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The Ice Twins

Review

The Ice Twins

I've always wanted to visit the Hebrides. Or, should I say, I always used to want to visit the Hebrides. After reading THE ICE TWINS by S. K. Tremayne (a pseudonym for a bestselling British novelist), I am beginning to have second thoughts about wanting to go to this beautiful but remote island cluster off the western coast of Scotland. Tremayne's novel acknowledges the place's beauty, but he also places that beauty in the context of violence, fear, and overwhelming grief and guilt. "This place is so relentlessly…beautiful, it never stops," thinks his narrator at one point. "Whatever else is happening, the beauty goes on, like a terrible nightmare."

"THE ICE TWINS is garnering a lot of comparisons to GONE GIRL, which is understandable given its pair of unreliable narrators. But its driven plot, well-drawn, compelling characters, and strong sense of place...put Tremayne’s psychological thriller in a class of its own."

The family at the center of THE ICE TWINS moves abruptly to the Hebrides as a way of stopping the nightmare their lives have become. Angus and Sarah Moorcroft's daughters were as identical as it's possible for twins to be --- even their own parents couldn't tell them apart by looking at a picture. Their personalities were different, of course, but when one of the twins, Lydia, is killed after a fall from her grandparents' balcony, the surviving twin, Kirstie, seems more than unusually changed, even damaged, by her grief. Of course, Sarah and Angus have been hardly left unchanged, either --- Sarah has withdrawn from her friends and family, and Angus has started drinking too much and lost his job following an altercation with his boss. Perhaps a move to the private island in the Hebrides that Angus has inherited from his grandmother will be just the thing to give all three --- or four? --- of them a fresh start.

As soon as the family arrives at the remote island, with its run-down, rodent-infested, perpetually freezing cottage, Kirstie begins behaving even more strangely, claiming that she is Lydia and that Kirstie, not Lydia, died that night. As Angus and Sarah begin to mistrust each other more and more, and as Kirstie's behavior towards her parents and others becomes more and more disturbing, they start to wonder what is real, what is made up, and what might be completely unexplainable.

This is the kind of book you want to read on a hot summer night, with all the lights on and someone else in the house. It's definitely not one you want to bring along on your next remote camping trip, unless you’d like to be frightened out of your mind. Is it a murder mystery, a ghost story, or just a portrait of a family unraveling under unimaginable grief? Adding to the overall creepiness factor is the inclusion of actual photographs from the island that inspired the one portrayed in the book, giving the story that extra dose of authenticity that propels it into truly terrifying territory.

THE ICE TWINS is garnering a lot of comparisons to GONE GIRL, which is understandable given its pair of unreliable narrators. But its driven plot, well-drawn, compelling characters, and strong sense of place --- depicted in all its beauty and ferocity --- put Tremayne’s psychological thriller in a class of its own.

Reviewed by Norah Piehl on May 29, 2015

The Ice Twins
by S. K. Tremayne