20%

There will be spoilers in this book's updates, fyi.

* I think something like over 50 friends have read this book, only one (ONE!!!) mentioned the you-know-what relationship. Y'all. Give a woman a heads-up.

I’ve nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions. 

After this comment, I find myself on edge because now I'm thinking we've got an unreliable narrator. I get overly paranoid in stories like this.

What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don’t expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.

Gorgeously said and definitely setting a good tone for Halloween Bingo.

So the beginning confused a little bit, changing from Vida's pov to Margaret's but I like that Margaret doesn't seem fall into the unreliable narrator category.

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods

The beginning of this really feels like a love letter to bookish people and I want to highlight so many passages.

I had a twin. Ignoring the tumult in my head, my curious fingers unfolded a sec-id piece of paper. A death certificate. My twin was dead.

What?? It's moving away from the book loveliness and I'm starting to feel the cold creepy in.

There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.

Book lovers across the globe: "NEVER!"

‘Once upon a time there were twins—“

We were both lone twins.

Ooook, my mind is going wild ranging from, Vida can't be her twin (thinking the death certificate was a lie) because of age difference, Vida is Margaret in the future

"[...]One should always pay attention to ghosts, shouldn’t one, Miss Lea?“

Is Margaret's twin haunting her, does Vida know it??? Or is this alluded to how the the death of her twin changed her family, her mother's depression?

She stared at the red beads of blood that were welling up along the livid line, then turned her gaze upon him. Her green eyes were wide with surprise and something like pleasure.

My theory that children are consistently the scariest things is given more credence. Also, "pleasure" had me hoping this wasn't going to go there but...

“It’s much better with a beau.”And when Sybilla asked her newfound friend, “How do you know?” Isabelle had the answer all ready: “Charlie.”

Y'All. Not where I thought this book was going to go, especially after that start. I noticed a lot of you put "Gothic" as descriptor in this book and I feel like some of the word was alluding to this and I will now have to question any brother and sister relationship in Gothics. 

[...]there was an incident that could lave been a scandal, and a vexed Isabelle told him that if that was how he intended to go about things then he would have to choose a different sort of woman. He turned from the daughters of minor aristocrats to those of farriers, farmers and foresters. Personally he couldn’t tell the difference, yet the world seemed to mind less.

There's some work being done in this passage.

‘Look.“ Isabelle turned to the parcels he had placed on the study desk, pulled the soft wrapping away, and stood back so that he could see. Slowly he turned his head and looked. The parcels were babies. Two babies. Twins.

Ok, so this is Vida's background story, see why she's been private her whole life. She said she would tell Margaret the truth, so I'm only going to go with 10% unreliable narrator here. 

Lovely beginning, some gorgeous passages, and then Isabelle and Charlie. I'm curious how the rest of the tales are going to go and if more of Margaret's family and death of her twin are going to be addressed more.