The Ice Twins

Sarah and Angus, parents of Lydia and Kirstie, two blonde haired, blue eyed twins, notably called, The Ice Twins, must grapple with the reality that one twin has died in a terrible fall from a balcony. The Ice Twins takes the reader on a twisted ride of twin psychology, parental angst, marriage deterioration and more on a small remote island in Scotland. This is a very mysterious story that unfolds slowly while everyone begins to fall apart at the seams though the story takes place a year after the death of the little girl. There is a lot of fascinating psychology in this book, such as why does the dog, Beany, behave differently between the twins and why does he act a certain way with the surviving twin? There is some good stuff in this show more book. The twin aspect I found to be super interesting. In this story, they are identical and hard to distinguish.

While reading this book, I found there is no one to trust in the story making it very unsettling. The surviving twin seems to be self com-busting while the parents try to amble along to find remedies, solutions, justifications and blame for all of their problems which begin to have a very claustrophobic feel due to their decision to move to the lighthouse island to an aged house that once belonged to Angus's grandmother. Once there, things really go haywire. Is the kid having an identity crisis? Maybe she is being haunted? Or, is her behavior based on more sinister happenings within the family?

Angus and Sarah are facing some serious troubles in their marriage. You get alternating viewpoints and narration throughout the book from Sarah and Angus who don't really communicate well to each other due to the loss of their daughter and other events. It's hard to believe either one of their stories and you never know if either is telling the truth.

This is a pretty good, taunt psychological mystery. I was interested, intrigued and creeped out by The Ice Twins. I found Tremayne's writing to be very good and I would read future books by this author. This story was well done and, for a nice change, I was glad to hit on a good mystery that combined psychological twists with a great setting and well distinguished characters. Well done. show less

Neli tähte selle eest, et tõesti ei saanud enne käest panna, kui läbi oli. Esimene thriller, mis mu lugemiskogemust kindlalt ja veenvalt rikastas. Õõvastavalt põnev sündmustik süngelt kaunis looduses. Pettusi, valet ja kahtlusi täis lugu perekonnast, kes püüab hakkama saada suure trauma, süütunde, leina ja iseendaga. Põnevust, süngust ja müstikat jätkub viimase leheküljeni.
Autor oli väga huitavalt lähenenud peategelastele, kus ühe peategelase jutustus oli mina-vormis,justkui soviga saada lugejale lähemale. Samas loo teine tegelane - Sarah abikaasa, toodi lugejateni tema-vormis, keegi teine, keda lugeja peaks jälgima kaugemalt, objektiivsemalt. Stiililiselt huvitav lähenemine, mis kindlasti mõjutab lugejat kogu show more loo vältel - keeruline on arusaada, keda siis tegelikult uskuda, mida üldse uskuda, keda usaldada ja keda kahtlustada või kas üldse kahtlustada. Mõnes mõttes osav mängimine ka lugeja enda mõtete ja erinevate ajukäärudega. Igal juhul tasub see raamat kätte võtta ja emotsioonaalne kaasahaaravus on tagatud! Jään põnevusega ootama filmi, mida raamatu põhjal väntama hakatakse. show less

This Book is Bonkers

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for rape and violence, including rough sex.)

"Mummy, why do you keep calling me Kirstie?"

I say nothing. The silence is ringing. I speak:

"Sorry, sweetheart. What?"

"Why do you keep calling me Kirstie, Mummy? Kirstie is dead. It was Kirstie that died. I'm Lydia."

###

It's been thirteen months since Sarah's six-year-old daughter Lydia - one half of the "Ice Twins" - died in a tragic fall from her parents' first-floor balcony in Devon. In the wake of the accident, the family all but fell apart: Sarah spiraled into a morass of grief and guilt - for it was she who was supposed to be watching the girls that fateful night - while her show more husband Angus found solace in the bottom of a whiskey bottle. An angry, sometimes-violent drunk like his father, Angus eventually was fired from his architecture job after assaulting his boss in an alcohol-fueled rage.

