The Good Twin
⭐ ⭐ ☆ ☆ ☆
The Good Twin by Marti Green
Okay… so this was supposed to be a thriller? 😔
The first half starts off decently enough, though it feels like a much less gripping knockoff of The Man in the Iron Mask. Twin girls are separated at birth: Charly grows up in luxury, while Mallory scrapes by. As adults, Mallory discovers she has a twin and becomes obsessed with meeting her. Instead, she meets Charly’s husband, Ben, who, unhappy in his marriage and driven by greed, convinces Mallory to help kill Charly so Mallory can take her place.
Quick tangent: Foreshadowing isn’t just an elegant storytelling device, it’s essential for continuity. It makes later events feel earned, rather than like they’re popping up out of nowhere.
And continuity is this book’s biggest problem. Around the halfway mark, the POV shifts from Mallory to Charly. Not only that, but the timeline rewinds to the beginning so we can see events running concurrently, a concept I actually liked. But then? Total narrative chaos. Suddenly, things happen involving Mallory, big things, like her and Charly meeting and spending time together that were never mentioned, hinted at, or even implied in Mallory’s own section. Where did this come from?
The only moment that actually delivered suspense came after the climactic confrontation, when Mallory actually follows through with assuming Charly’s identity. This twist worked beautifully, it was unexpected, heightened the tension, and gave the book the spark it needed to finally feel like the thriller it claimed to be. For a moment, I was hooked.
But that moment didn’t last. In the final chapters, the characters (and the author) backtracked, undoing the story’s one truly compelling turn, opting instead for a neat, happy ending that felt completely unearned.
Oh, what could’ve been. 😔
