Synopsis via Amazon:
Augusta Hope has never felt like she fits in.
And she’s right – she doesn’t. At six, she’s memorising the dictionary. At seven, she’s correcting her teachers. At eight, she spins the globe and picks her favourite country on the sound of its name: Burundi.
And now that she’s an adult, Augusta has no interest in the goings-on of the small town where she lives with her parents and her beloved twin sister, Julia.
When an unspeakable tragedy upends everything in Augusta’s life, she’s propelled headfirst into the unknown. She’s determined to find where she belongs – but what if her true home, and heart, are half a world away?
My reading experience:
Firstly I would like to thank Netgalley and the publishers for my free ARC.
Augusta has a twin sister called Julia. I know the universe has difficulty believing that twins can often be like chalk and cheese but here we have twins born on different days so very unlike each other and yet still as close as can be. But Augusta feels that she doesn’t quite fit in …
“In this way, your twin is your home. Or mine was, anyway.”
The story is told by two separate narrators – Augusta from Hedley Green and Parfait from Burundi. Worlds apart these two individuals have one thing in common – their sense of not belonging. So it is in these parallel stories that both Augusta and Parfait experience tragedy and heartache and loss before finding each other.
I found the structure of the story to be well planned and easy to follow, with some poignant prose and thought-provoking insights. The author has given her characters depth and wisdom and illuminated the joy of being “weird”.
I recommend this read but it may not be an easy one.
Appletree Books 