The most recommended books about twins

This is a book that has stuck with me for over five years now.

The book is the first in the Frontier Magic Trilogy, and it’s fantastic. I loved the world-building, the twist on how magic worked and was taught. I also loved how her biological family thought she was a jinx, but her teachers and friends really believed in her and her magic.

Amanda Ronconi reads the books, too, so I highly recommend listening if you are into audiobooks. 

I read this book accidentally. When ordering The Witch’s Boy by Michael Gruber (so good! no siblings), this title came up alongside it. Barnhill won the Newbery with The Girl who Drank the Moon, but this one won my heart first. I loved the woods that separated the two worlds and the two main characters; I loved the image of magic pulsing in the veins; and I loved the subtle sibling theme. The title character, Ned, is defined in part by his dead twin. He fears that the villagers are right in saying the wrong boy survived. Having siblings is not all cozy belonging. There’s guilt and insecurity and competition and heartbreak too. This book captures some of those lost feelings among its thrills and terrors, while being ultimately uplifting.

Loot is a really fun book about kids for whom thievery runs in the family. Twelve-year-old March sees his father die during a heist, and now March is on a mission to find the precious stones that will reverse the curse on his family. On the way, he meets the twin sister he never knew he had, and together, they set out to find the jewels. What I love most about this book is that March is kind of an anti-hero. He’s not the all-around good guy that readers find in so many middle grade books. He loves being a thief and wants to carry on his father’s legacy. But, of course, March is a great kid at heart, and I couldn’t help but root for him all the way through this maze of a mystery.

This story differs from the others on my list, as it takes place in England in the early twentieth century. Setting and time period aside, the plucky main character Tabitha along with her pet rat and fellow detective (in her mind) steal the show and our hearts. We can’t help but root for her despite all she comes up against and all who belittle her as she follows clues in her unique and endearing manner through a giant and possibly haunted estate. Nooks & Crannies does a fine job balancing humor and wit with more serious subjects such as murder and abuse, and is sure to appeal to fans of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Probably one of the darker reads on my list but, man! This Trinidadian book delivers such top-notch story-telling that you’ll ask yourself why you don’t read more Caribbean fiction.

This book also looks at twins but the choices are taken out of their hands and placed in those of their parents. The author injected it with a bit of humour but it’s also a tear-jerker in the end. I highly recommend.

This slim novel is actually the second in McGuire’s Wayward Children series, which I wholeheartedly recommend in its entirety. The premise: a school for teenagers who once found secret, magical doors to other worlds when they were younger—and who, for various reasons, are sent back from those worlds to ours again. I particularly loved Jack, the burgeoning mad scientist sister in Down Among the Sticks and Bones, as well as her complicated relationship with her sister, Jill. I’m also a big fan of unique worlds and high-concept premises, and McGuire’s series absolutely checks both of those boxes!

I’ve always been a horror fan, even when I was a little kid—and so a tween who fancies herself destined to be a movie scream queen, someone who has an encyclopedic knowledge of horror movies (and campy B movies at that), is so relatable to me.

The entire plot and all the little details are a love letter to horror films, from the names of director Maximus Price’s films to the squid-like creatures who attach themselves to the faces of the Price Manor’s staff. But more than that, each of the main characters, including the manor house, is so well-developed.

It’s a sweet and funny book with just enough scares to be the perfect first horror book for a middle-grade reader. 

I read this novel soon after returning from Wales where I was visiting on a writing fellowship. My experience of the country is contemporary while the book is set several decades in the past. But I found the references and nuances of life, society, politics, language, and religion familiar.

It is a beautiful study of realistic rural life without romanticizing it. Spanning nearly four generations and panning wide to take in the entire neighbourhood, it depicts history as lived experience. Be it late 21st century India or early 20th century Wales, ‘upended’ power dynamics in marriages in historically hierarchical societies lead to tragic, albeit interesting, stories whose impact continues to be felt many generations on. While this is the underlying theme of the story, the narrative doesn’t seek to educate. It simply paints an intricate and highly enjoyable picture.

I found it to be a classic, unputdownable book.

Scientific cloning fears come to life and the possible consequences of that dynamic? The protagonist, a geneticist, makes a startling and extremely consequential discovery and away we go. The story is a combination of science, crime drama, and bad guy intrigue that keeps the reader wondering how things will play out in terms of experiments and mysterious, secretive plots. Follett offers an array of engaging characters that left me pulling for some and proverbially punching others. As with the other Ken Follett novels I’ve read, the man does his research which offers educational elements as a bonus without it interfering with the flow. And the ending is a beauty. 

Questions about who we really are in terms of ourselves and maybe, just maybe, a cloned twin ‘out there’ who apparently isn’t the nice person you are? Why and how could that be? Creative ideas such as this, from the imagination… show more.

Ben instantly became one of my favourite authors after this. It’s not often you can feel an author’s passion for their work, but it shone from every page in this book. I was already hooked on ancient Rome, but I just found this stood out amongst its peers. Ben didn’t concentrate on the generals and senators that would write their names into history, but on the everyday soldiers that lived by the edge of their sword. It is a book I will certainly never forget