I suddenly realised that on World Book Day and in some of the book bloggers chats I’ve been recommending the same book over and over again and that maybe it was time to actually provide a review. Not only to give you an idea of the plot line but also to be able to put across why I love the book.
First here’s the official blurb that you can find on Amazon (here):
“A brutal serial killer stalks the Seattle nights. Regina Greenleaf was one of the victims. Her beautiful twin sister, Renata, is deeply traumatized.
Renata barely knows she’s alive. She talks only rarely, and then always in twin-speak, the special language she and Regina made up long before they’d learned to speak English.
When there had been two of them, they used to swap names. At school, they’d swapped the ribbons in their hair that were the only way of telling them apart. They were so close to each other, they might as well have been one person.
Mark, a college lecturer in English, is Renata’s friend and her post-trauma protector. He’s the only person Renata recognizes and will talk to. She agrees to attend his classes, and with the help of Mark’s room-mates Renata seems to be coming to terms with her loss.
But the number of murders in Seattle rises, and Mark has some dreadful suspicions. If he says anything, it’s guaranteed to send Renata back to the hospital. But if he doesn’t, there may be blood on his conscience…
In Regina’s Song, David and Leigh Eddings have written a tense, chilling story of a nightmare coming true.”
The reason I love this book is not just the plot but also the way it’s written. If you figure out who the killer is it’s fun reading along as the characters figure it out too.
While the subject matter may seem disturbing, it is well written and treated with respect.
Here are a few quotes that I absolutely adore
I have made sure that none of these quotes don’t include anything that would be considered a spoiler.
“My solution to the “identification crisis was to simply address them indiscriminately as Twinkie and to refer to them collectively as the Twinkie Twins.”
“Charlie here seems to be a Renaissance man.’ ‘But I don’t do ceilings,’ Charlie added. I think his reference to the Sistine Chapel missed the girls.”
“James had lots of old-fashioned words in his vocabulary – ‘station-wagon’, ‘truth’, ‘ethics’ – all those quaint, out-of-fashion concepts.”
Finally if I was asked to rate this book out of 5 I would be forced to give it 4.5 and that’s only because David and Leigh Eddings don’t seem to have written anything else in the same genre and I’d love to read more books like this one.
If love to know if you’ve read this and loved it or if you have a recommendation for me.
