Identical Genius

by Tom Friedrich

Kris is a highly accomplished and driven prodigy, a goal-oriented force of nature. Her sole focus is on becoming the world's leading cybersecurity expert. That is, until she meets Max. He melts her heart and changes her entire world. But, a case of mistaken identity threatens to break Kris's heart, and to thwart her one chance at true love. Kris's twin sister Liz carves her own path. Liz is a polymath, good at almost everything, but her lack of focus keeps her in Kris's shadow. Liz blooms later, but will her star shine as bright as Kris's? Or, will the envy that results from Kris's success doom Liz to a tragic and bitter end? In turns, the girls match wits with Dr. Reginald Hammond. Hammond is bitter and vain. He considers himself the smartest man in the room. Any room. And, he may well be. But is he the smartest person in the room? Or, has he met his match in Kris and Liz?

Genres: Fiction

270 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2020

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 1 out of 5]

Before anyone reads further, I have a message I would like to leave for Mr. Friedrich.

Dear Thomas,

Your gift was very kind & I did not deserve it. The more important gift you gave me was the reminder that there is a big difference in offering constructive criticism & being extremely & unnecessarily rude. As someone who majored in Journalism & minored in Creative Writing in college, I'm admonishing myself for not considering while writing my review that there is a human being, who put their time, energy & heart into the book, on the receiving side. For quite a while after receiving your gift yesterday, I thought on how I would feel if I ever manage to put out a book of my own as I hope to do, if someone disliked my work & felt the need to be so ignorant towards me. While I know there will always be those types of people in the world, I NEVER imagined allowing myself to be one of them. Your kindness in response to my behavior made me realize that not only was I (pardon my french) being an asshole, but that I had taken a book that I received FOR FREE & showed absolutely no appreciation for that at all. I also want to make the point that I know that for many first time authors, any negative response from readers can absolutely affect that author's decision whether to write another or whether they feel so down that they veer away from this path they are typically passionate about. I never, EVER want to be the type of person to dampen or destroy a person's passion for their art. That's exactly what writing is to me; a creative outlet, a form of expression and whom am I to take that away from someone?

I want you to know that I did an edit to my review & reposted it. It would be an insult to your intelligence to pretend that I have completely changed my mind on my feel for your book and as I have been far too disrespectful already, I won't make it worse by lying to you. It's not my cup of tea. However, if you choose to read the edit I made to the review, & I absolutely understand if you choose not to, I did correct some of my comments because my perspective after actually taking the time to think rather than rushing to judgment, did change on some points.

In ending this, I would like to tell you that from the bottom of my heart, I am so truly sorry for being so cruel, judgmental, crass & ignorant. You did not & do not deserve that.

Again, I hope that you and yours are safe, healthy and happy during this horrible time. Thank you for the genuine kindness I did not deserve.


Review Edit: While I can't pretend that I enjoyed this book when I obviously made it clear below that I didn't, I feel a need to add something important here before anyone reads further.

While I don't think constructive criticism is a bad thing, particularly as someone who hopes to write a book herself one day, I have come to realize in writing this that I was unnecessarily rude as opposed to be constructive. I did not consider either that this is Mr. Friedrich's first novel and of course, how people feel about it is going to affect his choice in the future of whether to try again. I never want to be the reason someone feels badly about something they were passionate about or take that away from them.

So, I am going to leave my original review at the bottom of this, not to make Mr. Friedrich feel badly but as a reminder to myself that, while I don't have to pretend to enjoy a book, there is no excuse for forgetting that the author is a human being putting something out there in the hopes that it will be enjoyed. With that in mind, I am going to write a review with more thought in what I am writing.

I found myself frustrated in this book with grammatical errors. However, after having a chat to refresh my memory on certain rules of sentence structure with a friend of mine who is a college English professor, I was reminded that short sentences and phrases don't have to be a full sentence on their own as long as there is context preceding them.

I do think there may have been a misunderstanding on my part as well because I assumed that when the author refers to a school named Haverd that he actually meant Harvard. The more I read, the more convinced I was. However, it is very possible that Mr. Friedrich wanted to hint towards Harvard with it being such a prestigious university but altered the name slightly to allow it to be a fictional school. It would have meant giving the reader the understanding of just HOW prestigious the school was while having it be his own in the story.

I personally would have tried to choose a name that was unique and unrelated to a real school, however, I do understand the purpose of the hint of something the reader is familiar with.


I still feel the descriptions and vague references to various philosophers felt forced. Perhaps, instead of trying to reference several recognizable names into a short couple of pages, Mr. Friedrich could have considered delving deeper into Fritz and allowing himself the pages to flesh out his character.

Maybe something along the lines of 'Professor Fritz, as one would expect from a philosophy professor, had very broad opinions of the famed philosophers he taught young adults about. There were complications in forming opinions on some of the great thinkers more than others. For instance, when considering the words of Socrates, one did not TRULY know if they were dissecting the thoughts of the man himself or if they are, in truth, the thoughts of Plato. Socrates never wrote down any of his thoughts or musings and the only knowledge we have of the Father of Western Philosophy are in the writings mainly recorded by Plato and attributed to his great mentor.

