Mary Lee and Madrigal are identical twins, exactly alike in every way. Mirror images. Two halves of one whole.
Or so it appears.
Until they are separated, leaving Mary Lee lost and alone. And Madrigal more beautiful, more popular, and happier than ever. . . with a boy who loves her.
Mary Lee wishes she could live her sister's life.
But when her wish comes true, Mary Lee is horrified to find out that Madrigal was not the person she seemed to be.
Caroline Cooney knew in sixth grade that she wanted to be a writer when "the best teacher I ever had in my life" made writing her main focus. "He used to rip off covers from The New Yorker and pass them around and make us write a short story on whichever cover we got. I started writing then and never stopped!" When her children were young, Caroline started writing books for young people -- with remarkable results. She began to sell stories to Seventeen magazine and soon after began writing books. Suspense novels are her favorites to read and write. "In a suspense novel, you can count on action." To keep her stories realistic, Caroline visits many schools outside of her area, learning more about teenagers all the time. She often organizes what she calls a "plotting game," in which students work together to create plots for stories. Caroline lives in Westbrook, Connecticut and when she's not writing she volunteers at a hospital, plays piano for the school musicals and daydreams! - Scholastic.com
I’m having so much fun rediscovering these again - some I can recall better than others. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t have this one as a teen.
The story is so outlandish, it’s the type of plot that I would recall instantly during a re-read. So I’m pretty sure that this is the first one that I’ve read along with the ‘Teenager Scream’ podcast that’s actually a first time read.
Twins Mary Lee and Madrigal are inseparable, until Mary Lee is forced to move to a boarding school. After an accident that sees Madrigal killed and a case of mistaken identity, Mary Lee has the opportunity to live her dead twins life. It’s not quite as perfect as she has first though...
Such a crazy plot, the story moved along quite quickly. Obviously I didn’t have the nostalgic vibes whilst reading this one, but it was still quite enjoyable.
Mary Lee is distraught. She's being sent to boarding school, far from her identical twin and best friend Madrigal. The twins have never been separated and Mary Lee desperately pleads with her parents to let her stay home to no avail. Mother and Father (yes the girls call their parents "Mother" and "Father") have seemingly realized that raising the girls to match all the time and be inseparable has been detrimental to them. Mary Lee insists that if she and her sister are separated, they won't be whole anymore. Mother and Father tell her that it's not healthy for the sisters to be so dependent on each other and they need to form their own identities. Madrigal agrees with her parents, and Mary Lee feels lost and betrayed. Mary Lee is sent off on a plane to boarding school and can't even communicate to Madrigal through their twin "waves". Cuz of course they have twin telepathy cuz this book is a hot mess.
Once at school, Mary Lee has trouble making friends due to her wet blanket of a personality and the fact that she's constantly moping about being separated from Madrigal. When she comes home for Christmas break, Mary Lee's desire for a glorious reunion with her twin is dashed when she finds out Madrigal now has a boyfriend to spend all her time with. His name is Jon Pear. Jon effin Pear. They call him by his full name at all times.
This is truly the most barf-worthy "hot boyfriend name" I've ever heard in my whole life. What was the thought process behind this name? I'm truly curious. Were drugs involved? Anyway, Madrigal refuses to introduce her sister to her fruitly-named boyfriend and basically forbids Mary Lee from trying to meet him. As Mary Lee returns to school, she feels more lost and alone than ever, and jealous that Madrigal's transition from twin to individual is going so smoothly. She wishes she had Madrigal's charmed life.
Madrigal calls to tell Mary Lee she's coming to visit and go skiing without their parents' permission, and Mary Lee is euphoric to a creepy degree. She runs around the school telling everyone she's an identical twin and her sister is coming to visit and it's going to be FABULOUS.
