The Other Twin by L.V. Hay
Fiction
Published: November 15, 2017. Orenda Books
Poppy has not returned to her hometown, Brighton, in years. She spends her nights in a drunken haze, bringing strange men to her home only to wake up with the guys long gone and mere flash backs to remind her of what happened. On one particular day she wakes up, Poppy realizes she has a ton of missed calls and texts from her mother. She and her mother are not exactly best friends, so Poppy knows that something terrible must have happened – maybe her step dad passed away? No, the news is worse than she could’ve thought – her younger sister, India, has fallen to her death from a bridge. The police are saying it was suicide.
So of course, Poppy returns home to be with her family and attend her sisters funeral but then stays so she can play detective. She doubts that India committed suicide – even though she finds a referral to a psychiatrist with a prescription of anti-depressants (that India had not been taking). Okay, so India was suffering from depression – that doesn’t mean she jumped to her death. What really grabs Poppy’s attention is the ‘suicide note’ left by India that is addressed to someone both Poppy and her parents have never heard of – Jenny.
This Jenny, from what readers will discover, is an egotistical woman who loves being in charge and literally saviors that feeling when those who are beneath her follows her command in fear. Okay so what does this Jenny have to do with what happened to India? What kind of show is Jenny running if she has this much power over people? And an even better question is how Matthew Temple, Poppy’s ex boyfriend that she abandoned, involved?
I really wanted to enjoy this book – but this whole plot of a character having to return to their long lost home and become their own investigator to discover the truth of what happened to their loved ones is just so over used. The book is character driven by characters that I personally couldn’t relate too, let alone really like – which also placed this book below average for me.
Kirsten Lowe attends Athabasca University