My Rating: 
Alike in every single way…with one exception.
Haylee and Kaylee Fitzgerald are identical twins and must be the same in every way according to their mother. They wear the same clothing, have the same toys, and even the same middle names. Deep in her heart, she believes her girls are special, in complete sync. Whatever one girl feels or thinks, the other must.
After being home-schooled for the early years of grade school, the girls are enrolled into public school. Completely unprepared, they navigate the social web of cliques and boys and set out to discover what makes them different from each other. But, the search for independence turns dark and dangerous, taking mother’s determination for daughters to daughter too much to heart.
Quickie Disclaimer: This is the first series by V.C. Andrews that I’ve read, and I know that the author has longed passed away, so this isn’t actually written by her, but a ghost.
The book takes place in Kaylee Fitzgerald’s POV, the good twin as I call her. She goes on to describe how her and her sister grow up as if they’re one person. While she seeks to be her own person, she doesn’t desire to disappoint her mother. She just wants to find a balance. Her sister Haylee is the exact opposite. Defiant and unrelenting she goes to great lengths to disrupt their mother’s vision of them, manipulate and bend everyone to her will and even hurt others to get what she wants.
I must be honest. I both found this book to be enjoyable yet not. I found the beginning to be long-winded, especially in the beginning. I didn’t need eighty pages of history about the Fitzgerald family. Cut it down to forty and I still would’ve understood how creepy and strange it was to have twins be utterly identical down to the very way their brains worked, which was very creepy. That or the history could’ve been interwoven into the story…which it already was. Either way the eighty pages felt unneeded.
More so, I found there to be parts of the book that were rather repetitive. I didn’t need to know “because that’s what mother expected” or “so mother wouldn’t go all CIA on us” on almost every page. Going back on every little detail was bothersome, too, because it got to a point that some of it could’ve been omitted. I started gritting my teeth in places. Understanding a person’s actions is all in the action and telling me about it constantly made me cringe.
However, not all was bad. In fact the whole direction of the story was dark and full of intrigue with how twisted Haylee became in the midst of striving to be her own person. She went to extreme lengths, like pretending to be Kaylee on a mini date with Kaylee’s crush and destroying whatever chance Kaylee had with the boy. It was a cruel and slimy thing to do and to family! Haylee didn’t even feel bad about it either. All of the nasty, dirty things that happen between Kaylee and Haylee really show the dynamic between the siblings; that they don’t have your average sibling rivalry. These girls look like one person, but one inherited the evil while the other inherited the good. It was when I reached the shocking end of the book that I decided I wanted to read the next book in this three part series, Broken Glass.
So while I had high hopes, they fell short. I can only muster three and a half bolts. There are sparks that keep me going. I shall have Broken Glass up soon.
Quotables:
“Never blame your sister for anything; never make her look foolish or stupid, or you will look foolish and stupid.” (Mother to Kaylee & Haylee, p. 59)
Real love is an investment of yourself. You drop every natural defense you possess and replace it too soon with trust and dependence. Love, or the feelings you will come to call love, can be very, very dangerous.” (Mother to Kaylee & Haylee, p. 214)
“We’re just luggage. We’ll probably treat our own children the same way.” (Matt to Kaylee, p. 300)
“…It’s not your chronological age that matters; it’s your mental and emotional age.” (Haylee to Kaylee, p. 305)
More to come soon…
– K.
P.S. Song today? Fly Away by Lenny Kravitz.
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