The Other Half Of Augusta Hope by Joanna Glen

          3.5 Stars

I wasn't too sure what to make of this novel at first.  Augusta Hope and her twin sister, Julia, may have shared a womb and now share a bedroom and their lives but they could not be more disparate characters - from their different birthdays (each born different sides of midnight), to Julia's penchant to people please and be a delicate feminine daughter happy to settle down with a husband and family to Augusta's unquenchable need for knowledge.  They really are nothing alike and the juxtaposition of their characters works very well.  The foil for their relationship is the grey staidity of their parents and the brightness of the Alvarez family who move on to the Crescent one fateful New Year.

Augusta's tale takes her from precocious child, through her tweens and teenage years and through student fun to an untethered adulthood.  There is love, of many types but mainly sororial, the bittersweetness of loss and the sheer mundanity of suburban life.  Augusta is determined and inflexible which does make her both infuriating and strangely likeable - you can sympathise with her parents though, she would have been a nightmare to raise.

Augusta's story is then contrasted with that of Parfait.  Born to the war torn country of Burundi and no stranger to violence and tragedy we also get to follow him as he loses almost everything in a quest for a better life.  Somehow, I never really bought in to Parfait's character as much as I did Augusta's; something just never really clicked and he never really came alive for me.  Maybe he was too many stereotypes or too obviously used as a counterpoint for Augusta's assurdness.

The story meanders along very nicely with a gentle pace.  The Hope family are believable and their world may be shuttered and parochial but it works for 3 of the 4.  Augusta has a firm voice and is entirely believable and really comes alive for the viewer.  Things do lose their way towards the end with a set of coincidences that stretch credibility just that little bit too far to bring the threads together to shamble in to a conclusion.  A conclusion that I found a little bit twee, if I'm being honest.

It is a good strong story that does engage the reader but it is not without it's problems.  For me most of those centred around Parfait and I will admit to mostly skim reading through those bits to get back to Augusta.  I can see why those sections were there but they were not nuanced enough for me and their purpose and placement were jarring against the treatment of the Hope's story.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED VIA READERS FIRST.