The Ice Twins

Starred review from March 23, 2015
The death of one of the twin daughters of Sarah and Angus Moorcroft jump-starts this superb tale from the pseudonymous Tremayne. A year after the tragedy, the once well-to-do Moorcroft family leaves London to live in a lighthouse on Eilean Torran, a remote Scottish island that Angus inherited from his grandmother. Angus’s fond memories of the island give way to harsh reality: the place, accessible only by boat, is nearly uninhabitable with rats, leaks, and mold. But the dilapidated building and the island’s eeriness pale next to the family’s deterioration. The surviving twin, seven-year-old Kirstie, insists she is Lydia, the child who fell to her death. The girls were monozygotic, or perfectly identical twins, but Sarah could tell them apart. Did the parents, whose fragile marriage continues to corrode,
misidentify the deceased child? Tremayne effectively delivers a psychological gothic thriller with supernatural overtones while avoiding clichés. Grief’s debilitating effects on children and adults further
elevate this gripping story. Agent: Jay Mandel, WME Entertainment.

March 15, 2015
Still reeling from tragedy, the Moorcroft family leaves London for a remote Scottish island only to find their problems increase tenfold. Thirteen months earlier, one of Sarah and Angus' identical twin daughters, 6-year-old Lydia, died following a freak accident. Tremayne explores the circumstances of Lydia's death in retrospect as the novel alternates between Sarah's first-person perspective and less-effective third-person chapters focused on Angus. No longer the picture-perfect family, all of the Moorcrofts buckle under the strain of grief: Angus' increased drinking leads to a blowup at work and the subsequent loss of his job; Kirstie, Lydia's twin, is withdrawn and friendless; and Sarah is barely hanging on to her sanity. Then Kirstie tells Sarah something shocking and, for readers, requiring a healthy suspension of disbelief: "It was Kirstie that died. I'm Lydia." The revelation causes Sarah-she doesn't share Kirstie's secret with Angus-to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about the accident and its aftermath. Looking for a fresh start, Angus and Sarah decide to leave London and start anew in a dilapidated lighthouse cottage on Eilean Torrran, a tiny Scottish island accessible only by boat. This is wise only in that it furthers the increasingly audacious plot-for the characters' mental health, it's a terrible idea. Tremayne ably spins numerous variations of the which-twin-is-really-dead idea, playing into the inherent creepiness of wholly identical twins like Kirstie and Lydia, indistinguishable even on a DNA level.

December 1, 2014

After the death of one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, Angus and Sarah Moorcroft move to the tiny Scottish island Angus inherited from his grandmother with remaining daughter Kirstie. Then Kirstie claims that she's actually Lydia, and she's growing weirder by the day. Huge rights sales for this pseudonymous author; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2015

British author Tremayne's first novel is the chilling story of the death of one identical twin sister and the effect that it has on her family. Angus and Sara Moorcroft and their surviving daughter, Kirstie, leave London for a cottage on a Scottish island that has been in Angus's family for centuries and that he hopes to eventually sell, having lost his job after the family's tragedy. Torran Island's isolation promises to give the Moorcrofts a chance to heal, and a new school for Kirstie is expected to help her adjust to the terrible loss of her sibling. However, things don't go as planned, and Sara is deeply disturbed by Kirstie's claims that she is actually her dead twin, Lydia, and the thought that perhaps she has misidentified her surviving daughter. Struggling with her concern for her daughter, her isolation and increasing doubts about her husband, Sara is tortured by the past and about what actually happened that fateful day when one of her children died. VERDICT Filled with secrets and lies, this gripping psychological thriller will keep readers absorbed until the final page. [See Prepub Alert, 11/24/14.]--Lisa O'Hara, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnipeg

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.