Beautiful Lies

At the beginning of Beautiful Lies twin sisters Rachel and Alice stand on a jogging trail debating the best way to spend the lovely fall evening. A family walks by with a small girl who is startled by the exact duplicates and cries. "We're freaks" says Alice.  "We aren't freaks, "Rachel replies as she adds eye make-up to her sister's eyes. What they are, are twins so rare and identical and close that one can experience what the other is feeling so when they were children and one choked the other gasped for breath.

Alice offers to go home, but Rachel resists. Their friends are waiting to go to the carnival. "Your friends" says Alice. "They don't like me, anymore." Alice is the troubled twin, the reckless girl, the girl who will never accept that their parents have died and they had to live with their Aunt and Uncle and mentally challenged cousin. Their Aunt who was also a twin. A twin of the mother they lost.

Back to the fair. Alice wants to ride the Ferris wheel. Rachel feels uneasy, but agrees. Once she is strapped in...Alice slips out of the seat and takes off "I'll catch up with you after," she calls,"I want a candy apple". And she's away and...gone!

Gone! And that is the opening of this intense and unusual new book by Jessica Warman.

What has happened to Alice and why does Rachel start to feel pain and then unexplainable bruises show up on her body? Why do her Aunt and Uncle stall in calling the police to look for Alice? Is it just another of her stunts? Doesn't she have a mysterious boyfriend, Robin, that none of them have ever met? And what about the drawings in Alice's sketchpad, the face of a girl she doesn't know but feels compelled to draw over and over. Who is she?

This is a story draped in mystery as you plunge into the lives of the twins and learn more of  the secrets and lies that might turn a game they played into one of life and death. Don't miss this addictive read (available this August) and don't forget to read  Ms. Warman's "Between" reviewed here previously.