The Girls by Lori Lansen

This book is the story of Rose and Ruby Darlen, the world's oldest, surviving craniopagus twins. Written as an autobiography, mainly from Rose's viewpoint, the reader is taken on a journey of the sister's lives.

Although forced to be each other's constant companion, Lansen subtly displays to the reader how the girls are two very different people with vastly different inerests having to accomodate each others needs. Throughout the book Rose and Ruby often give you their own very different accounts of an event or experience and make assumptions as to what the other sister is feeling and thinking.

The book slowly draws you in, you expect the sisters to be extraordinary but it is the other characters and events that keep you turning the pages; by the end of the book I was left feeling like a part of the Darlen family.

Running throughout the book is the incredible bond that the sisters share even though they have never once been able to look into each others eyes. However, it is not necessarily a bond borne out of their physical link but purely and simply because they are sisters. This book was so much more than I expected it to be.

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