What do you think?
Rate this book
Twice Burned
The Archer twins are fourteen, beautiful, dangerous. Now Carroll Lawton is left alone to bring them up.A phone call in the night changes Carroll's life. A newspaper reporter, she learns that her new husband, Steve, whom she thought she knew , had a first wife, Vivian, and is the father of twin girls. In the wake of Vivian's sudden death, Steve is flying west to bring them home.Then a fresh tragedy leaves Carroll alone to take care of Steve's strange, silky, and exquisite daughters, who live a bizarre secret life on the third floor of the Archer mansion, high above the California coast.Identical twins Jane and Emily Archer are by turns delightful and enigmatic. Lovely and unnerving, they baffle doctors and police as they pursue their singular obsession. Communicating in a private language, the girls live out a compelling drama of their own. Their secret passions overflow into the real worth with terrifying consequences when they are uprooted and move into Carroll's childhood home in Florida.Assigned to track down the truth about a series of killings in her small town, Carroll follows the trail back to her own family home. The terror escalates as she plunges into a life-and-death struggle for the twins' souls -- and her own life.Once burned, twice shy, Carroll thinks. At least it's what she wants to believe. But in the world of the twins, she finds it's once burned, twice burned.
- GenresFiction
406 pages, Paperback
First published July 22, 1993
9 people are currently reading
52 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 30, 2019
This is your generic there’s always an evil twin book. I didn’t really find it all that creepy or unique in any way but the writing was okay and if you like this sort of thing it’s fairly inoffensive in its mediocrity. Just not for me.
June 19, 2018
Started off full of promise but finished hurriedly !
March 28, 2021
Family is cursed by twins, one good, one evil, no one knows which is which.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 21, 2011
Once I discovered the fun of BookCrossing.com, I decided to weed through all my old books, decide what I wanted to keep in my permanent collection, and get rid of the rest. Of course, that means reading or re-reading some of the stacks and piles and bookshelves full of books, some of which I bought in huge bags on sale tables. One such unread book was Twice Burned by Kit Craig.
::: The Bobbsey Twins, They Ain't :::
In Twice Burned, we are introduced to a set of twins, Jane and Emily, who live with their mother Vivian and grandmother. A groundskeeper and his mysterious son also live on the estate. From the beginning, you know that there is something creepy about the twins, as they live in a shared suite of rooms on the third floor of their grandmother's manse with an entire collection of toys and their own secret language, even at the age of 14.
Mysterious conversations take place between Vivian and her mother about splitting the twins up for their own good, and soon Vivian dies unexpectedly, leaving the grandmother to call in their father, who hasn't seen the girls since Vivian took off with them as babies. Steve Harriman has a new wife, Carol, who has no idea he has been married before, or that he has children, and he leaves to go get the girls without giving his new wife much explanation.
In no time flat, Steve also meets an untimely end, and, defying all logic, Carol accepts custody of the girls and vows to make them a family, returning with Jane and Emily to Florida, to the old house she grew up in as an orphan with her three spinster aunts and potential pedophile uncle.
Veiled conversations between the groundskeeper and his son reveal that the twins are actually the children of a twin, and that Vivian had a twin of her own who died young. They are also all aware of some sort of something about the twins, but no one will come out and say it.
As Carol happily tries to create a new life for herself and the twins back in her hometown (and conveniently, back at her old newspaper job), the son of the groundskeeper combats his agoraphobia to travel about the country trying to find out the "truth" about the twins, while a serial killer is apparently loose in the town Carol and the twins are living.
::: V.C. Andrews Meets William Faulkner While Mary Higgins Clark Goes Out To Lunch :::
The whole twins in the attic with their Dresden looks and Laura Ashley dresses and creepy happenings reeks of V.C. Andrews Flowers in the Attic and subsequent novels. Then throw in the backwater Florida setting Carol moves the twins to with the pedophilic old uncle and spinster aunts and say a few hundred more pages and you might have yourself a pale comparison to a Faulkner novel. But the problem is that there really just isn't that much suspense. There is virtually no character development for any of the characters, with so much told in backstory you are just supposed to accept their actions. Why on earth would someone take in twins she never knew existed, children of a husband she'd only just married?
Somewhere in this novel is the germ of an idea that fell totally flat. From the moment Vivian dies, there is not one ounce of suspense in the book, and the ending is so deliberately vague and anticlimactic that you just might find yourself laughing.
This review previously published at Epinions: http://www.epinions.com/review/Twice_...
::: The Bobbsey Twins, They Ain't :::
In Twice Burned, we are introduced to a set of twins, Jane and Emily, who live with their mother Vivian and grandmother. A groundskeeper and his mysterious son also live on the estate. From the beginning, you know that there is something creepy about the twins, as they live in a shared suite of rooms on the third floor of their grandmother's manse with an entire collection of toys and their own secret language, even at the age of 14.
Mysterious conversations take place between Vivian and her mother about splitting the twins up for their own good, and soon Vivian dies unexpectedly, leaving the grandmother to call in their father, who hasn't seen the girls since Vivian took off with them as babies. Steve Harriman has a new wife, Carol, who has no idea he has been married before, or that he has children, and he leaves to go get the girls without giving his new wife much explanation.
In no time flat, Steve also meets an untimely end, and, defying all logic, Carol accepts custody of the girls and vows to make them a family, returning with Jane and Emily to Florida, to the old house she grew up in as an orphan with her three spinster aunts and potential pedophile uncle.
Veiled conversations between the groundskeeper and his son reveal that the twins are actually the children of a twin, and that Vivian had a twin of her own who died young. They are also all aware of some sort of something about the twins, but no one will come out and say it.
As Carol happily tries to create a new life for herself and the twins back in her hometown (and conveniently, back at her old newspaper job), the son of the groundskeeper combats his agoraphobia to travel about the country trying to find out the "truth" about the twins, while a serial killer is apparently loose in the town Carol and the twins are living.
::: V.C. Andrews Meets William Faulkner While Mary Higgins Clark Goes Out To Lunch :::
The whole twins in the attic with their Dresden looks and Laura Ashley dresses and creepy happenings reeks of V.C. Andrews Flowers in the Attic and subsequent novels. Then throw in the backwater Florida setting Carol moves the twins to with the pedophilic old uncle and spinster aunts and say a few hundred more pages and you might have yourself a pale comparison to a Faulkner novel. But the problem is that there really just isn't that much suspense. There is virtually no character development for any of the characters, with so much told in backstory you are just supposed to accept their actions. Why on earth would someone take in twins she never knew existed, children of a husband she'd only just married?
Somewhere in this novel is the germ of an idea that fell totally flat. From the moment Vivian dies, there is not one ounce of suspense in the book, and the ending is so deliberately vague and anticlimactic that you just might find yourself laughing.
This review previously published at Epinions: http://www.epinions.com/review/Twice_...
August 5, 2010
Even better than Tempted! I can't wait to read Awakened!
Want to read
May 21, 2011how do I read the book
September 24, 2011
It was a good book, I liked Gone better, this to me was predictable. But I did want to get home every night just to see want was going to happen next...
July 19, 2015
Amazing .... love the style and i totally couldnot put it down .
December 29, 2015
If you like thriller that wants to be really scary but doesn't quite get there, then this is for you :)
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews