Recently Read: One

Author: Sarah Crossan
Genre: Young Adult/ Contemporary
Publication Date: 2015
Page Count: 400
Rating: 4/5

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Tippi and Grace are twins, best friends, and joined at the hip. Literally. They are sixteen years old and conjoined twins. This free verse novel tells the story of their first encounter with public school, and a tragedy that will test their love for one another.

This book was so addicting, I couldn't put it down. I read it in one sitting, which is something I haven't done with a book in a very long time. The free verse style worked perfectly with this novel, and accounted for the quick pace and addictivness. I will say, that the free verse makes it a little harder to connect to Grace as a narrator, but it really worked overall for this novel.

I'm fascinated by twins and grew up knowing quite a few pairs. I love how connected they are and how intune to one another they are. Conjoined twins are a whole other level. I can't imagine living my life by sharing a body with someone else, and I can't imagine the depth of the connection that conjoined twins have. Grace and Tippi are connected at the waist, so they each have their own torso and two arms, and they share the lower half of their body. They are always together, and depend on each other for survival. Of course there is a little bit of romance, which is interesting with the shared body dynamic, but what I really loved about this book was seeing how connected Grace and Tippi were to each other, not just in their physical movements, but in their emotions and thoughts.

Of course after reading this I watched a couple documentaries on conjoined twins and became even more fascinated by them. I read that there are only like twelve living pairs of conjoined adult twins in the whole world right now. That's crazy. Abby and Brittany Hensel are a pair of conjoined twins who have done a few documentaries and T.V. shows that are really great if you are interested. They have two heads and pretty much one body, one girl controls the right side of the body, the other the left side. They are so insync that they say the exact same thing at the exact same time and almost always talk in stereo without even trying to.

I recommend you check this one out, as it was really unique and hard to put down!