Today I’m going to talk about a book written by Virginia C. Andrew and published in 2006. It’s the first volume of The Gemini serie and it’s entitled Celeste.

This book tells us the story of twins, Celeste and Lionel, who are not living in an usual family. Indeed, their mother believes in spirits and more precisely in her ancestor’s spirits. She educates her children in this philosophy. She regulary talks to family’s spirit, does things based on what they would like to do and promises to her children that soon they could do the same.

When the young Lionel (who was the favorite of her mother) died in an accident, the mother compels Celest to take the identity of her dead brother ( it’s not a spoil, you can read all of it on the blurb ). The young girl loses herself and takes her brother’s identity to satisfy her mother. Indeed, her only wish is to be loved by her mother and she would do everything to please her.

I found  this book very interesting because we don’t know, during all the story, if spirits are real or if the mother has got psychological troubles. You know, in Harry Potter by example witches and wizards are real , it’s a sort of convention between the reader and the author. Well, in Celeste it’s not clear, you always have a doubt, the only « vision » who are describe are those of Celeste and you can wonder if it’s not the imagination of a child. This book is also very based on the psychology of characters, why are they acting like this? how will they get out of this situation ? All is always manipulation, false pretences..  The story looks like some sordid miscellaneous, but we are « behind the scene », we know the truth.

The Gemini is a trilogy and there are many books of this author, generally by series of five.

I hope you enjoy this article. If you read the book tell me what do you think about it !