The Gemini Game

by Susanna Kearsley

Book by Susanna Kearsley

Genres: Romance, Mystery, Romantic Suspense, Suspense, Fiction, Mystery Thriller

192 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1994

About the author

New York Times, USA Today, and Globe and Mail bestselling author Susanna Kearsley is a former museum curator who loves restoring the lost voices of real people to the page, interweaving romance and historical intrigue with modern adventure.

Her books, published in translation in more than 20 countries, have won the Catherine Cookson Fiction Prize, RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards, a RITA Award, and National Readers’ Choice Awards, and have finaled for the UK’s Romantic Novel of the Year and the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel.

She lives near Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

(Aka Emma Cole, a pseudonym she used for one novel, Every Secret Thing, a thriller which at the time was intended to be the first of a trilogy featuring heroine Kate Murray, and which may yet be finished, some day. Meantime, Every Secret Thing has been reissued under Kearsley's name, and the Emma Cole pseudonym is no longer in use.)

Reviews

[Barb in Maryland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Curiosity compelled me to track this down--let's give a big cheer for Inter-Library Loans!

So hard to judge fairly--this is such an early work by this author. Given the length of the book (183 pages), Kearsley had little room to develop any of the characters, nor did she have the word count available to elevate the setting of the story beyond the generic.
The basic story is a mystery, with a bit of a romance tacked on. As the title hints, identical twins are involved. One died in an auto crash--but which one? The twins are our heroine Karen's older brothers--brothers she hasn't seen in 10 years, for Reasons. She hero-worshipped one of them; is he the one who is dead? Lots of gothic style drama ensues before we have our dramatic conclusion.

This book came out about the same time as Mariana. The quality difference between the two books is a clear indication that the short format was not Kearsley's strong suit.

[Diane Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really more like 3.5 stars

This story was written in 1994 and is very short at 183 pages. It was surprisingly good and the mystery had a little twist.

First line: There was no one to meet her at the bus stop.

Karen Caldwell left her home, Seven Oaks, in South Carolina after her grandfather's death. She was all of eighteen years old and was a bit troubled. She ran to Pittsburgh and after a few years was a successful business woman with a boutique clothing store. As the story starts, eight years have passed since Karen left and she has been called home by a mysterious telegram because her brother, Alec, has died. Alec has a twin, Nick. Karen arrives in her home town at night during a storm. Her extended family lives at Seven Oaks and they are not happy she has returned. Alec's will is read the night she arrives. Accidents start happening, no one will admit to sending the telegram calling her home, someone steals some of her family pictures, the family doctor gives her a cryptic message. There are a lot of strange things going on. Seven Oaks is a race horse breeding and training farm and there is a lot of money involved. Is Karen's life in danger? So that is the basic set up.

I really enjoyed this story. It was not as well developed as some of the author's other work, but it is also much shorter. The mystery part was really quite good. The descriptions of South Carolina were also well done. The horse farm workings, including a foaling, were also well done. As a matter of fact I was reminded of The Ivy Tree as I read this. Overall, I was quite pleased. Read on openlibrary.org.

[LJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gemini Game - G
Susanna Kearsley
After eight years building a career in Pittsburg, Karen Caldwell arrives back at her South Carolina home after receiving an anonymous telegram pleading for her return. One of her older twin brothers, Alex, killed in a tragic automobile accident leaves the family circling like buzzards over the remains of the family estate, a wealthy racehorse stud and training farm. Imagine when out of the blue, after eight long years away, Karen steps back into their lives and inherits the property and the 14 million dollars that goes with it.

Suddenly, Karen finds herself in the center of unwanted attention, particularly male attention. When she finds herself falling in love, Karen must factor her newfound wealth into her analysis of her true feelings. In addition to this, she realizes that before Alex's death, he and his twin Nick were playing what they called, "the Gemini Game", a game where they switched places just for fun . . . as she wrestles with the game's implications, she discovers that her inheritance has put her own life in jeopardy . . .

