Layla had as children, begin showing up at odd times. Then, Finn starts getting emails that finally result in the person on the other end saying she is, in fact, Layla! Finn is beside himself and doesn't tell Ellen. Could it possibly be his beloved Layla is still alive? Ellen knows about the Russian Dolls and begins to think herself that Layla could be alive. She's both thrilled that her sister is possibly alive, and worried at the same time. Does that mean Finn would want to go back to the lively Layla instead of the dependable Ellen? I figured out very early in the book the big twist, so it was kind of interesting seeing the story unfold with that knowledge. It's along the lines of finding out that Bruce Willis is really dead in The Sixth Sense. There's not a ghost in this story, but there's just one of those "do your head" twists that makes you go back and reread things. :-) I guess I"ll just say ***SPOILER ALERT*** from this point on. If you'd like to read this book but don't want to know the big twist, then  you should stop reading immediately! okie doke? So, probably most people will also figure this out pretty early on, but Ellen is really Layla with a split personality. It ends up that her sister Ellen had been killed by their horribly abusive father as a teenager and her body buried. When Finn had raised his hand to Layla twelve years before, the abusive childhood reared its talons and grabbed hold of Layla. Even though it ends up Finn did not hit her, Layla didn't know what he might do when he returned from the restroom, so she caught a ride with a stranger and ran. She went back to her father, who by that time was nearly blind with diabetes, and assumed the identity of her sister Ellen, because believe it or not, the father actually tolerated Ellen more than he did Layla! After her father's death, Layla went to school to become a book illustrator and more and more kept Ellen's personality. When she went to the death declaration ceremony for Layla and Finn didn't even recognize her, she, Layla, made a promise to Ellen that she'd go away for good if Ellen could make Finn happy. However, Layla couldn't keep her promise when Finn actually proposed to Ellen. That's why Layla wanted back out to play and to claim Finn. As Finn becomes more and more frantic because rather than agreeing to meet with him, Layla's behavior and emails are escalating, demanding that Finn get rid of Ellen, Finn still doesn't let Ellen know what's going on. Of course, since Ellen and Layla are sharing the same body, Ellen already knows everything that Finn is not telling her. Neither of them seem to be able to control when the other comes out. When Layla kidnaps Ellen and their dog (or so Finn thinks), with the help of his friends, he finally figures out that she's taken Ellen to their old family home. When he gets there, and he only finds one person, who he thinks is Ellen, they struggle as he's trying to figure out what's going on and Ellen falls and hits her head. It's a fatal wound, but before she dies, she keeps muttering, "not Ellen but Layla". Once Finn is informed by his friends, who stayed behind to delve into more emails, that what he was dealing with was a split personality all along, Finn can't forgive himself for not recognizing Layla at the ceremony, and more so, for his fit of anger that began the whole nightmare. He doesn't fight the law when he's accused of manslaughter and prepares to go to jail and live in his own prison. The books is much more suspenseful than my mediocre recap!