Double Identity

I have to say, this is one of the best Margaret Peterson Haddix books I have ever read. Bethany is an average, girl, that is, until both her parents seem to go under some sort of manic depression. This is serious, not at all a funny situation. Bethany's parents have always acted slightly odd around her, seeming to be able to predict things, such as when she needs glasses. Also, always being overprotective over her safety, as when Bethany rides her bike without a helmet. Her dad shouts, screams, and yells at her, saying she could have been killed. Bethany never thought of it as odd, until her parents leave her alone with an aunt and cousin she's never known. Bethany's parents are crying, and leave no explanation as to why she is being sent to a different part of the country. The mystery deepens even more and the plot twisted and knotted until it may be too much for you to bear. However, a very surprising ending will have you smiling as you read the last lines of this great novel.

Enter Bethany Cole, a seemingly avarage teen girl. Her peaceful, quiet lifestyle is quickly demolished when her parents whisk her away from her home, and to her aunt's house. An Aunt she never knew existed.

As Bethany is dropped off with no way to contact her parents about the strange situation, Bethany must wait. Soon, a strange trip turns into a fast paced and exciting mystery, as Bethany hurries to discover the intention behind her parent's behavior. She is left with no clues other than her father saying, 'getting help for her (bethany's) mother.) and the name of young woman whom Bethany does not know.

The plot thickens when Bethany is sent a mysterious package by her parents, containing four bith certificates.
Bethany then proceeds to, slowly, discover the remaining facts, and, with the help of her Aunt, discovers that the mystery woman is none other than, her sister! Once again, another mystery unfolds. Why did she never hear of her sister? Who are their parents hiding from? And when her mother begins speaking strangely, believing Bethany is her sister, the final plot twist begins to unfold.
The answers to these questions and more can only be found in Margaret Peterson Haddix's thrilling story of Double Identity.

Haddix weaves a brilliant tale in this book. The characters each have well thought out, realistic personalities: No stereotypes or paper-thin characters here. The characters are all deep, and never are out of character. The final twist at the ending (which I will not reveal.) was brilliant, and I was certainly not expecting it. As you read this book, you too will find yourself trying to piece together the mystery, just as Bethany Cole tries. The ending was fitting, and not rushed. Very satisfactory.

The story is incrediblle, as the mystery is finally solved in the end. Fortunately, the story is not open ended, but leaves you the room to wonder how the lives of Bethnay Cole and her family proceed into the future. Which reminds me, the story is set in the near future, around 2011/12 Shocking and surprising, the final twist was...it was wonderful! And, then, you begin to realize why the book was titled the way it was.

The book is in the first person view, which truly brings out the full impact of this book.

Well, that's all I'll reveal. This is a wonderful book for anyone about Grade 5 and up. (Around 11 years old plus) Trust me, anyone looking for a great mystery story will find relief in this awesome book. So, basically, read this book!!

Double Identity
By: Margaret Peterson Haddix
Reviewed by: S. Sok
Period 1

Bethany is now a thirteen year old, and her mother and father begin to act more strangely than usual. She sees her mom cry constantly, and her father never lets Bethany out of his sight. Then one day, her parents cross seven states by car and end up at Bethany's aunt's house, of whom she never even heard of her entire life. Bethany is left with her so-called Aunt Myrlie and her parents leave her at Myrlie's house for safety and ends Bethany on a string. Bethany believes that her parents are running away from trouble, but who knows? All she hears from eavesdropping is, "She doesn't know anything about Elizabeth." Bethany's life gets odder and odder: the people in the town react to Bethany as if they had seen ghost, she receives a package from her father containing four different birth certificates and last names and thousands of dollars in cash, and a strange and scary man appears up at Aunt Myrlies's house and asks confidential family questions,. Then, Bethany slowly uncovers the secret and finds out that she is a clone of her sister Elizabeth, who died years ago, Double Identity is truly a thriller.
I liked Double Identity because it was very mysterious. However, I come to love mystery books, one of my favorite genres. As it is said in the book, "But Aunt Myrlie won't explain who Elizabeth is, and she won't explain why people in her small town react to Bethany as if they've seen a ghost. This sentence left me off the hook and made me want to read on, also, it was really intensifying when Bethany received four different birth certificates from four different states with four different last names. However, there was not only mystery in this book, but it contained much self perseverance.
There was a lot of self perseverance in the book. Out of the characters, Bethany had the most self perseverance because she kept her head high, even though it was though being in a town with relatives she never even heard of before. It says, "Oh Elizabeth," Joss says, "it's so nice having you back! I've missed"- she gets a stricken look on her face-"you" she finishes lamely. Even though Bethany didn't want to be and look like Elizabeth, she tried her hardest to keep up with it.
My favorite part of Double Identity is when Bethany sums up everything; she is able to answer all of the mysterious questions she had been having. It gave my insides a great, enormous, banana smile because I could feel Bethany's happiness. I also like it when Bethany answers her questions since she had put up with and through a lot of tragedies. It really makes you feel "proud" of her. Double Identity is an awesome and thrilling book!