Once Madrigal actually shows up, her classmates are astonished that the girls are related, let alone identical twins. Madrigal hatches a plan to switch ski outfits with Mary Lee and swap identities so Mary Lee can seem like the cooler twin and make friends. This is kind of stupid because the girls at school already know what a drip Mary Lee is and how vivacious Madrigal is, so it's not like a change of horribly 90's ski outfits would fool them but this book isn't very interested in making sense. Mary Lee's wish to have Madrigal's life comes true when Madrigal falls off the ski lift, hits an outcrop of rocks, and dies. Everyone thinks Mary Lee is the dead twin because of the brilliant costume change, and Mary Lee goes along with their assumption after they don't seem to notice her trying to tell them she's Mary Lee. It's also easy for her to take on Madrigal's identity because people are all like "at least it was the lame twin who's dead". She's upset at her sister's death, but happy that she can return home and live Madrigal's seemingly fabulous life.
People at home are more concerned with how "Madrigal's" coping than they are with "Mary Lee's" death. She even overhears her parents saying that the right twin died and express regret that they ever had twins. Mary Lee finally meets the mysterious Jon Pear and is immediately scared of him. Good call ML, cuz he's a total creep who says things like "I am Jon Pear", "we are twins now", and catches her tears in a bottle and eats one of her tears. This is all within 5 minutes of Mary Lee meeting him (although he doesn't know it's not Madrigal). Like girl maybe go tell your parents your boyfriend is a psycho. They have a run-in with Mary Lee's old friends Scarlett and Van, who don't seem very happy that "Madrigal" has survived. Mary Lee wonders what happened between her sister and her old friends.
Jon Pear's weirdness continues, and most of their convos go like this:
JP: I am so happy Mary Lee is dead. We are twins now!
ML: But I miss my twin.
JP: You don't need her, we are twins!
ML: Mary Lee was my only twin.
JP: We are soul twins!
ML: My only twin is dead.
JP: I am the only twin you need!
ML: We will never be twins.
JP: We are twins!
No, seriously. That's the gist.
Mary Lee discovers that her sister and Jon Pear got their kicks by being massive sociopathic d-bags. No one actually liked Madrigal, they were all scared to get on her bad side. Jon Pear alludes to Mary Lee's death as being planned, and Mary Lee finds out that Van and Scarlet have been distant towards her because Madrigal and Jon Pear pick up random girls and leave them in bad parts of the city. When they did it to Scarlet, she curled up on the side of the road and was like...swarmed by rats. I know. This book is so bad.
Jon Pear keeps waxing pornographic about how much he loves seeing panic in people's eyes, how glad he is that "Madrigal's" conscience (Mary Lee's telepathic sweetness) is gone, and that he now wants to see "Madrigal" panic. He gives her the same lame terror treatment, and when they return to school Mary Lee lets everyone know who she truly is. Her parents have apparently known all along.
Jon Pear wants to plan something nefarious for Winter Sleigh Day, and when the day arrives all the kids corner him on the thin ice of the lake where the skating competition is taking place. Mary Lee objects to their plan to kill JP with icicles because she is so good and sweet, but is distracted when a young boy falls through the ice. She looks back after saving the boy and only sees a crack in the ice with what appears to be blood below it.
Everything about this book was a mess. The characters were all weird. Mary Lee is like the twin sisters on My Strange Addiction who were addicted to being together. Basically, she's a little crazy. I don't totally fault Madrigal for turning to the Dark Side after having a sister who basically wanted to be conjoined. Mary Lee ties her whole identity to her twinness and is emotionally crippled when she's forced to be on her own. Madrigal was apparently bitter her whole life about being considered half of a person, and their parents apparently knew she was an evil little wench the whole time. So they sent Mary Lee away to "keep her safe" instead of getting Madrigal psychiatric help. Jon Pear is never really explained...sometimes it seems like he's an evil supernatural being (ML is unable to cry after JP steals her tears), but Mary Lee asserts that he's just a lousy human. There's also a part where Madrigal's mirror talks back to Mary Lee, and it's never explored again. Was Jon Pear a demon? We'll never know. He reminded me of a less-cool version of J.D. from Heathers.
He had zero wittiness or humor to make you understand why Madrigal might have liked him.
Maybe I need to keep re-reading more Caroline B. Cooney books, but with Twins and the Time Travelers Quartet I've realized how obsessed her protagonists are with being beautiful. Part of why Mary Lee misses Madrigal so much is that they're an "Event" when they appear together, because they're both beautiful, gorgeous, identical twins with long black hair and blah blah blah. Just like Annie from Both Sides of Time and Out of Time, Mary Lee and Madrigal's personalities suffer because they get by on their beauty. It's lazy characterization, but I guess all pre-teen girls want to live vicariously through beautiful characters.
