The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe's Very First Case, and: Jake and Lily (review)

See this month's Big Picture, p. 545, for review.

Twins Jake and Lily share a special connection: they finish each other's sentences, each instinctively knows when the other is hurt, and they even occasionally share the same dreams and the accompanying sleepwalking. As their eleventh birthday approaches, however, Lily is becoming concerned that they will lose this connection (which she has dubbed their "goombla"). The two have moved into separate bedrooms and Jake is growing increasingly distant, often choosing to spend his summer days hanging with "the guys" and leaving Lily to while away the time with their hippie grandfather. The story, which the twins take turns narrating, lays bare the siblings' insecurities, selfishness, and vulnerabilities and renders each kid utterly relatable, if not entirely likable. Twinned or not, most readers will be painfully familiar with the unpleasant realization that life keeps changing and that those changes may alter relationships irrevocably. Although Lily's incessant complaining borders on whininess, her experience mirrors the heartbreak most middle-graders encounter first, that of being dumped by a friend, and her despair is treated with genuine compassion and understanding by the author. Jake, on the other hand, will speak to kids whose need for freedom is fierce; his friendship with the neighborhood bully complicates his quest for independence at any cost, offering readers the chance to contemplate the difference between truly shaping your own identity and merely trading one allegiance in for another. The siblings come back to each other in the end, of course, but they discover that their twin-ness no longer defines them, a fitting ending to this emotionally resonant tale.