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4.9 13
Young Adult Fiction 991
Powerful Young Adult Novel
Overall rating
 
5.0
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Ellen Hopkinss powerful storytelling riveted my attention from the start. Although I did not intend to read a novel all morning, I could not put this one down. The characters are unsparing and unflinching in their plainspoken truths about the lie of their seemingly perfect lives and the evil behind the doors of their clean suburban home with the perfectly manicured lawn. At the heart of the story, there is a mystery in the lives of the identical twin protagonists, Kaeleigh and Raeanne.

The twins harbor terrible secretssecrets that they keep from each other and everyone else. Kaeleigh is a lot like her absentee mother and becomes the unwilling object of her daddys misplaced love. Raeanne, disgusted with her twin sisters passive acceptance of an intolerable situation, actively pursues life on her own termsbut what she chooses is a life of drugs, alcohol, and sex. Both girls are haunted by eating disorders, deep loneliness, a yearning for love, and unanswerable questions. Throughout their traumatic adventures, the girls never communicate with each other and are unable to understand the dark fears that grip their alcoholic fatheruntil a confrontation at the end in which it all becomes clear.

The way the novel is written cannot help but capture your attention also. Each page is a poem with the title forming part of the first line. Often, a secondary poem streams off to the right of the page, dropping small bombs of intense meaning which underscore the larger poem. Always, these secondary poems are done in mirror image on the next page, like an identical twin facing her mirror image every time she sees her sister. I found this technique to be emotionally moving and not at all a distraction to the story. In fact, it made it all the more meaningful.

Ellen Hopkins is the bestselling author of Crank, Impulse, and Glass.
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June 15, 2013
That was a really well written review and I loved this book so much. It was the first one of hers that I ever read.
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