And the remaining daughter Kirstie? Well, she's adrift without her other half. Best friends and then some, Kirstie and Lydia lived in their own little world. They had their own secret language and elaborate in-jokes, and in the months leading up to the accident, their identities had become so intertwined that they often dressed alike, swapped personas, and referred to themselves as a single entity, e.g., "Mummy, come and sit between me so you can read to us." Now that Lydia's gone, Kirstie is an island: alone, apart, desolate.

So what could be better than relocating Kirstie to an actual island? (Yes, that was sarcasm. Sarah and Angus are the worst.)

No longer able to afford their upper-middle-class lifestyle, the Moorcrofts decide to move to the ancient cottage under the lighthouse on Eilean Torran - Thunder Island - willed to Angus and his brother by their recently deceased grandmother. Though it's been years since he vacationed there, Angus has fond (more like "idealized") memories of the place. After much research - online, because visiting the place beforehand is just too much - Sarah decides that the change of scenery might do the family - and Kirstie especially - a world of good. A clean slate.

There's just one problem with this: the Moorcrofts remain the Moorcrofts no matter where they hang their North Face anoraks.

Oh, and it's rumored that Torron Island is haunted: a place where the boundaries between worlds is thin, and spirits sometimes slip through.

Unsurprisingly, Kirstie continues to devolve in this harsh, desolate - yet painfully beautiful - environment. Before long, she drops a bomb on Sarah: Kirstie isn't Kirstie, but rather Lydia, the twin taken for dead. Yet Kirstie isn't gone, either: a part of her lives on in Lydia, and sometimes that part comes out to play.

With only the surviving twin's spontaneous utterance to go on - "Mummy Mummy come quickly, Lydie-lo has fallen!" - Sarah begins to question her memories of the accident. Could she really have made a mistake? Did they say goodbye to the wrong girl? Might her favorite twin still be alive?

In a word, this book is BONKERS. The Ice Twins is a wicked weird mashup of genres: ghost story, murder mystery, psychological thriller, and (oddly enough) nature writing. Just which genre dominates the scene shifts and slides from one chapter to the next.

Many of the elements - an unreliable narrator, a nefarious ex-/husband, a reality that bends and buckles and refuses to be nailed down - are reminiscent of another 2015 psychological thriller, Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train. But there are also shades of The Shining cast here as well; the primitive, disconnected isolation of Torran Island brings to mind the Overlook Hotel; bonus points since both stories take place during the stormy, dreary winter season, where the weather is almost as great of a threat as your murderous, alcoholic husband. Torran Island is a MC unto itself.

Filled with twists and turns, you're really best just sitting back and enjoying the show. As Sarah tries to decipher the truth about what happened thirteen months ago - and in the days since - theories run the gamut and become increasingly over-the-top: adultery, murder, suicide, rape, incest, pedophilia. And of course hauntings: of the house, the island, her daughter. Had I been live-blogging it, my comments would have been a never ending series of WELL THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY gifs.

While Sarah's perspective dominates the story, occasionally the focus shifts to Angus for a one-chapter interjection of sorts. Whereas Sarah narrates in first person, present tense, Angus is written in third person, past tense, for a rather obvious and jarring change. At least until it isn't. Spoilers!

Sarah and Angus are wholly unlikable protagonists, which actually works quite well for the story. (Who wants to read about unicorns and rainbows and Mr. Rogers all the time?) The story does hinge on the old horror trope of sex is evil/punishing women for their sexuality. If I think on it too hard, it is a little irritating; yet on another level I can see how it works in this particular instance. (Which is to say, it wasn't so much the sex as the bad parenting.)

One thing that really irritated me: Tremayne's love affair with colons, which are wildly overused. Then again, I read the ARC; no doubt editors will swoop in and clean this up in the final version.

P.S. Adopt, don't shop!

http://www.easyvegan.info/2015/05/22/the-ice-twins-by-s-k-tremayne/ show less

Twins are fascinating. None more so than identical twins. How they relate to each other, how they relate to other people, even how you can tell them apart: these are all rich sources of material for a writer, but S. K. Tremayne's gothically charged novel starts from the end in a sense by exploring the tensions inherent in one twin relationship after the loss of a twin.

