The Twin's Daughter by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Meh.

No really, that's my opinion of this book. Meh.

I thought it was slow starting, turning into a huge soap opera that was full of sex and murder. Not really my cup of tea, and to be honest, extremely predictable. (Also the character development SUCKED)

This story is about a girl growing up in late Victorian England (possibly Edwardian?) where she discovers that her mother has an identical twin sister, who was raised in an orphanage, instead of in the lap of luxury, like her mother was. Over a miraculous six month period, this impoverished "common" twin is taken into the wealthy home of her sister and becomes just like her.

Then she is mistaken for her twin, blah, blah, blah. In the end everyone has slept with every one and no one knows which twin is which, and one twin kills the other for sleeping with her husband. I was bored in the first chapter, so I skipped to the end and found out the ending.

I think the author intended to be a dark, disturbing novel, but I think she missed the mark. It was too monotonous. There wasn't any real atmosphere in the entire book and all of the "clues" that pointed to the dramatic end were blatantly obvious. Maybe I'm callous.

I just don't like the soap-opera style like that. I get bored, because you know that who ever is writing is going to make it as dramatic as possible, even if it doesn't make any sense.

Also, London doesn't have street cars (correct me if I'm wrong,). It had omnibuses, trains or the Underground. (Yes the underground was around in the early 1900's. The first tunnel was actually created in the late 1800's. Look it up if you don't believe me) Little things like that, that would have taken five minutes of research really make or break a good historical novel. I firmly believe that you have to LIVE somewhere before you can write about it. If not physically, then mentally. Tolkien LIVED in Middle Earth, that is one reason it is so believable.

Not worth a read. I like dark novels every once in a while, but this lacked the atmosphere of a truly GOOD dark novel. Like "White Midnight" by Dia Calhoun. Well it isn't really dark (like Hamlet, but I never think Shakespeare is dark, the ending is just different from his comedies, but that's another post), but it doesn't exactly end well either.