I really did not mean for that to get wordy. I just meant to make an example of how much room there would be to flesh out the character of Fritz as it seemed like Friedrich wanted to but maybe felt like that much depth wasn't needed for that particular character.

I can't help but feel the repetitive nature and overstressed details are what made the book a hard sell for me. I felt like the repeats such as the fact that Max's mother was an alcoholic and that she was dead were used to fill space in the story and that brings me back to the thought that delving into the characters in detail more so there isn't a need to repeat the same handful of traits or facts about them.

I also think Friedrich should have allowed himself the time and space to fill in the story that way so it didn't end up feeling like this sudden new romantic interest for a girl who had never had so much as a crush was rushed so quickly that it didn't make sense.

I love having a lot of detail and I think I would have enjoyed the story if it didn't feel like it needed more guts, for lack of a better word.

To Mr. Friedrich, I hope you have the opportunity to read the updated review here, as the conversation with my professor friend as well as the arrival of your gift today truly made me rethink how I approached writing this review to begin with. Constructive criticism is healthy and helpful. Cruel criticism accomplishes nothing. I apologize for how unthinking I was while reviewing your book to begin with. While I'm leaving it up beneath this as I mentioned, I hope you understand that it's a reminder to myself that it's an example of the kind of person I don't want to be and I am sorry again for allowing myself to be unnecessarily rude in regards to your book.

_____________________________________________________
Original extremely rude review:

Only into the second chapter and the sentence structure is horrendous. Clearly, Friedrich is not familiar with the oxford comma, how commas are used or what constitutes an actual sentence. This one paragraph alone makes it obvious that this is not a book written by anyone that excelled in Language Arts in school.

*Like her dad, Liz was more curious about life in general than driven to conquer any single aspect of it. Liz read widely - novels, cultural histories, cookbooks, current events. Even philosophy, which pleased her Dad immensely. She was hardly lazy, as her mother seemed to think. Just diffusely focused. Tennis, golf, pottery, cooking, kickboxing, music, theater, travel, architecture, woodworking, gardening, and even welding attracted her interest. Usually in intense phases, that burned out as quickly as they arrived. The fact of her passing interest in those topics blurred the stunning reality of her quick mastery of virtually everything that she tried.*

It's standard in any writing that a sentence should make sense on its own. Instead of using commas, colons or semicolons for a continuing statement, he just writes lines that, standing alone, have no context. "Just diffusely focused." "Usually in intense phases…" You get the idea.

I also haven't figured out yet whether Friedrich is referring to a school I'm not familiar with or if Haverd, spelled this way twice so far, was meant to be Harvard.

Finished Chapter 2. He 100% meant Harvard.

There's a whole page, maybe two, where the author is talking about the father character, Fritz the philosophy professor, and goes into this whole thing of vaguely referencing nearly every well known philosopher and a brief, nonsensical reference about what Fritz thinks of them.

*Ayn Rand had made some very good points about the connection between effort and outcome, Fritz conceded, but he considered her heartless and cold.*

*Fritz thought that John Locke, Jean Jacque Rousseau , and of course Plato and Socrates, all had much to offer.*

*But, in Fritz's view, so does the guy behind the counter at the local bowling center, whose critique of the arbitrary abuse of power inherent in local zoning restrictions is spot on. And, Fritz's barber, Joe. His views on confiscation via taxation made Fritz think. As much as anything the esteemed David Hume had to offer. Or, Adam Smith, for that matter.*

It goes on like this. Also, it doesn't matter if you're not familiar with the views of any of history's philosophers because as someone who has books by the majority of the ones mentioned and has read a few of them between other books I enjoy, the slight reference to their name and only a vague mention of any of their world views doesn't even make sense IN context.

It's as if the author here is trying to give the character the knowledge he should have as a philosophy professor as well as opinions on them, but read only a brief synopsis of just a few of those he name dropped but without doing any in-depth research reading himself. In my opinion, if you want a character you're writing the thoughts of to be seen as having a fair amount of logic on a particular subject, it's part of your job as the author to spend time reading up on the subject yourself so your character's thoughts and words make sense in context. It's also important if you're going to have a character knowledgeable in a subject like Fritz and philosophy, that your target audience isn't likely to have any familiarity with, that context is important. A reader needs to be able to follow a character's train of thought and only making vague references to one small aspect of, in this case, a well known philosopher's many, many views only causes disconnect.

I've stopped reading at page 33, just a couple of pages into chapter 4 and I cannot finish this book.
The short description on the back of the author, Tom Friedrich, says that he has written for academic and professional journals. I'm having an extremely hard time believing this because the writing is so poor, repetitive and the characters are just so bland. Even as he tries to flesh them out, he repeats details over and over again. He must have repeated at least 6 times in the pages describing the character Max III, that Max's mother had become an alcoholic who had overdosed on pills and booze. He also uses the Roman numeral at every single mention of Max's grandfather, father and several times with the Max we're meant to be following.