I guess the point of this book was that it's important to be your own person, or something. It just had a weird way of promoting that message.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
I finally found it! I was starting to think this book only existed in my head. For some reason, I was fascinated with stories about twins when I was younger. And I definitely had a thing for books that leaned towards the disturbing. So this one was right up my alley. It would probably still creep me out as an adult. An antagonist who collects tears and wears them in a vial around his neck? Psychotic, party of one.
Re-read this for Episode 7 of the Teenage Scream podcast (lovingly dissecting the best and worst of 90s teen horror). Listen here, or subscribe on your podcast app:
Yet another really good, but very uncomfortable book from Caroline B. Cooney. It was very good, and compelling, and as uncomfortable as a hair shirt. Her books take always seem to find little nooks and crannies of the human psyche and exploit them. Even though her books are never fun, I read them all because they are always thought provoking and worth the read.
“Bianca and Mindy crept into the room like great big fashionable mice.” ― Caroline B. Cooney, Twins
I like a good YA mystery and this was short but it did not make a whole lot of sense and:
SPOILERS:
Plot was crazy..could not believe it. I do like her books even as an adult because some of them are really creepy and some of them are just all out fun but this is not one I enjoyed.
Well it wasn't terrible, but I can't say it was great or even much good... I do admit, though, that i did enjoy some parts.
I have also read Hush Little Baby by Caroline B. Cooney and now I notice something. She has a way of making a typical realistic fiction story into something that feels unreal and science fictionish (just pretend that is a word)... and that's not always a good thing. In this book for example, even if two identical twins are really close, which is quite possible, they are not going to do the exact same things at the exact same time. And to top it off they communicate in "twin waves". Twin waves? Really?
In the back of the book there's an advertisement for another of her works, "The Terrorist, and on the corner in a little bubble it reads "A gripping page-turner from the master of suspense!", and Cooney is definitely that. I could hardly put the book down and the plot held my attention. On the day I got this book I read it in class, the bus ride home, and in then in the park waiting for my mom to pick me up. And once I got in the car I- you guessed it- read some more and kept reading for some hours after I got home. I pretty read for about three hours straight after school, which is pretty rare because I get car/bus sick easily.
Any way, although unbelievable, the plot was entertaining. I was wondering why one of the girls had to leave- I’m not saying who because I don’t want to spoil anything. And then I began to feel depressed along with the character when she had no friends. I think that part of it is that I connected a lot with ‘that character” and I began to realize how similar I was and that- like part of the book shows- people want to hand around you more if you have personality. I was afraid like ‘the character” that I didn’t either.
Okay I’m tired of writing now and I want to watch “Bones”, so I’m going to end this review. My dad loaded all of the seasons up to season 6 on my computer, so I’m going to catch up on my ‘bones”. I’m rambling now so Twins was a good book and I recommend it as a quick read- but if you’re looking for something deep, well, it’s not here.
yeah I’m on a Point Horror reread kick 🤪 biased rating would be 5/5 just for the nostalgia. I vividly remember reading this in middle school and being so obsessed with the idea of evil twins.
What a creepy book this is, especially the ending. Drowning in a frozen pond is one of my fears. So is the incident on the ski lift, which is one of about 10 reasons I won't go skiing.
The cover of this book is completely misleading. They look like 13 year old girls, but they're actually 17 years old. The cover shows two girls with light brown hair and pale skin. They were continually described as having thick black hair and olive/tan skin.
You may remember I read "Freeze Tag" by this author a few weeks ago. Lannie from "Freeze Tag" and Jon Pear would make quite the diabolical couple. And why does the author keep calling him by his full name? Jon Pear this, Jon Pear that. So weird.