--- What's it about? ---

Fourteen months ago, Lydia Moorcroft died in an accident. Now her devastated parents, Sarah and Angus, move with their dog, Beany, and surviving twin, Kirstie, to a remote Scottish Island. (Handily, Angus' grandmother has left him the island as a bequest in a will. As you do.) Their hopes of a fresh start dim when Kirstie declares that she is show more actually Lydia. Her parents know that one of their completely identical daughters died. But do they know which one? As Kirstie/Lydia's identity shifts and confuses, the gaping cracks in her parents' relationship become wide enough that a person could fall through them, and on isolated Torran, no-one would hear their cries for help...

--- What's it like? ---

Creepy. Ambiguous. Filled to the brim with guilt. Sarah's readiness to believe that they have identified the 'wrong' twin as living for the last fourteen months is strange, especially as it is initially based on one statement made on one evening. Gradually she starts to collate 'evidence': the dogs' responses to the twins; a shift in academic abilities; and a favourite toy that's been recovered from Lydia's boxed-up belongings. It's easy to believe that this could simply be wish-fulfilment: Lydia was Sarah's favourite out of the twins, after all. Does she simply want her favourite back? Is Kirstie just trying to please her deeply distressed mother?
Then the narrative shifts to reveal Angus' perspective and the level of threat increases exponentially. Angus is pleased that, 'On Torran they would be safe at last. No one would ask questions. No interfering neighbours. No friends and relatives. No police.' What exactly is he afraid of? What happened to Lydia? And why does he seem to hate his wife?

The sense of threat is heightened again by the move to Torran. Angus wonders how many people drown each year trying to cross the flats, concluding that it's still safer than London. Readers may feel otherwise! In this deeply unsettling environment, in a cottage that's definitely breaking down rather than simply ramshackle, Angus becomes a potential Jack Torrance, (is it a coincidence that he lives on Torran?) and Sarah becomes increasingly convinced that he is hiding something terrible from her. Meanwhile, Lydia's attempts to make friends suffer from Kirstie's continued presence...

--- Final thoughts ---

I loved the creepiness, the uncertainty and the harsh environment. Sarah tries to paint over murals left by squatters on the cottage walls, but as nature continues its assault on their little corner of the world, the murals come back. Defiant. Daring Sarah to face them. And the truth will do the same. (Though I wonder whether some feminists might criticise the 'truth' that is finally revealed; arguably, a woman is harshly punished for acting in defiance of traditional roles.)

I was annoyed by the insistent use of colons. 'The wine came: plentifully.' 'The anger rises inside me: like fire.' Etc. There are a million examples like this, presumably intended to create a more dramatic tone and mood, but their prevalence irritated me, especially as the vast majority were unnecessary, and they detracted my attention from the story.

The story dips into supernatural territory throughout, but there's always an alternative, rational explanation available, which I liked. In fact, the disturbing ending is even more chilling if you discount the possible supernatural explanation, which I prefer to do.

Genuinely gripping, disturbing and a compulsive page turner, this kept me awake til 3am one night. show less

The loss of a child can and does rip apart families as easily as one can rip a piece of paper. However, how does a family survive such a tragedy when that loss is one-half of a set of identical twins? For a year now, Sarah and Angus must face this exact question as they deal with the ramifications of a tragic accident and the ensuing guilt. Readers know very early in the story that there is more than meets the eye to Sarah’s and Gus’ stories. As they move forward with their lives on the family-owned island in the Hebrides, secrets will out and sanity, or something more sinister, will unravel their lives. They thought they knew tragedy, but in reality, it was only just beginning.

In The Ice Twins, much of the novel revolves around the show more identity confusion Kirstie or Lydia exhibits and the odd but real possibility that Sarah and Gus buried the wrong child. This is one of those odd scenarios that seem to strange to be true, but when dealing with genetically identical twins, the rules fly out the window. How does one ever know which twin is which? Then there is the issue of loss and ongoing trauma that occurs every time Kirstie or Lydia looks in the mirror and sees, not herself, but her dead twin. That there are no easy answers only adds fuel to Sarah’s paranoia.