Her parents are gone! Bethany Cole was like any normal child, and now, her parents are leaving her at some aunt she never even knew she had!Her mom has been crying for the past few months too. What is going on, she wonders, and who in the world is this Elizabeth she keeps hearing about? All she knows is about her is she is someone or something that she over heard her father talking about to her so called "aunt". In this book, Double Identity, Margaret Peterson Haddix packs in suspense, mystery, and excitement. This book has a lot of connections too. Every chapter, every page, every word will keep you reading!

Bethany's confusing, shocking, and frightening journey to find out the secret her family is keeping from her is an interesting story, likely to attract young readers, in Margaret Peterson Haddix's book, Double Identity. This fiction book takes place in the future, and has an unrealistic plot, which makes it even more interesting. The author does not write much about the future in the beginning of this book, but brings the idea back in towards the end. There are shocking answers throughout the book that Bethany decides she has to find out. Not only are the answers shocking, but the questions are just as scary. Why is Bethany's mother crying? Since when does she have family other than her stressed parents? Who is Elizabeth? These questions bother Bethany terribly, but she won't dare ask her old, tired father.

Bethany finds herself in the car, her father driving very slowly and carefully, and her mother sobbing quietly in the front, as usual. No one says a word until they reach her "Aunt's" house, miles away from her home. After her parents left her with her Aunt Myrlie and drove off to find help for her mother, Bethany is confused and angry at them, waiting day and night for them to call and clear things up. When they do finally call, Bethany's questions slowly start to make sense.
After Bethany's crazy mother calls Bethany in the middle of the night thinking she is `Elizabeth', Bethany's aunt finally tells her the truth to her very own past. This is definitely not the end though. Bethany figures out more and more answers as her mother continues calling her secretly, thinking she is Elizabeth, and as her father sends her aunt loads of money, with many fake identities for Bethany.

This was a totally unpredictable book; there were many clues in the beginning, which led to many surprising conclusions that were hard to figure out from the clues. There are questions and answers everywhere throughout Double Identity, but in the end, Bethany is sick of questions, and takes her cousins advice to stop trying to figure everything out. This is the meaning of the book, which I found interesting, and different from most of the other books' meanings I've read. Bethany doesn't care about the questions anymore, and now the real problem is, what will Bethany do with her life? After she tells you the answers you've wanted to hear through out the book, Margaret Peterson Haddix leaves you hanging with one more question in Double Identity; one that lets you think of your own conclusion to the book.

For almost thirteen-year-old Bethany, life has suddenly and unexplicably taken a strange turn. For a girl who has never spent a night away from her parents, she's suddenly hustled into the car by her sad-looking father, subjected to listening to her sobbing mother, and unceremoniously dropped off in the middle of the night in a town she's never heard of, at the home of a woman claiming to be her Aunt Myrlie. Her parents are a lot older than her friend's parents, and Bethany is sure that her parent's siblings are all dead. So who is this woman claiming to be her Aunt, and why has she never heard of her before? Why won't her mother stop crying? Why does her dad seem so eager to get away from the house in Sanderfield? And who the heck is Elizabeth, the name she overheard her father and Myrlie discussing?

All these questions and more are only the tip of the iceberg in Margaret Peterson Haddix's newest novel, a wonderful young adult thriller that I thoroughly enjoyed. The twists and turns are unpredictable and unexpected--the conclusion one I never saw coming.

Overall, a great suspensful read for teens and adults alike!

Bethany, aged twelve, is in a car with her sobbing mother and burdened father. Neither parent will tell her where they're going or why her mother has been crying for months. They arrive at a small town in the middle of the night, where she is informed that she will stay with someone her parents call "Aunt Myrlie." Bethany's mother is beside herself with grief, and has a very difficult time parting with her daughter. Then, astoundingly, her overly protective parents drive off and leave her with the stranger.

Bethany tries calling her parents' cell phones to beg them to come back, but all she gets are "this number is out of service" messages. The next morning, her father calls to tell her, puzzlingly, that she's safer where she is than with them. She overhears Myrlie tell her father that Bethany must learn about Elizabeth, which is not the name of anyone Bethany knows. There are more mysteries, too, such as the way Myrlie is shocked that Bethany loves to swim and the fact that Myrlie (who actually turns out to be Bethany's aunt) always introduces her as a visitor instead of her niece.

The questions keep coming quickly and furiously: Whose memorial makes Myrlie so uncomfortable? Why do people act like they've seen a ghost when they meet Bethany?

But Bethany realizes that she's accustomed to unanswered questions, having lived with them all her life: Why does her family move constantly? Why are her parents so old? Why have they never had contact with relatives?