Twins By Caroline B. Cooney Mary Lee and Madrigal are identical twins whom had done many things together since birth. It starts off with their parents sending Mary Lee to boarding school to improve their independence. It turns out Mary couldn't make friends in her boarding school while Madrigal's popularity is out of this world. So one day Madrigal decide to sneak off to visit Mary in her boarding school without informing their parents. Madrigal told her about her boyfriend and Mary Lee was jealous over her sister's popularity. In a skiing event Mary and Madrigal wanted to play a prank to their friends by switching their skiing outfit. But in an accident the real Madrigal died when the ski lift cable broke; and everyone thinks its Mary who died. Living in her twins identify Mary discovered terrifying truths about her twin... Twins is another one of Caroline B. Cooney's mystery novels. This novel was "supposed" to be scary but in my opinion she didn't wrote that part well, after all there's nothing frightening about city rats. Many descriptions in the novel seemed to be exaggerated a bit, like the ability to communicate telepathically as twins. All these add up made the story seem less interesting, since this book wasn't meant for fantasy. Overall I think it described very well about how the teenage mind worked, how kids brood over popularity and appearance. Caroline B. Cooney is well known for writing detective novels. Even though this book did not turn out so well, I would still recommend you to read more of her work. Her books are well suited for those who enjoy solving mysteries and it is perfect for learning about what it felt like to be in the middle of life threatening situations.
This book is really crazy and sad. They switch lives but one of them dies while the other one had to confess that she wasnt who she really is then the sister that is alive finds out that her twins boyfriend was evil and the dead twin was more evil than he is.
A tense psychological story with a WTF ending this was interesting and well written if a little rushed to finish. I wonder if Mary Lee ever asked the question of the mob?
Obviously this was written for a younger audience so the writing is juvenile BUT... WOW. The plot was amazing! I couldn’t wait to see what happened at the end. This was definitely a page-turner
A whole wild mess. Definitely an example of "I read this because of a reading prompt and for no other reason." You can definitely feel the 90s in the writing
From the assortment of contributing Point Horror authors, I find Caroline B. Cooney to have one of the more distinctive voices. However, I also find the quality of her books to be one of the more varied - ranging from the highs of The Cheerleader to the lows of The Return of the Vampire. Of course, there's also a fair amount of average in between, like Freeze Tag, The Perfume, The Vampire's Promise, and The Stranger. I find myself continuously returning to the same grievances when it comes to Cooney's writing - an over-reliance on flowery and poetic language. Unfortunately Twins is no exception.
I'll be honest, by page three of Twins I thought I'd figured out the twist - there are many moments throughout this book where the narrative seems to be leaning very heavily in a certain direction, and so I found myself forging through Cooney's detached writing style keen to see how certain events were explained. But I was wrong. I had given the book too much credit and instead of an easily predictable twist, we ultimately just don't really get any twist at all. What we do get, however, is Cooney repeating herself endlessly. Our protagonist here, Mary Lee, quickly becomes rather irritating, opting to define herself as one half of a twin. The result is a character perspective that feels weak and lacks assurance, and we're left to endure pages and pages of her simpering. And then there's Jon Pear, who for some inexplicable reason is always referred to by his full name, Jon Pear. Jon Pear rolls into the narrative like a storm cloud and casts a dark shadow over an already tedious reading experience.
The internal logic of Twins doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, and despite a couple of particularly cruel moments, there's nothing here that's very memorable. Anything that borders on being actually good or enjoyable about this book is quickly obfuscated by Cooney waxing lyrical about how special it is to be perceived as an Event because you happen to be an identical twin. I think there's a concept here that could have been unravelled in an intriguing way if it had been tackled by more capable hands.
*Reread* The concept of this one creeped me out as a kid. I couldn't remember much beyond the ski incident, so it was fun to reread. However, this book is... weird. The writing felt melodramatic to me. Maybe the story is more for middle grade. I didn't remember Jon Pear at all, but WHY is that his name? So strange and distracting. Anyways. Overall a fairly enjoyable read but mostly from a nostalgic standpoint.
This was pretty poor. The story was just slow and silly. Twins, split up, then one meets an 'evil' boy that likes to watch people be scared. Then suddenly all the school, who were previously scared of this boy, turn on him and watch him drown... the end... and that took nearly 200 pages!? (This took me 3 weeks as I was struggling to find it interesting to pick up) - Not worth reading!
Compellingly weird. I'm kind of getting into Cooneys vibe now. Its quite refreshing to read YA where you have absolutely no idea what's going on. I'm coming to terms with the flowery writing.
