Book Review: Think Twice

Author: Lisa Scottoline

Genre: thriller

Rating: 2.5/5

Verdict

*slight spoilers ahead*

Think Twice is a story that explores the deceptive possibilities behind having an identical twin. The twins in question are called Alice and Bennie; Bennie is a successful lawyer whilst Alice lives in a world of drugs and corruption. One night Alice drugs Bennie and buries her alive out in the field, and assumes her identity. However, she’s misjudged her twin, who fights for her life with a vengeance. A race, of sorts, ensues.

This is what I got from the blurb of the book, which concealed the plot just as well as a Netflix trailer. Though when you start reading the book you realise why. This set up is revealed in the first 2 chapters of the book (10 pages in). It delves right in, with no real introduction to the characters (I didn’t realise until after reading that this is book 11 in a series called ‘Rosato & Associates’, so I’ve probably skipped a good amount of character development).

The blurb on this book exaggerates the darkness of the story a bit. “Bennie must face the twisted truth that she is more like her sister than she could have ever imagined”. Not really. Her sister buried her alive, impersonated her and tried to steal all her money leaving her and her business broke. The worst thing Bennie does is shoot a man trying to attack her. She may not leave the story as squeaky clean as she started but to suggest she stoops to the same level of cunning as her twin is a steep claim to make. I was expecting Norman Bates level of derangement, but she was too rational in all her decisions.

The narrative jumps around a lot, alternating between Alice, Bennie and Mary (Bennie’s colleague). The chapters are short and never more than a couple pages long. In this instance this format worked to keep me invested long enough to read the book; there wasn’t enough drama happening in any single narrative to stick with it for long.

For a thriller, this story was far too vanilla. The darkest parts of the book are Alice’s death threat thoughts, which as a thought are

1. Passive
2. Not very threatening when you’ve read several versions of them

The ending was disappointing, it seemed to frame the whole plot as just a big old misunderstanding and felt like it belonged in a sitcom, or a feel-good film. Everything tied back together far too neatly. All fractured romantic relationships are fixed, people are promoted and the dog lives. Happy endings for all. We never find out what happens to Alice, so you can let your imagination run wild there. But overall it felt a bit PG.

Action and corny happiness aside it was an easy read and didn’t take me long to finish, making it a decent summer read. Because we never really get the character introduction at the start I found I really didn’t care what happened to either twin. This stopped the suspense that Scottoline builds throughout the story from being that effective; I was impartial rather than routing for a winner. Whilst it wasn’t a bad read, it’s not one I can see myself pushing other people towards.

Find the book on Goodreads!