Reading copious amounts of YA as I do, I often find myself thinking that teens are just so shallow and clueless. With all of the information and resources available today, how can so many of them choose to have unsafe sex, do drugs, drink while driving? Then I read an Ellen Hopkins' novel, and I feel over-whelming amounts of sympathy for today's young adults. Yes, I suppose many of them do make unwise choices when it comes to their well-being, but I can't help but wonder if this is because so many decisions are not yet left to them. When you're 16 or 17, adults still decide what it is best for you, and often it's an adult's harmful actions that lead a teen down the wrong path.
Before the accident, Kaeleigh and Raeanne were the identical twin daughters in an all-American family. Kaeleigh and Raeanne took care of each other, and their loving parents took care of them.
After the accident, each sister finds herself having to live with a terrible, dark secret. Secrets too horrible to be shared even with your mirror image. For Kaeleigh, she's her mother's substitute. Politician Mom is always on the campaign trail, and Daddy is lonely. For Raeanne, she is the forgotten daughter and left to herself, she chooses pot, alcohol and sex to dull her pain. The girls can't hold these secrets inside forever. One sister will have to save the other, and in the process, hope she saves herself.
In gritty, engrossing, elegant verse, in Identical Ellen Hopkins has given readers another mesmerizing tale about a life out of control and the long path back to redemption.
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