Book: Identical Strangers

I generally read quite a bit more fiction than non-fiction, but when I make an exception, it is often for a biography. This duo-biography (and, no, I'm not sure that's a word) tells the story of two women about my own age who discover a big secret about themselves: although they had always known they were adopted, they did not know they had an identical twin.

This is something I can't begin to imagine. They couldn't either, but were suddenly faced with trying to figure out how to handle this new reality. The book, in alternating voices of Elyse and Paula, takes the reader through the moments they first learned about having a twin, their first meeting, the tentative steps they took to become acquainted with a new-found sister, and a search for their birth mother and the truth about why they were separated.

Along the way, they introduce other sets of identical twins that were also separated and adopted out to different families. The facts about they uncover about twins are completely fascinating, as is their very honest and personal account of their discovery.