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| Identical | 
 enlarge | Author: Ellen Hopkins
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Category: Book
List Price: $17.99
Buy New: $11.07
You Save: $6.92 (38%)
New (39) Used (11) from $10.86
Avg. Customer Rating:  47 reviews
Sales Rank: 864
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.2 x 2
ISBN: 1416950052
EAN: 9781416950059
ASIN: 1416950052
Publication Date: August 26, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Product Description
Do twins begin in the womb?
Or in a better place? Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family -- on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that's where their differences begin. For Kaeleigh, she's the misplaced focus of Daddy's love, intended for a mother whose presence on the campaign trail means absence at home. All that Raeanne sees is Daddy playing a game of favorites -- and she is losing. If she has to lose, she will do it on her own terms, so she chooses drugs, alcohol, and sex. Secrets like the ones the twins are harboring are not meant to be kept -- from each other or anyone else. Pretty soon it's obvious that neither sister can handle it alone, and one sister must step up to save the other, but the question is -- who?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 42 more reviews...
 3.5 stars for a somewhat disappointing book September 3, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I am a high school librarian and I have read all of Hopkins' previous books so I was looking forward to this one and started it as soon as it arrived. After a few chapters, reading about the incest, I was wondering what the purpose of the book was. A friend pointed out that it was a "mirror" book -- meant to reveal how a student could see herself and her life or an event through the eyes of a character and can see how that character acts or deals with a particular situation. Hopefully to encourage that student to take steps to solve the problem. I can't write much more here because whatever I say in response to what I read would be spoilers as the book moves toward a conclusion that just fell short and ended up being somewhat unbelieavable mostly because a lot of the book took place in school or around other people. The supporting characters, especially the mother, are stereotypes and not at all sympathetic. Yes I know that many awful things happen behind closed doors in families and if by reading this book even one girl gets the courage to step forth and tell on her abuser, then I guess the author will have achieved her goal. Other than that, be warned, there's a lot of descriptive sex, drugs, alcohol abuse, suicide attempts, self-mutilation, anorexia and bulimia -- I mean all of these behaviors are exhibited -- and other mature scenes both on and off-page.
 "I try not to look at the girl in the mirror as I pass by" October 19, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical twins, 16 years old, mirror images; physically alike but in personality very different. They are half of a deeply dysfunctional family. Their mother, a politician running for office in Washington, has left them in every way possible; their father, a judge, numbs himself with whiskey and pills before coming to one daughter's bed while the other alternately hates him for it and longs for his love.
Kaeleigh, soft-centered, binges and cuts herself, can't feel worthy of the young man who loves her; and finds her only common ground with an 80-year-old woman who lives in the residential center where she works part-time. Raeanne, on the other hand, is tough and cold, has sex with dangerous boys for drugs, steals booze and oxy from her father, and purges to free herself from the venom of her past.
The unbearable events that poison the twins' present are rooted in the past, but just how far back? The car accident when they were eight years old, or further back in their parents' youth? The foreshadowing is woven through the present story, and even if the reader glimpses the truth before full disclosure, the book's worth rests not in its revelation but in the escalation of pain resulting from the family history.
I had not read any earlier books by author Ellen Hopkins so I was unprepared for the highly original design concept of this book. Done entirely in free verse in the alternating voices of the sisters, the words on the page are arranged in patterns that reflect the tone of the story. Letters, hearts, teardrops; tight intense verses; jagged word explosions on the page; and most interesting of all, where the story transitions from one twin to the other, the words on the facing pages mesh together like the teeth of a zipper. I found it literally impossible to put this book down and read it in one long session. The originality of design hooked me, but the intensity of the story delivered a punch that will stay with me for a long time.
In publisher-speak, the category "Young Adult" refers to readers approximately 12 to 18 years old. Identical would be better suited for the more mature reader toward the upper end of that range, having explicit scenes involving sex, alcohol and drug abuse, purging and cutting. Any adult wanting to understand the pressures and realities of teen life will find this book enlightening, and for everyone else it's a fast, riveting read; dark, but beautifully paced and crackling with painful truth. Five stars at least.
Linda Bulger, 2008
 Not for My Girls October 8, 2008
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
I have twin girls and this is supposed to be a young adult book, so I was immediately interested. I'm sorry now. There is no reason on God's green earth that this book should be read by a minor. Heck even adults should avoid this dreck.
Who wants to read about a young girl being abused by her father ad infinitum. And how graphic do we have to get? And it makes her twin sister jealous? Sheesh. Sex, drugs, more sex, more drugs. Incest. Ignorance. I believe in giving good reviews. I can't here. I could ignore this book, can't do that either, because I agreed to review it.
Okay, the writing is okay, I can see where Ms. Hopkins has talent, but I thought she took up way too many pages with her free verse. This all could have been put on a couple hundred and saved three hundred pages of paper
It's such a shame when such a talent wastes it this way. One star for content, four for talent gives me an average of two.
Now I know there are going to be people who don't like my review, people who think perhaps this book might educate young girls, might keep them from been abused or by getting them to tell if they are. I'm not one of those, sorry. I just would not want my daughters reading this.
haunting October 2, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
I am a huge Ellen Hopkins fan, which came as a surprise to me considering her novels are written in verse and I don't like poetry. The sparse writing style seems to work well for the painful subjects she deals with in her books.
Identical is about twin teenage girls--both struggling with their own demons. Karleigh is the good student, drama star, goes with the nice boy--but feels guilty and unworthy because she is being sexually abused by her judge father. Raeanne is the bad girl--into drugs, sex, and sometimes worse, jealous because she doesn't have her father's attention. Their mother, running for congress, is mostly out of the picture while both girls long for her to come home. Between the two sisters, they turn to pretty much every screwed up teenage behavior possible: cutting, bulminia, drug and alcohol abuse, relationships with inappropriate partners, you name it. It seems almost impossible that the two of them will ever come out of this.
This is a sad, disturbing story. My only disappointment was that I figured out the twins' secret way too early (about 1/3 of the way through the book). I would have liked to be kept in suspense longer. Still, a great read.
The Compulsive Reader's Reviews August 26, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
There are so many similarities between Kaeleigh and Raeanne. They're identical twins. They share an absentee politician of a mother, and lonely drunk of a father. They both have had a painful childhood, and for both, it all began with a gruesome accident. But the source of that pain is entirely different for each girl.
For Kaeleigh, it's the pain of a father who loves her too much, who loves her as no father should love his child. Raeanne's pain is the feeling of being unloved and unwanted, except by a string of sleazy boyfriends with an abundance of alcohol and drugs. Each girl knows that what they're experiencing is wrong, but they know nothing else. And unless someone can do something to bring about a change, their pain is all they'll ever know.
Identical is depressing, disturbing, and yet strangely engrossing and electrifying. Through her irresistible and varying poetry, Hopkins coaxes readers into the story, just far enough in for Raeanne and Kaeleigh grasp on, taking you on an unforgettable ride through their lives, and showing us their convoluted--yet curiously levelheaded--reasoning and their innermost thoughts. The beautiful and innovative poetry gets right down to what makes the twins tick in a frank and straightforward style that is not necessarily comforting, but is gritty and real. Full of passion, pain, remorse, and, amazingly, love, Identical is one of those books that will make you gasp theatrically at the end, and then want to immediately re-read the entire thing with new eyes--it is a book that will cause you to think.
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