This was so….I don’t even know if there is a word for it. Parts of it were beautiful, parts of it were ugly, and parts of it were uncomfortable. I’m not even sure I would classify it as YA. I got it from the YA section, and it is about two teenagers, but the style of the writing is more akin to adult fiction I’ve read. Plus it was very much a book that took place in reality, yet there was a fantasy element to it.
Was it real? Was it all in the characters head? What did it mean?
I don’t have the answers to these questions and that is what I loved most about this book. It wasn’t bothered with explaining things, or making things obvious. It told the story and left the fine points up to the reader.
The book is about a pair of first cousins, Madeleine and Rogan, who are “twinned souls.” They don’t care about the way their family looks at them, they don’t care that some people consider it wrong, they don’t care that their fathers are twin brothers. They’re just teenagers in love. They can’t remember a time without one another and they don’t want there to be a time when they should have to be apart.
But with their family manipulating things in the background, and their own discovery of how they differ, it doesn’t look as if they will be able to stay the way are.
This book could be both beautiful and uncomfortable at the same time. But the author did such a good job of making Rogan and Madeleine feel like love interests and not family that I usually had to be reminded they were cousins. All the sneaking around and hiding they had to do, could’ve been something any teenage couple had to do.
I don’t really know what to say about this book, I was engrossed in reading it, but I’m not sure if I can describe the experience as enjoyable. The style of the book, and thus of the feel of reading it, was very surreal. Even now, a week after finishing it, I can’t quite put my finger on how I felt about it. Or what I thought of the ending.
I am glad I read it, and I do recommend it. And I wish I could remember what author I saw blog about this book so I could thank them.
There is a small fantasy element to the book, but I don’t want to say anything about it because it was so beautiful the way you discover along with Rogan and Madeleine that I want to leave the experience to you.