Adding to the considerable tension of a fracturing family is the fact that Angus and Sarah are essentially bankrupt. Their move to northern Scotland is a move of desperation not only for their family psyche but also for their finances. The stress of being on the brink of disaster means that not only are there any easy answers but there are no alternatives they to which they can afford to escape. They must deal with the drafty, rat-infested cottage with creepy murals and incessant damp as well as the near constant isolation that is now their life. As such, the emotional suspense is every bit as intense as one would imagine.

What gives The Ice Twins its true power are the emotions of the characters. Gus and Sarah do not hide the fact that they still love and desire each other, but their deeper feelings resulting from the tragedy seem to be impeding them from finding solace in each other’s company. Sarah’s guilt – at not being there to prevent the accident, at not know which twin is still living, at not being able to help the living twin through her grief – is devastatingly real and every bit as intense as the suspense of the story. Gus’ anger, inexplicable but still very much a factor in his state of mind, is palpable and frankly eerie. Readers know that this combination of roiling emotions is a bomb ready to explode. The anticipation of this is what makes the story so difficult to set aside for real life.

The Ice Twins is the best kind of thriller. Not only does it have an excellent story with intense characters, the remote Scottish landscape takes on a life of its own. Sarah’s and Gus’ ongoing emotional trauma at the loss of their daughter is palpable, adding a layer of complexity and heightening the story’s tension. The harrowing conclusion is equal parts tragic and exciting, while the lingering questions that remain solidify the ominous tone of the story. While probably not an ideal beach read, The Ice Twins is still a fantastic story, impulsively readable and one that will grab a reader’s attention until the very end. show less

From my blog

This is one of the weirdest books I have read. I can't imagine having identical twins and only knowing them apart by their personality. When they were babies into toddlers, one had a nail painted pink and the other blue to help identify them. I can understand the frustration and chilling scary moments for the mother. As the reader I just wanted to get to the end to understand the story but I was able to put it down, it never had me on the edge of my seat. Which twin died, Kirstie or Lydia, you truly didn't know and it was quite confusing.

Unreliable characters are one of my favourite styles but I was more frustrated reading this one. The mom tells the story and I wonder if she needs help, they all need help. The author did show more a good job on allowing me to feel the pain and frustration the family did, all in different ways but the ending helps to understand why. This is such a sad quote.

".....now that Lydia is alone she may lead a more normal life, you know, twins are so different, now she is more normal, in the most terrible way, of course." Kindle 71%

Can you imagine saying that to a mom, outrageous.

As I learned all the secrets throughout the story I was angry, how can parents be that ignorant, what they put on their child was unbelievable to me, no wonder she was confused and it became scary. This story truly made you consider believing in ghosts, now I can understand the main word used to describe the book, chilling.

When you are guilty of an act that you end up with amnesia, how do you heal and move on? This is the question and who is guilty, mom, dad or the surviving twin? show less

** spoiler alert ** Sarah, Angus and their daughter Kirstie move to a remote Scottish island to make a fresh start. Just over a year ago Kirstie's twin sister Lydia died in an accident, but suddenly Sarah is no longer sure that Lydia was the daughter who died. When I read the description of this book, I assumed that the twins were older and that the surviving daughter had much more deliberate agency in what happened to her sister. I was disappointed to find that Kirstie/Lydia is 7 when the story opens and essentially a victim in the story of what her parents did and do.

I liked the basic premise and found the research the author had obviously done about identical twins very interesting. The island setting and the descriptions and photos show more of the cottage were also well done. However, I disliked this book in the end for various reasons. I found the pace rather slow and most of the characters unlikeable (apart really from Josh and Molly). I don't like books which hint at the supernatural/ghosts etc. I found the way Sarah and Angus parented their extremely troubled daughter to be appalling. I know they were supposed to have compelling motivations for squashing/not delving too deeply into what she said, but these were not revealed until the end and even then did not form adequate justification in my view. The reveal at the close of the story of what Sarah actually did on the day in question was completely out of left field for me (maybe I missed clues - I know Angus kept going on about how he couldn't forgive her, but still). Also, would you really have sex with some one you have just met in the middle of the afternoon with your six your old daughters knocking on the door?

Disappointing. show less