A Gothic-type story; Mary Stewart-esque.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susanna Kearsley is one of my favorite authors and i have read all of her more recent stuff. On her website she states "These are both quite short books (50,000 words) and, while I’m fond of them as early works, they’re honestly not up to the standard of my later and longer novels." I agree - there really is no comparison to her more recent works. Having said that this was not a bad book - I enjoyed it and it was a quick one night read that just lacked the depth of what I have become accustomed to with Kearsley.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating Clarification: 2.5 Stars

[Minnesinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is quite short for a novel, but decent for a beginning writer. (It was only Kearsley's second book, following 'Undertow'.)

Goodreads reviewer Denise mentioned that Kearsley stated on her website that her first books were "not up to the standard of my later and longer novels." Denise agreed, and so do I: there really is no comparison to her later works. Nevertheless, this was still a (mostly) satisfying, quick read.

In some ways, I think Kearsley did a better job here in describing Karen than she does a later heroine (Emily) in 'Splendour Falls', which is a longer work.
On the other hand, she does gloss over a lot of time -- a crucial eight years -- between Karen's leaving Seven Oaks at age 18 to her return at age 26. A critical stage in life when one's identity is shaped. But then this is hardly (meant to be) a classic work of literature. We all understand and forgive a fledgling writer for oversights or gaps, especially an author loved and admired like Susanna Kearsley. And to be fair, she does tell us that Karen was building up her retail empire during that time. Whether that is believable is another matter.

Kearsley has clearly followed the standard writer advice to 'write what you know': She writes about the American South, where she grew up. (At least I think she grew up in Texas; she does not share much about her personal life with readers. And though Texas may not be antebellum, Atlantic-seaboard South, it is still 'South' as far as this Northerner is concerned,) I don't know if the author grew up with horses, but that's my guess, because Karen is not her only heroine who is an accomplished equestrienne.

The title 'The Gemini Game' struck me as a bit SciFi-sounding for a romance, but it was obviously chosen because of the (astrological symbol for) twins.

Some reviewers did not care for the greater emphasis on romance here than in her later books, but I felt the opposite; i wish Kearsley's books contained a bit more romance (romance, not sex).

Of all Kearsley's novels, my fave so far is Splendour Falls, because the hero is more sensitive, 'together' as a person (comfortable in his own skin), and knows what he wants -- her. (Why, is a mystery, but this review is not about that book,) The drawn-out romantic tension in that book was palpable.

Here, there is very little tension, and it is not so much between Karen and Greg than between Karen and her catty cousin Angie who 'claims' Greg. The ending comes so abruptly, too, that it's disconcerting and unrealistic; it feels like 'wham-bam, here's your ring, now let's get hitched'.

I'd love to talk with the author sometime about where she got her inspiration for Karen's family; they are pretty awful. But then some families really are that wicked and self-absorbed.

For those who don't have access to Kearsley's earliest books (like most of us), you can find them at OpenLibrary.org--you just need to create an account. OpenLibrary is an extension of the Internet Archive, which has scanned many older, out-of-print books.

You can download this title in epub or pdf file format, OR read it online. Though the epub file is smaller, the epub scan quality of this particular title is poor; there is missing text at the beginning of Chapter 1, and more than a few odd line breaks.
You will need Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) software on your computer, PC or Mac. if you use an Apple device (Mac, iPad or iPhone); I *strongly* recommend reading the ebook online, not downloading either file, the epub or pdf, because they don't work well with OS X or iOS. Trust me on this! You won't be able to return the book early (to be free to check out another). Actually, you won't be able to return the downloaded file at all; you will have to wait for it to expire after the standard 14-day loan period. If you read the book online, you can return it as soon as you're done, in your OpenLibrary account; just press the 'Return' button.
If you use a non-Apple device--a PC, tablet or smartphone--you should have no problem returning ebooks early from any device. At least that is what I've been told!

