“At ten it isn’t exactly
easy to separate
good touch
from bad
touch,
proper
love from
improper love,
doting daddy from perv.”
Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical twins: beautiful, wealthy, well-dressed, living in a large house in a prestigious area. Their father is a respected judge, and their mother is on her way to winning a seat in the Senate. Of course, (remember, this is an Ellen Hopkins book), nothing is as nice as it appears. After a devastating accident when the twins were young, their father begins drinking, abusing prescription medication, and sexually abusing Kaeleigh. Their mother spends more and more time on the campaign trail, feigning ignorance of the situation at home. The girls try to compensate for the devastation in the family in various ways: Raeanne sleeps with guys to get drugs, using sex, drugs, and alcohol to medicate herself. Kaeleigh binges and forces herself to vomit, and cuts herself in the shower. Both girls despair of ever being whole again.
I can’t say much more, because I don’t want to give anything away. The ending is surprising, and felt slightly contrived, but after problems with the scope and nature of Raeanne’s and Kaeleigh’s, that is understandable. It’s hard to resolve such trauma in the space of a single story, and I don’t feel like the ending will be objectionable to younger readers. Furthermore, I think Hopkins handles the emotional fallout of sexual abuse in a very realistic way, which makes up for the ending.
This is a novel in unrhymed verse, and many of the poems are shaped to look like hearts, letters, and other designs. However, it still reads quickly, and the arrangement doesn’t interfere with ease-of-reading. That said, the topics do. This book was so disturbing that I was compelled to finish it in the space of seven tense hours. I just wanted to get through it, so that I could be free of it. Compelling isn’t the half of it: once I started, I had to finish.
I know that Ellen Hopkins is a wildly popular author, and readers are constantly clamoring for more, and any book that makes young people want to read is a winner with me. Yes, please! If you love books about tough stuff, this one may be for you. Hopkins is undeniably a skilled writer, and her novels fill an important space in the YA lit world. When we refuse to address certain topics, it creates a shroud of shame around them, which is why I applaud authors who don’t shy away from tricky subjects. However, I would recommend this book only to very mature readers, due to the graphic content. We’re talking incest, drugs, bulimia, self-injury, BDSM, alcoholism, and date rape. This isn’t for the faint-hearted.
Happy Reading!
Author’s website: http://www.ellenhopkins.com (Right now, it’s currently under construction, but you can look her up on Facebook, if you want!)
Hopkins, Ellen. Identical. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2008. 565 pp. Ages 16 (a mature 16) and up.
A Better World through Books 
I have read all of Ellen Hopkins books, and Identical is definitely my favorite. You are brought into the world of Kaeleigh and Raeanne, twins with two completely different outlooks on life. This book has given me so much insight into a dysfunctional family, which is something I can relate to although not to the extent of this book. Hopkins style of writing is something I love. Her words just flow onto the pages that make up her creation of what should be considered a “hard life”. All of her novels were based on people that have lives that are beyond distortion, their reality being what many people cannot understand and will only understand once reading one of her books. I believe that these novela were designed to give her readers a taste of her mind, and her ideas have given us the ability to see her view and her world. One of my favorite characters of this book is Ian. Unrequited love is something that people experience at least once in their lifetime and in the beginning in the novel it is evident that this happens to Ian. I love the fact Kaeleigh realizes her love for him because she really doesn’t associate herself with anyone else but him. Ian is the type of guy who is what every girl would defintely go for. Humble, not egotistical at all. Their relationship is genuine. Thumbs up for Ellen Hopkins.