The Third Twin

Ava and Lexi are foundling identical twins, left on a restaurateur’s doorstep as infants and raised by their single father as members of the privileged California beach crowd. They have a habit of slumming with lower-class dates, alternately pretending to be “Alicia,” an invented “third twin.” When one of those dates turns up dead, Alicia is implicated. Like Omololu’s Transcendence, this contemporary thriller takes a long time to get going. A hundred pages in, Ava and Lexi are still hanging out, worrying about their outfits, about not getting into Stanford, and about who’s wearing the diamond-encrusted pendant tonight. A murder has happened, and the cops are involved, but more verbiage is devoted to the joys of eating at a food truck than to concern about the law. The narrative is from Lexi’s point of view, and she claims to know nothing, as does Ava. Is Lexi unreliable? Is Ava lying? Or is the truth more convoluted? Some readers may not make it far enough to find out, between sluggish pacing and the sisters’ sympathy-numbing self-absorption. Ages 12–up. Agent: Sarah Davies, Greenhouse Literary Agency. (Feb.)