Identical by Scott Turow
★ ★ 

Paul and Cass Giannis share everything with each other. They go everywhere together and learn how to do everything like each other to be the “perfect twins” This sharing even includes knowing what happened the night Dita, Cass’s fiancé is murdered. Cass goes to jail for the crime and is released 25 years after pleading guilty. Dita’s brother isn’t so sure that it was Cass that deserved to serve the jail time. Suddenly, Paul finds himself being dragged under the spotlight with court mandated DNA testing while Evon Miller and Tim Brodie are hired to track down Cass and anyone else who may have been at the scene. What these two find shocks them as different secrets come out and more and more suspects are revealed. Suddenly no one is sure which the Giannis brothers share more, secrets or guilt.

Identical was a very frustrating book. It was based around such a great idea but the storytelling is really what made me end up not liking the read. The author kept switching how he referred to the characters. (First name or last name? Pick buddy.) This made it very hard to keep up with names I was already having trouble pronouncing/memorizing. There was also the massive confusion that Dita was short for Aphrodite which I didn’t catch on to until about halfway through the book. Did he tell me and I missed it? I have no idea. That’s pretty much how I felt about most of the book. If there were any questions I had after parts, I’d try to reread and still end up feeling like I had no idea why this was in the book. A prime example is Evon’s relationship with her ex-girlfriend.  We were forced to watch the dissolution of their relationship without there ever being an underlying theme or anything to tie it back to the story. I was really worried this book was going to throw me off my book goal as I was dragging through it. I genuinely believe that if it weren’t for being able to audiobook this while I drove, I would have never made it through. The twist is very interesting and isn’t easy to see coming, but the brilliance of it is lost in trying to get to the end to see it.