FREE: Identical by Elen Hopkins (NEW)

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Conventional wisdom holds that twins, especially identical twins, share a deeper connection to each other than siblings.

Raeanne and Kaeleigh Gardella are the teenage daughters of two successful parents: dad Ray is a prominent judge and mom Kay is expected to win an upcoming senatorial election. The girls have school to occupy them, but while Kaeleigh is involved in typical extracurricular activities, Raeanne spends most of her free time with her drug dealer, smoking pot, drinking and having sex. At home, both girls self-medicate, drinking from their father's bottles and emptying his pill bottles. It soon becomes apparent why: ever since a tragic car accident years ago, Ray has been sexually abusing Kaeleigh.

The twins respond to the abuse, as well as their father’s alcoholism and their mother’s emotional abandonment, in different ways. One rebels and tries to find power in relationships with men while numbing herself with drugs and alcohol; the other tries to avoid or discourage her father with overeating and emotional passivity while also numbing herself with substances and finally cutting herself to control her own body and the pain she is in. On the outside they seem like an ideal family as long as they all keep up the charade. But several changes in their lives make it impossible to pretend any longer that all is okay in their home.

Their mother is away more and more, and while the girls each begin new relationships with young men, they find out, when their grandparents contact them after many years, the events that so damaged their father. Soon, everything is spiraling out of control for both young ladies and they turn increasingly to drugs and sex, cutting and overeating. Friends new and old will be there to help pick up the pieces, but in the end, the twins have a steep and difficult road to recovery.