Almost Dead by Lisa Jackson is a sequel to If She Only Knew, but it is a great stand-alone romantic suspense novel. It opens with you being in the mind of a patient who is in a coma. She can hear what is happening around her but she can't respond. Is this the heroine or the villain? Jackson returns to this comatose patient several times throughout the story, but the reader isn't told (although you will never stop guessing) who it is until the very end of the last chapter.
Cissy Cahill has a psychotic murderer for a mother who has recently escaped from the institution where she was to spend the rest of her life. Is it her mother who is haunting Cissy now and killing off family members? Cissy's grandmother falls to her death, one second cousin dies of an overdose, another is shot at point-blank range. Why? What's the motive? Who has the opportunity?
This is all happening to Cissy while she is in the beginning stages of a divorce from the man she really loves but who seems to have had an affair with a co-worker. Is Jack really taking after his womanizing father or does it just seem that way? Cissy and Jack have one other thing holding them together and that's their two year-old son, B.J. Jackson has created a very charming, very true-to-life toddler. As the suspense builds, you will find yourself wanting to yell at Cissy and Jack to guard B.J. more closely - keep him safe.
In the end, it turns out that Cissy's mother is not the only psychotic killer in the family!
