Gemini by Sonya Mukherjee

After exploring some pretty heavy nonfiction last week, I decided to pick something on the lighter side for my next read. Gemini by Sonya Mukherjee fit the bill nicely. This was one of my young adult impulse purchases from Barnes and Noble that has sat on my shelf for ages. I picked it more or less at random from a big stack of others just like it and dove in.

The plot concerns Hailey and Clara, two seventeen year old conjoined twins. As the story starts, they are beginning their senior year of high school in Bear Pass, the tiny California town where they live with their parents. They are joined together back-to-back, at the base of their spines. Growing up attached to each other hasn't always been easy, but thanks to the efforts of their mother, who makes sure accommodations are taken care of at home and at school, the girls have been able to live reasonably normal lives.

However, as they approach the end of their high school careers and college application deadlines loom closer and closer, the girls find themselves at a bit of a crossroads. Hailey, who favors pink hair and a punk rock aesthetic, longs to attend an art school, where she can continue to hone her painting skills. Clara, who is timid and always trying to minimize the amount of attention she draws to herself, secretly dreams of studying astronomy and physics. She longs to go to space and see Earth through the window of a shuttle. While the girls are extremely close to each other and love each other deeply, their differing desires are starting to bother them both. To pursue the dreams of one sister means that the other sister will have to give up what she wants. In addition, their over-protective mother is putting constant pressure on them to conform to her vision for their future - staying at home and attending a local community college that does not have an astronomy program and has a very weak art program. It's a near-impossible situation for them to navigate.

To add to the difficulty they are experiencing as they try to make plans for their future, they begin to have a little boy drama as well. Both Hailey and Clara have crushes on different boys, but they are afraid to pursue any relationships. How can you have a boyfriend when your sister is attached to your back? As they watch other students in their classes pair off, they despair of ever being in a romantic relationship themselves. Feelings of self doubt and intense sadness creep into their minds, especially for Clara, who is always very hard on herself.

As their school year moves forward, both girls must begin making tough decisions and pushing themselves out of their comfort zones. They consider everything from one twin sacrificing her own happiness for her sister's dreams to risking a highly-dangerous separation surgery. Together, they work through this painful process of figuring out who they are and what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Gemini is a novel about a bond between two sisters who are closer than most, and how that bond pulls them through the uncertainty of growing up.

I thought the novel was pretty enjoyable overall. The plot was intriguing and caused me to think a lot about what choices I would make if I were in Hailey or Clara's (or their mother's) position. I thought Mukherjee did a nice job of characterizing the twins differently. She shifts the narration between the girls from chapter to chapter and each voice felt distinctive. I identified hard with Clara, the more reticent and anxious sister, and I enjoyed pulling for her throughout the novel. This was a quick read for me; I was able to finish over the course of two days. It was the perfect book for the mood I was in. I wanted something interesting and on the lighter side, which this was, despite tackling some emotional topics.

There were only two elements of the novel that I wasn't a fan of. The first was the girls' mother. I found her to be unreasonably over-protective and annoying. In my mind, if you make the highly unorthodox decision not to separate conjoined twins, then you must move mountains to help them live normal lives. The mother in this story did that, but only to a point. She got special desks in the girls' school and became a great tailor to alter their clothes, but then she refuses to let them do things like date boys, go to school dances, or attend the colleges they want without massive, emotional arguments. I get that she was trying to shield them from the judgements and rudeness of others, but it got old. She felt less like a real person and more like a plot devise designed to consistently stand in the way of her daughters' happiness.

The other element that I wasn't a fan of was the ending, which felt cheesy, forced, and unrealistic. It was a bit too happy for me. I felt like Mukherjee glossed over a lot of the difficult questions she raised in her previous chapters and just ended things with a shrug. I wish she had dug deeper into the implications of the decision that the girls ultimately ended up making.

Despite those things, Gemini was still a very entertaining read. It's not destined to be a favorite of mine, but I did enjoy it and I think young adult readers will find a lot to like in its pages. This one will end up on my donate pile. I hope it finds its way to someone who will fall in love with Hailey and Clara's unusual and engaging story. 


Challenge Tally:
Clear the Shelves 2018: 12 books donated


Total Books Read in 2018: 22