This is how I ended my notes for this read on my phone's Notes app:
Well. Wow. I don't know what to say. Weird book.
That kinda sums it up. It struck me pretty early that the language was very flowery, like these two sisters came from serious money and had been bred a certain way, to fit with a certain crowd. But most kids in the book were similar I guess.
I wasn't sure for a while which twin was , so you know, I was preparing for anything. Now at the end of the read I still don't really know what happened - where did Jon Pear come from, who () is he, and did he really you-know-what at the end?
For a lot of the book I thought that this guy must be in some way, but there's no real confirmation of that fact. It just seemed like with the captured tears he controlled others. Maybe it was all mental mastery!
It's pretty brutal for parents to say some of the things they said about Madrigal, no matter what she was like. I must also say I was quite surprised at how things went for Madrigal when she was visiting Mary Lee. Didn't see that coming.
That last scene with all the "young men" carrying Mary Lee was rather hectic, although maybe that's a normal thing that happens in snowy towns (I live in a city where snow isn't a thing, ever).
One-Line Review: “And there ain’t no villains and there ain’t no heroes / People on both sides of the tracks tryna add up a whole bunch of zeroes...” ~ Jewel, Rosey and Mick
Full Review:
Cooney is polarising. Readers tend to either love her or find her books dull and weird and like nothing ever really happens.
I fall on the love side, yet I do understand why some people do not. For the first few years of reading her - which is when I was 7-8; I was somewhat precocious - I thought I didn’t like her books. I enjoyed them hugely while I was actually reading them, but when I hadn’t read one for a while, it would fall out of my mind in a way that other YA horror writers didn’t. I grew to appreciate her when I was 11 or 12, in my first year of high school (UK), and she’s remained a great love solidly for the last 25 years.
Even now, 30 years after first reading Cooney, I sometimes find myself thinking of her books as unbooks; as something other than a story about a series of events that occur. Where Stine and Hoh and Ellis and Smith and even Cusick write tales that progress from beginning to end in a straightforward manner, Cooney - with the exception of her “emergency” books - is all over the place, sliding from present to past as though the concept of linear time is really only a suggestion, jumping between occurrences and thoughts until you realise that somehow, you’ve spent most of the book inside the protagonist’s head. Many of her writings are less like stories and more like dreams, and like dreams, it can be difficult later on to explain to others what happened in them, or even to remember for yourself.
That stream-of-consciousness narrative is one of the main things that attracts me to her books, even while I understand how it can be off-putting to some. I, too, experience time in a not-quite-linear fashion, and Cooney’s heroines, particularly her horror heroines, are some of the first characters I was ever able to identify with.
What happens in this book? Almost nothing. A girl goes away to school. Her twin visits her, and dies. She returns home, pretending to be her twin, and finds out that her twin was not as nice as she thought. It’s a far cry from the stalkers and slashers and murderous teenagers that populate so many of these YA horror novels, and yet it’s somehow more haunting.
If there’s one thread that ties Cooney’s books together, it’s be better. You can always choose to be a better person. To give back gifts that were contingent on other people’s non-consensual sacrifices. To behave with compassion, even towards people who have none. To say no to evil. To offer a helping hand to those in the shadows. As a child and teenager, she taught me these things where my (frequently abusive and usually neglectful and disinterested) parents did not, and as an adult, she continues to remind me whenever I need a reminder.
This was literally one of the worst books I have ever read holy heck. For starters, the main character, Mary Lee, really should have been renamed Mary Sue. Mary Lee was perfect and could do no wrong; she loved her twin with all her heart, forgave her for her 'evil ways,' was entirely horrified by this and that, etc etc etc. The only thing imperfect about Mary Lee was that she was not good at not being a twin - for about five minutes at the beginning of the novel, where she didn't want to do things by herself. Of course, as soon as she decided she wanted to be popular and loved, she was. Smh.
Her sister Madrigal was of course the exact opposite, another equally flat character who was supposed to be perfectly evil. Madrigal and Jon Pear were just terrible - perfectly evil! Why, they stood and watched a man drown and laughed!! Oh no!!! and they never ever did anything nice ever!!!
