Laura and Alex Carter are beautiful eighteen-year-old identical twins, too glamorous for the rundown seaside hotel where they live. Then Laura is found dead, her wrists slashed, a signed suicide note beside her. It's tragic - but straightforward. Until the girl who's alive claims she's Laura. Lily Pascale, literature lecturer with a talent for solving crimes, receives a visit from novelist Emma Winter. She wants answers: which twin is dead, and why Lily is drawn into a dark mystery of false identity and twisted motives, where appearance is the last thing she can trust.

Trapped in a wintry seaside world where people live in the shadows, and even the innocent have got something to hide, Lily knows time is running out. There is a killer with an agenda - and other victims in mind. All she has to do is prove it.