Mia and Lexi are best friends. Both girls are insecure. One comes from a charmed background and one from a background of neglect and poverty; a mother who was a druggie and an absent, unknown father. Mia has a twin brother. They are exceptionally close with the bond that only twins can share. This is their story.
It begins on the first day of a new High School for Lexi Baill. On that fateful day, she catches the eye of Zach Farraday, the future prom king, and befriends his opposite in social stature, his twin sister, Mia Farraday, a social outcast.
As rich a life as Mia and Zach have, with every social advantage that money can buy, Lexi’s is poor. Raised by a drug addict mom who was never able to kick the habit and who eventually overdosed, she is bounced around from foster home to foster home until a great aunt finds out she has a relative and takes her in to live with her. This is a story of how privilege can corrupt and tragedy can cause tremendous destruction. This is a story about justice and yet the justice was meted out in an unjust, cold-hearted way.
The punishment was not commensurate with the perpetrators intent or past history. The pain of loss, clouded by deep anger takes the life of a living child unfairly to make up for the life of one that dies prematurely in an accident. Fanaticism is bad no matter from what quarter it hails.
Foster children are bounced around and never feel safe or loved or wanted. Twins feel the presence of each other in their minds and emotions.
I thought, at first, the book was cloying and contrived. All the stereotypes of irresponsible teens are displayed. All the stereotypes of liberal moms, who want to make sure their children have everything while at the same time they hover over them and never let them grow up, are trotted out. The resulting tragedies keep unfolding and pyramiding, one on top of the other. Like dominoes, mistakes are made one after another.
Until I finished the first third of the book, I wondered if I would finish the book at all. At that point, the story becomes so gripping, so emotional that it is not only one you must complete, it is one you cannot put down.