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The Third Twin is a stand-alone YA Mystery/Thriller by CJ Omololu. It is compared to works such as Pretty Little Liars and Revenge. Got this one for my birthday a couple years ago and finally read it to get in the Halloween spirit because it was the M/Th/Horror month.
When they were little, Lexi and her identical twin, Ava, made up a third sister, Alicia. If something broke? Alicia did it. Cookies got eaten? Alicia's guilty. Alicia was always to blame for everything. The game is all grown up now that the girls are seniors. They use Alicia as their cover to go out with boys who are hot but not exactly dating material. Boys they'd never, ever be with in real life.
Now one of the guys Alicia went out with has turned up dead, and Lexi wants to stop the game for good. As coincidences start piling up, Ava insists that if they follow the rules for being Alicia, everything will be fine. But when another boy is killed, the DNA evidence and surveillance photos point to only one suspect: Alicia. The girl who doesn't exist. As she runs from the cops, Lexi has to find the truth before another boy is murdered. Because either Ava is a killer...or Alicia is real.
Probably a low 3 star for me, which is odd because I stayed up late into the night to finish this book. I think the reason can be explained quite easily.
I adored the concept of this book. I am a huge psychological fan, and I am a huge fan of seeing how people deal with feeling like they aren't good enough who they are. So you got this made-up twin, Alicia, being who the mc, Lexi, thinks would be cool. There is definitely a theme of accepting yourself for who you are throughout this that I adored. That honestly is probably what left me the most entranced with the book.
Which is sad to say because the YA part of the book shouldn't be the main thing I want to talk about when it is a YA Mystery/Thriller. When you mix YA with other genres, yes, you expect those YA elements, but you are doing another genre with it, so you expect that genre to have impact.
And I did enjoy that side of the story in ways, but overall, it for the most part fell flat. I knew the motivation of the killer right away, and I will admit I got the killer wrong, but that is entirely because who the killer was... just didn't make sense? It's like there was a snap of the finger where the villain went from being normal to being crazy.
Look, there is creating fabulous confusion in your readers because so many people could be the culprit. There is making them uneasy. There is building tension in them. Then there is thinking you're smart because there is no way they saw this coming! Newsflash... We should have evidence that it was coming...
The police force also just made some very questionable decisions (never even questioned the twin just because the MC said it wasn't the twin... Not like sisters protect each other). Like, they were better portrayed than in some things I saw, but also just not in other ways.
There is also this scene where a character is suddenly stabbed and I have no idea how.
So I read this book so vigorously because I loved the YA concept of it and I loved the Mystery/Thriller concept. However, I am rating this as a low 3 because only one of those concepts really seemed to feel fleshed well.
I genuinely think I would have enjoyed this book more as a psychological exploration of a girl who felt like this made up version of her was so much better than her original self and those around her helping her see she was good as she was.