The plot, as well, was,,,,, questionable. The novel starts out really weirdly, with twins who are 1 person, moves to Mary Lee deciding inexplicably to become Madrigal rather than just tell everyone that it was she who died, not Mary Lee, moving on to meeting the truly evil Jon Pear - how do we know he's evil? 1, because he drinks tears (???) and 2, because for a good time, he picks up students telling them he's going out partying and then *gasp* dumps them in the bad part of town and lets them walk home. In fact, that's what makes him evil - because all the bad things he does are super passive. wow. There are some weird hints of him calling the Winter Sleigh Festival the 'Winter SLAY festival,' but apparently his plan is to just... wait for someone to fall into the cold water and not save them from drowning....? omg!!! true horror!!! im scare!!!
Last but not least, the only thing that could have even possibly redeemed this novel, the writing style. It was terrible. The dialogue was stilted - in perfect tandem with the rest of the book, let it be noted. For this book, Cooney's goal seems to have been to never ever use even a single contraction. Everyone, including the teenagers, used incredibly formal and repetitive speech. This read as though it had been written by a 14 year old who thought that to write like an adult wrote as stiffly as possible and as though it hadn't been edited at all, frankly. Not impressed at all.
This is literally the longest review I have ever written for any book, ever, and let that stand as a testament to how truly non-impressive Twins is. eurgh.
I think I found this on one of those lists, you know, '50 Scariest Young Adult Novels' or something like that.
However, and maybe because I'm a bit older than the target audience (ha ha), since it is a young adult novel, I didn't find this book scary in the least.
As a matter of fact, I didn't like it, full stop.
The author has a weird, stilted way of writing, especially when you're looking at the dialogue. No one talks the way that the author has people speaking, especially not in semi-modern times. There's a weird avoidance of contractions in speech, and just something funky about the characters' speech patters overall.
There's the ghost of a good plot here, the bones, whatever, but the author never gets deep enough into any aspect of it to make good on the theory.
You have a set of twins, one sent away, one kept at home for 'observation'. And then one twin dies, and the other takes her place. And you could go in so many ways with this - haunting, possession, the 'good' twin turns out to be even worse than the 'bad' twin, etc. But we get a hand wavy story where the good twin, sent away to keep her safe, was so blind to her sister that she didn't know her sister was 'evil' (though we can debate how evil the sister was, from the story itself you just get that she was playing very cruel jokes on people but given some of the things she could have been doing, she just seems like someone who needed therapy) even though everyone declares that the evil twin was 'born bad and got worse'. And you have this conceit where the good twin mirrored the bad, but she didn't mirror her enough to know what she was getting up to? Whatever.
And the 'bad guy' is just....boring. There's nothing there but a hint of someone who could have been terrifying, if we'd seen more of him or maybe he'd been given time to grow up.
As it is, I'm left with thinking that this could have been a good book, but the authors writing style is off putting and there's no meat to the story as written.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
ok spoiler alert, this book sucks. It is a very basic consept of twins being separated and one of them is an absolute wet blanket while the other lives their best life on the edge. I think that it is totally stereotypical. not all twins are so reliant on each other. ALSO...............
JON PEAR No, not Jon Jon Pear everyone call him JON PEAR please, who does this and why? I would understand if it was Jon-Pear someone, but its not. his name is Jon Pear Pear being his last name
Also........
no-one is actually such a wet blanket when they start at a boarding school and if you were you wouldnt ignore all of the poeple trying to help you. you would accept their kindness and suck it up.
Also......
doesnt anyone do like a formal body identification? I mean, how could no-one notice. this is outragous and while I love an element of not knowing while im reading, this is too much. I think that this book was supposed to have a realistic feel, but honestly, NO.
also.......
At the end she confesses everything to her parents and they are all like, yea we knew the whole time, and so we sent you to a wierd school with a wierd boyfriend and caused you years worth of emotional damage that not even therapy will fix, so yea! have a nice life!
I think the consept was actually quite good. But ummmm.......It just wasnt It. Sorry Caroline, but I just really hated it. I have never written such a mean review, but honestly it is just so.......................so.........................just SO, ok.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
This is more of a discussion than a review with highlighted areas of the book and has a comedy feel to the discussion to. Please be aware that as this is a discussion there will be spoilers.