Genre
Young adult
Setting and Context
The suburbs of a modern-day town in the United States.
Narrator and Point of View
The story is told from the alternating perspectives of twin sisters, Kaeleigh and Raeanne.
Tone and Mood
The tone is somber, introspective, and often intense. The mood is dark and heavy.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Kaeleigh is the primary protagonist; her father is the primary antagonist.
Major Conflict
The story revolves around the twin's struggles to wrestle with and overcome their trauma.
Climax
When it is revealed that Kaeleigh is suffering from dissociative identity disorder because of her father's abuse.
Foreshadowing
There is subtle foreshadowing to Raeanne not being real and Kaeleigh having dissociative identity disorder before it is revealed at the end of the novel.
Understatement
Initially, the extent of the twins father's culpability in their mental health struggles is understated in the novel.
Allusions
There are allusions scattered throughout the novel to politics and popular culture.
Imagery
The novel includes powerful imagery of drugs and alcohol, which are used to underscore the internal turmoil of the twins and their mother.
Paradox
Although Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical twins and similar in many ways and deal with much of the same kind of trauma, their internal struggles, experiences, and ways of coping differ significantly.
Parallelism
n/a
Metonymy and Synecdoche
n/a
Personification
The girl's fathers car accident is personified in the novel and given human-like characteristics.
