TLC Book Tours Book Review: Beside Myself

Author: Ann Morgan
Title: Beside Myself
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publish Date: Jan 12, 2016
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: TLC Book Tours
Book Blurb: 

Six-year-old Helen and Ellie are identical twins, but Helen is smarter, more popular, and their mother's favorite. Ellie, on the other hand, requires special instruction at school, is friendless, and is punished at every turn.

Until they decide to swap places--just for fun, and just for one day--and Ellie refuses to switch back. Everything of Helen's, from her toys to her friends to her identity, now belongs to her sister. With those around her oblivious to her plight, the girl who used to be Helen loses her sense of self and withdraws into a spiral of behavioral problems, delinquency, and mental illness. In time, she's not even sure of her memory of the switch.

Twenty-five years later, she receives a call that threatens to pull her back into her sister's dangerous orbit. Will she take this chance to face her past?

Review: This is one of those books that you have to digest. It reminds me of Gone Girl, not in the plot but in how I felt about the characters.

The Helen/Ellie characters are both really intensely unlikable, but none of the characters more so than the girls' mother. The whole time I was reading the book, I found her to be truly nasty and without any regard for the life of her other daughter.

I couldn't understand why they never tried to do anything to help Ellie, long before she was the trouble maker that was out of control. I mean what kind of mother is like that!!! And to thing it all started with a day when two twins switched places. That's pretty common place in books.

I felt sorry for her, because her family was just awful. Actually, Helen was pretty awful to Ellie before the switch and their Mother was really terrible period. What I didn't quite get was how easily the two sisters took on the other sister's life. That didn't make much sense to me if the real Ellie was a little developmentally challenged. How did she suddenly excel while Helen began to do poorly?

I wish this story would have been more two sided thouga. I wanted to know more of the real Ellie. We only get Helen's side. When stories are dark, like this one, I like to get to know the villain if you could, in fact call either girl that.

When you find out a family secret at the end, you'll really hate the mother. The one thing you could take away from this book, was that the entire family was messed up.

This is the kind of book you can't put down because you want to know what the outcome is going to be.

Rating: 4 flowers