CBR Book 2: Identical

Identical, by Ellen Hopkins

My one-line summary of Identical is that it's pretty much When Rabbit Howls for the Twilight set. It's in a sort of a prose poem style, and it deals with pretty much any issue you can imagine a YA book dealing with: sexual abuse, incest, cutting, eating disorders, drugs, sexual promiscuity, love, rivalries, dysfunctional families ... you name it, these girls are dealing with it.

"These girls" are Raeanne and Kaeleigh (oy, those names) Gardella, twin daughters of a successful judge and a would-be Congresswoman, living "the good life" in mid-state California. Their family has its public side, and its private side, and guess what? The private side is pretty ugly. The girls have their means of coping - namely the aforementioned laundry list of issues. Clearly, the status is not quo, and as we follow the first person "poetic" narrative to the (somewhat predictable) denouement, we are treated to loads and loads of teenage angst, plus some fairly disturbing activity for 18 year olds to be engaged in. (Or at least it's disturbing from the viewpoint of someone with a 3 week old daughter.)

Honestly, I sort of wish Ms. Hopkins had just picked one or two issues and dealt with that. The book would be a lot less busy. But, she's apparently a fairly popular YA author, so what do I know? I'm not entirely sure how this one ended up on my "to-read" list ... I like looking at lists of books in newspapers and on NPR and so forth, and I will often just decide that some random list sounds fun and add a bunch of stuff to my own agenda, which I then promptly forget about.

I think that I must have been intrigued by the structure of the novel, which is admittedly somewhat interesting, if better manifested elsewhere (try Out of the Dust if you want novels in poem form). I am not, by any means, belittling the problems that teenagers face in this day and age, and I think it's great that a successful novel can address those issues, but I guess to me the inclusion of pretty much all of them just seemed kind of gimmicky. Still, I admit that I am not the target audience, and perhaps for a girl who's read Twilight and is looking for something with a little more substance, this would be the way to go.

This book is rated R for sexual content, drug use, and foul language. Some scenes may be disturbing for younger readers.