He doesn't want to assume she's straight / going to be a straight girl.

Johnson does state in the book that gender is a construct and Curtis (the older brother) teases her about having boys in her room, but then checks himself and teases her about 'having a thing' for her friend Amber. Besides commenting on how cute an older boy in the ROTC is, there's no romantic slant at all. The book doesn't have any romantic or sexual leanings. He doesn't live with the girls but he's still a part of the family and a part of their lives. I like the blended family - the girls have an older half-brother from their dad's previous wife. I liked that everyone was basically a good person, though flawed. They all care about each other, but make mistakes and sometimes cause each other pain. sister), no one in the book is a bad person. No one is a saint or exactly 'in the right' in this book, you can see things from everyone's perspective.ĭespite a lot of conflict on a lot of fronts (not only sister vs. Everyone involved makes some bad decisions and has to suffer blowback for them.

The girls are flawed, the parents are flawed. Everyone in the book is flawed, which I think is to its benefit. Both Francine and Maureen are fully fleshed out, even the side characters are pretty developed. Francine and Maureen fight and Francine says some choice mean things to Maureen that make her feel like shit.Īfter that, Maureen goes for president of student council, a position she KNOWS Francine is wanting and gunning for. The whole thing kind of blows up on page 62 when Maureen finds out from her Master Sergeant that her parents told ROTC to enroll her and it all comes out that there was no 'computer glitch' and that Francine begged her parents to put her in classes without Maureen in an attempt to separate her from her sister. Maureen has also been enrolled in ROTC or whatever version of ROTC exists in this universe. Francine is thrilled with this, Maureen is nervous and upset. In the beginning, we learn that a 'computer error' made it so that the girls aren't in all the same classes this year. Maureen is the more fearful one, the one who wants to stay with her sister all the time, the one who gets the best grades and the one who is the main character of the book. Francine is the talkative one, the social one, the outgoing one. Although they are identical in appearance, the girls are pretty different. This was a pretty good book about two twins entering the 6th grade together. She always smiles at me - I think she likes me. You're not supposed to eat in the library, but Mrs. She had even decided to run for class president, and was forming a campaign committee and everything. But Francine wasn't right about everything.

Twins by varian johnson