Books rarely surprise me anymore. A suspense, mystery, or SciFi could, and frequently do, surprised me with their plot or storyline, but fictions do not venture into an area that I have not been before, let alone not even thought existed. Hence a critical difficulty in review this book without spoiling it.
Years ago, I read Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale. It was a good mystery that I gradually forgot the details. Karen Joy Fowler aroused a memory from that book, about twins being forcibly separated and the trauma of such separation, only a couple of days, has inflicted on them. The lost of a twin sibling is said to be the biggest emotional trauma, more severe than lost of a child, spouse, or parent. The damage could last a life-time.
That’s as far as I would go without spoiling it. There!
I knew, yet completely forgot, that it was a fiction. I was truly submerged into the book and thought it was all real. That was the second surprise.