E. Lynn Harris posthumously pleases with new novel
by Terri Schlichenmeyer
You have 24 hours in a day. Over 1400 minutes, around 86,000 seconds, and you still can’t do everything you need to get done. Some days, you just want to clone yourself. With two of you, maybe you’d get things finished. Double yourself, and you might even get ahead.
Cobi Winslow just found his doppelgänger 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 Chicago’s best neighborhood. He had nice clothes, a law-school education, cars, and antiques—but he didn’t have his father’s acceptance.
Cobi Aiden Winslow was gay. His father hated that, so acceptance was never going to come. Cobi’s parents were killed in a plane crash, but not before telling him that he had a twin brother . . . somewhere. Absent a father’s love, a long-lost 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 of the company stock, 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 34th birthday or his stock would be sold.
A takeover was imminent.
Cobi turned 34 in 25 days. There was no woman on the horizon.
Thinking quickly, Sissy Winslow devised a plan to save the business. As she searched for a stylish, smart, Winslow-worthy society 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 for two years now, and in the book’s preface, co-author RM Johnson says that he and Harris collaborated on this novel before Harris’s death. So is this book reminiscent of Harris’s other books, or . . . ?
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. Granted, there were a few times when I thought the story got a little silly, but I did like how it unfolded overall, and how there were surprises in the creases.
If you’re looking for something to grab for a lazy weekend read, you can’t go wrong with a book like this. No One in the World will grab you in a second, and you’ll want to read it all day.
Terri Schlichenmeyer has been reading since she was three years old, and she never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.
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