Publisher: Walker Childrens
Publication Date: August 7, 2012
Format: ARC
Status: *GASP!* Stand alone!
Genre: Teen Paranormal. Mostly YA Thriller.
Other Info: Warman is also the author of Between and Breathless. Check out her guest post about her favorite fictional twins!
Description and link from Goodreads):
I’ve told you about my Bookish Preference for twins, so I imagine you know (or can guess) that Beautiful Lies was an auto-read for me. The story goes like this: identical twins Rachel and Alice are ” ‘monochorionic, monoamniotic twins,’ which means [they] are identical twins who grew in the same amniotic sac and shared one placenta” (p.18). It’s a real thing. I Googled it. Yet, despite this rare closeness, in the recent months, Rachel and Alice have grown apart. Rachel has become the “good twin,” while Alice has begun acting out in the usual ways–drinking, wearing heavy makeup, hanging out with lowlifes (one in particular) and getting arrested. Okay, maybe the latter isn’t “usual.” Then one of the twins goes missing, and nobody believes it when the other twin insists that her sister is in danger.
I haven’t read any of Jessica Warman’s books before, so I approached this one with few expectations–just a pleasurable hum of anticipation. And I’m happy to report that it was a solid read. Except…the description gives a few of the twists and turns away. Personally, I think unreliable narrators work best when we’re not told up front that he or she is unreliable. It’s a tool that’s effective when we are left to discover it for ourselves…not when we are told that it’s going to happen. Then, the narrator isn’t unreliable because I never relied on them in the first place. You know what I mean?
It’s hard for me to review this book without giving away some of the important elements, so I’m going to keep things as brief as I can. The writing here is good, but not inspired. I didn’t particularly like the narrator, and I didn’t really sympathize with her. I felt that she was selfish. SPOILER: Particularly in her decision to keep quiet about her sister when she first went missing. She knew that if she told her aunt and uncle who she really was, they would have called the police right away. So why did she keep quiet? I also would have preferred to hear the story from the other twin’s perspective. And don’t get me started on the ending. It was abrupt and too unresolved. Beautiful Lies doesn’t make me want to go glom Jessica Warman’s backlist, but I won’t reject anything she wrote out of hand, either.
3 Matryoshkas: I would have coffee with this book.
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For some reason this sounds like that Lindsay Lohan movie ‘I Know Who Killed Me’. I have no idea if the story is the same, but that is what it makes me think of. I would like to read this book though. I have a thing for twins as well. I think they’re fun.
Thanks for the review.
Sara @ Just Another Story
Sounds like a solid read, as you said but what you mention in the spoiler does sound a bit weird.
Great review!
I haven’t read any twin books, so this one will be a good start for me. The idea of the story sounds quite unique to me(maybe it’s just my lack of twin books experience, but I haven’t seen anything like that before), but I think the idea can be expanded into a series (I love series books!) and just like you said, I gasped when I found out it was a standalone… I think the book can be told from 2 POVs, that would be using the twin concept in the most efficient way. But, you know, I should wait til I read the book before I further comment on it.
It sounds really interesting but I hate unresolved endings when there is no second book
Not sure if i should pick it up. Thanks for sharing 