The final straw for me was Chapter 4: True Love, page 33. Max and Kris meet briefly in a class they share. They make small talk. Kris agrees to meet Max at a coffee shop on a Sunday.

A little background: While describing the character Kris, her life, her ambitions, her long term goals and such, it's stated, many times of course, that Kris has never paid any attention to boys before this because she basically didn't have any other interests or personality outside of academic excellence, getting into a specific college and path of study. No likes or dislikes, doesn't care about anything on television or movies, never cared about having friends and again, has never had any interest in dating.

So, they meet at the coffee shop and Kris who has never paid any attention to boys or had any crushes or boyfriends, looks at him as he is coming in, before they have had anything resembling a conversation and thinks This doesn't feel like a crush. I think I'm really in love.

I shut the book here. I'm so disappointed because the premise of this book sounded like it could be good and now, I cannot bring myself to even finish it to tell you if there was even a plot, because at the point I stopped, nothing was happening.

So, that's my review. I am always a person who believes in reading and judging for yourself, but I won this one in a GoodReads giveaway and I would recommend not spending your money on this at all.

I tried to undo giving the rating even 1 star but I guess it's the lowest you can rate.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a train wreck and not in a good way. Fragmented sentences ruin the fluency, the use of the word "but" is overwhelming (try "and" instead!), the dialogue is stilted ("That's too bad. Prepare to die."), and the weak plot is not foreshadowed it is blatantly apparent. The use of NIT and Haverd as names of colleges was distracting as well as unnecessary.

Tom Friedrich has been published in academic and professional journals with this being his first novel. Additional polish and editing are necessary for a work of fiction that is intended for a more diverse readership.

[Corinne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this story very much. I could see that this was the author's first book. In many cases the dialogue was like a speech. This was true for more than the first half of the book. It got better in the later half of the book. The story was intriguing but could have used some more development. I did check several times to see if the author was male. It was such a nice love story I was not sure. So very good job for a first book. I would read more from this author and hope he gets more involved in the story development and improves the dialogue.

[Jana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like the author was very knowledgeable in his writing about being a genius in the field of cyber security. He told a good story thru the characters lives in school, work, overseas, and government. However if you like romance it felt really stiff like I can totally get into a book about love at first sight or if it takes 5 years but his use of it in the book feels forced and unnatural for him as a writer. Besides that aspect it was still a good easy read.

[Pj Gaumond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read!!!!! I really enjoyed this book. The story line was clear and the characters believable. It's a novel about family, choices, challenges and love. It's a love story and so much more as the characters are very well developed and face their challenges head on. I'm looking forward to reading more by Tom Friedrich. I won this book through Goodreads.

[Theresa Colvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this action filled love story. This book kept me on my toes excitingly wanting to know what was going to happen next. It was filled with so much detail and emotion in each scene. I hope there is another book!

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book had excitement and suspense and a lot of knowledge b/c well they were geniuses but the romance felt forced or unnatural not like a warm fuzzy believable for me anyways. I still think it was worth the read if you're into cyber, geniuses, military, and or love.

[RyReads]

This book is...twisty. From one sentence to the next 'Identical Genius' often switches which character we are following or jumps ahead in the time frame without any page breaks.

Part academia fiction, part love story of two couples, 'Identical Genius' is a fast-paced read.

[Kelsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely LOVED this book! The style is different than many other authors, which I felt made it a very unique and positive reading experience! I hope the author writes another book, because I'd love to see where these characters go!!!!

[Angela Crossland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed it overall, but would have liked more story development between how Max and Kris fell in love and their meetings at the coffee shop. A lot of action was packed into this book, which sometimes jumped around a bit, but overall I kept finding myself wanting to read more.

[Alex Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great read. The other reviewer pointing out grammatical issues and other perceived problems... I just didn't see the problems. I was engrossed in the story. Especially chapters 11-14!

[Renee Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This had an interesting twist - which was fairly predictable; however, it wss engaging and an easy read.

[Angie Sanchez · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun story and a fast paced read. I passed it to my niece and she absolutely loves this book.

[Barbara Sugg · Rating 1 out of 5]

This a very interesting book. The story seems to promote the belief that everything happens for a reason. It is an intriguing espionage tale involving identical twins and the two men they meet in the course of their student and job activities. The book is an easy read and can be read in one sitting. I read it twice and I enjoyed it both times. And now I am waiting for the next book in this series.

[Sylvia. A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth checking out.

A very pleasant read. This book holds your attention and moves a smooth steady pace. I would recommend it and would read the next book when published.

[Tina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting story by first time novelist Tom Friedrich about identical twins, cybersecurity and a dash of philosophy thrown in. I would like to see where their story continues.