BEAUTIFUL LIES

Alice and Rachel are even closer than most identical twins, having shared a single amniotic sac in utero and a psychic bond ever since.

After their parents’ death in a car accident, the twins were raised by their mother’s twin sister and her husband, but lately they have taken very different paths while remaining deeply intertwined. Cautious, responsible Rachel, a good student, looks out for reckless, out-of-control Alice, who shares their mother’s artistic and perhaps other gifts. When Alice vanishes, Rachel is overcome with a sense of dread and menace; she knows something bad has happened to her twin, but family, police and friends are less certain. But all is not as it seems in this claustrophobic, corkscrew-plotted world. As the title makes clear, readers are in unreliable-narrator territory. The twins, whose genetic legacy includes profound mental illness, trade places and keep secrets from each other. While failing to draw all loose threads into a neat bundle, the ending mostly makes sense and readers willing to be kept in the dark, even manipulated, in the service of a dynamic plot will enjoy the twists and turns.

It’s the twins’ culturally barren, dreary yet violent world—a realm of broken dreams—that resonates most in this haunting, moody, character-driven thriller