THE MIDNIGHT TWINS

A shamelessly manipulative chicklet-lit-cum-horror tale, first in a trilogy, from the famed author of the Oprah pick The Deep End of the Ocean (1996). In the New York State town of Ridgeline, where their families have lived for generations, the twins Mallory and Meredith were born on the opposite sides of midnight one New Year’s Eve. On the New Year’s Eve of their 13th birthdays, an arson fire injures both girls so badly that they no longer share their dreams or hear each other’s thoughts. One twin gets terrifying glimpses of the future, the other of the past, in their world of soccer and cheerleading and pizzas at the mall. When an older boy tortures animals and almost rapes a girl, what the twins see—and do not see—twists their lives and leads to an absolutely predictable climax. Many clichés, cardboard characters and the hoary tropes of grandmotherly wisdom and benevolent female ancestors close but do not end the tale. Will teens eat it up? Possibly. (Fiction. 12 & up)