[SusanwithaGoodBook · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Kearsley's second novel, written back in 1994. Like Undertow, it's a simpler, more straightforward story than her later novels. A lot of the reviews I've read about this one really pan it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Karen gets a message asking her to return home immediately because her oldest brother has died. When she arrives she finds her family gathered, including the long-estranged twin brother of the deceased. There is tension in the air because the estate left by the brother's death is large, so most of the family is expecting some kind of money in the will. There's a bit of mystery surrounding the brother's death and there's some history between Karen and a ranch hand, and over the course of the story you sort out both the mystery of the brother and Karen's history on the ranch.

It's not a long book, so I read it in a couple of hours. I really couldn't put it down. Yes, it was somewhat predictable, but it had twists and turns and tension and all the things that make me a happy reader. Oh, and like I said about Undertow, the male lead in this one had more to say and was a more fleshed-out character than in some of her later novels (I'm looking at you Named of the Dragon and Season of Storms).

I had to request this one through my library's interlibrary loan system, but I'm very glad I did. It was a good read. I've now read everything Kearsley has written, so I'll just have to wait for her to write something new.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know if my expectations were low or my standards just aren't as high as others, but, while this early work of Susanna Kearsley has received mixed/negative reviews, I really enjoyed it.

Unlike her later historical fiction, this sits pretty firmly in the "chick-lit" genre for me. However, it had everything I like about chick-lit and none of the things I dislike. There's romance, of course, but it was 1) clean and 2) not the only plot. There was a mystery, which, yes, was a little predictable, but wasn't a gimme. It kept me interested. I didn't want to put the book down. It's short (180 pages), and I would have finished it in one sitting had life not gotten in the way. As it is, I almost want to re-read it just for fun because it's so short.

I would recommend this book for fans of the show Heartland. It's not as sappy as Heartland by any means, but the main character is a young woman who inherits a horse farm in South Carolina. There are some lovely descriptions of horses and riding that made me miss it. The mystery lies in the circumstances of her brother's death that lead to her inheriting his estate. The romance is surprisingly well developed for such a short book. Like I said, I was not disappointed.

[Tiffany E-P · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trying to be fair in my review because this is an early work. And obviously everyone gets better with practice. And also because it was written in the 90s, times were different. It reminded me a bit of a later Agatha Christie. Somewhat suspenseful and a bit unrealistic. A naive heroine who is saved by the man who always loved her while spurning her cousin who had always been a bit of a villain. And all the accompanying drama

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pleased to find both of Kearsley's earlier books online at https://www.worldcat.org/. They vary from her later books in that they are solely mystery/romance without the paranormal or historical aspects, but they are each a pleasant read in their own right. Her descriptive prose is in evidence early on in her writing career, and while I admit that she has certainly developed her craft over the years, I still enjoyed these shorter stories for what they are.

[Judy Nappa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this now (after reading all of Susanna's books written since she wrote it), I can say that she showed great promise and I'm glad that she kept on writing. An interesting plot and quite different from what she writes now but I enjoyed the read and I love that she's now writing historical fiction as it's one of my main favourite genres!

[Sharon Buxton · Rating 3 out of 5]

C. fiction, contemporary, mystery

[Greta Steinz · Rating 5 out of 5]

An early book that was hard to find in my area. Fantastic for one of her early works! Engaging, captivating and creative. A good quick, but dense read. Totally worth it! Hugs and smiles!

[Michale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad for a second book. But her writing just kept improving as she moved into books with a longer format.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can't hold a candle to her later books.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was somewhat disappointed in this second novel. Most authors I've read show a real leap in skill from book 1 to book 2. This one was a let down. It became much more predictable than the first and the main character lost some of her strength and independence falling in love. Will read on with this author as the later books get a much higher rating.

[Nieca · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, I understand why the author wrote this on her website, "while I’m fond of them as early works, they’re honestly not up to the standard of my later and longer novels." This was OK, but not nearly as absorbing as her other works. I missed my mini history lesson.

[Charissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very fast, easy read about a girl who runs from her life at 18 and starts a new one. The death of her brother summons her home, but her family isn't happy. It was good!

[Kathy Sebesta · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is only her second book so it's not fair to expect the more polished writer of current day. However, The Gemini Game definitely shows her talent and where she's headed.