When the truth is finally revealed, it's astonishing --- and devastating. Even in her confusion and distress, Bethany realizes that the revelation doesn't explain everything about her odd life, or why some strange man appears to be stalking her.

This is yet another triumph for the amazing Margaret Peterson Haddix (if you haven't yet read RUNNING OUT OF TIME or AMONG THE HIDDEN, they should be the next books on your reading list!) Haddix is a master at combining a dazzlingly original concept with suspenseful writing --- and she delivers both in DOUBLE IDENTITY.

That said, I felt that the ending was just a bit on the anticlimactic side with a rather too-tidy resolution. However, I still wholeheartedly recommend this book for its thought-provoking twist on the theme "be yourself" and for the noteworthy suspense, which builds throughout the story.

[...]

`When I was in second grade, my mother had simply announced one afternoon, "Time to get glasses." And she'd taken me to the eye doctor and, yes, it was true, I was beginning to slip into myopia. "Were you referred by the school nurse after a screening?" the eye doctor asked. "No, I just had a feeling," Mom said. Of course she did. Of course. She'd known when I'd lose my first tooth, when I'd need my first bra. Because of Elizabeth. Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix is by far the best science fiction novel that I have read. Bethany Cole is very worried when her mother begins to cry uncontrollably, and then when her dad takes them to the middle of nowhere to a very distant aunt, that Bethany never knew existed, she is very confused. Then when her parents just desert her at this unknown aunt's house, she begins to panic. Into the book, it is revealed that all of the strange happenings are because Bethany's parents were trying to hide the fact that Bethany was really a clone of a daughter that had died. I would recommend this book to science fiction readers, as well as anyone settling for a good read.

When I read it, I honestly didn't know that it was classified as science fiction. The topic of cloning doesn't seem like it would really be that hard to believe, but when Bethany found out she was in total shock. I would be mad/confused too. She had all of the same qualities as her clone, Elizabeth, who had died in a car accident more than thirteen years earlier, yet she had no idea that she even had a clone. To imagine that I had a clone that I have no idea about would be weird.

This book is kind of mysterious too. I love myself a good mystery book as well as a book with a sense of reality in it, and this novel had all of this and more. Like many books, Double Identity kept you guessing, or in other words, it kept you in the same place as Bethany. Haddix, the author, didn't make a place for a lot of irony because she made Bethany, the main character, seem like she was just as smart, if not smarter about the situation as you would have been if you were in Bethany's place. In better terms, she made Bethany know the same things that any other reader with a good grip on common sense would. You didn't find out for sure that she was a clone until it was actually revealed to Bethany. The entire plot unravels in front of Bethany's eyes, as well as yours.

Although the concept of the story could come off as somewhat confusing, it was also very interesting. Since Bethany's parents were kinda in a scheme like situation that made the concept of why it all happened kind of complicated to understand, but it also made it an interesting one once you got exactly what it was saying. At the end, all of the confusions were cleared up. You may have had to read the epilogue two or three times to put it all together to really understand why it all happened, but once you did, you had that expression that we all seem to get when we finally figure that hard problem out.

Double Identity is a great science fiction novel from beginning to cover. Its protagonist, Bethany, made it all the more interesting, with her role in the story. When I bought this book I had no idea of how good a read that I was settling in for, but I was satisfied after reading it. This review is a recommendation for a great science fiction novel.

J. Moss

In Double Identity, Bethany is a 12 year old girl whose goes to live with her aunt, where she soon finds out she is unable to contact her parents and wonders if she'll ever see them again. Not sure why everyone treats her oddly when they see her, she eventually discovers that she is a clone of her dead sister Elizabeth. She tries to create her own identity seperate from Elizabeth, and soon discovers that there's someone hunting for her to reveal her to the world for his own evil purposes. While the book does hold your interest, there's not a lot of action, which I expected to happen once we find out someone is after Bethany. For that reason, I gave the book four stars instead of five. Otherwise, I recommend the book. I also recommend The Giver and An Audience for Einstein, two other young adult books that hold your interest.

In the book, there is a girl named Bethany has always been an only child. Her parents are extremely protective of her. They never let her out of her sight until one day, her parents dropped her off at an aunts house that she didn't even know existed. Then all of the sudden, everyone starts to mention a girl named Elizabeth. After she starts to investigate what is going on, she learns that she has a sister,Elizabeth. Elizabeth had died in a car accident. She also got a chance to see Elizabeth's picture and saw that they look exactly alike. They even had the same lopsided freckles on their face. After Bethany finds out all of this about her, a strange guy starts to call and show up asking for her father. She also got some calls from her mom saying that hey were going to get Elizabeth back by cloning. To make matters worse, Bethany has to find out if she is a clone.
I really liked this book, but no book is without its faults. The only thing that I would change is I would put a bit more action in the book. Other than that, the plot was awesome and so were the characters.
I would recommend this book to any one who likes books by Margaret Peterson Haddix or likes suspense books.