Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone
Cat's identical twin sister El is missing. Cat has to return to their gloomy childhood home and confront the memories that wait there. It's all coming back to Cat now. This is a dull gothic tale of trauma. Cat whines and bitches and tantrums. The plot crawls until toward the end it escalates quickly. This is essentially a modern day 'Flowers In The Attic'. But the more you think about it, the more the plot falls apart. Cat is dumb and hysterical and the endless stupid nicknames and the utter oblivousness to logic.
Best Lines:
“Men who mostly act like they couldn't care less about me.”
“Knowing that I'd rather be anywhere else and pretending I don't. I'm not living. I'm waiting. For something, anything, to happen. And worst of all, I've started to wonder whether this-all of this-is it.”
“Her wholesale rejection of us.”
“Bear blame for what she has done.”
“Kept on hating me until I left.”
“Excuses became less and less convincing.”
“Just charity-shopped the lot.”
“She took him from me.”
“I can't ever go back.”
“I feel wronged, persecuted, unbelieved.”
“Her very good friend- and he said he didn't have a clue who you were.”
“Every year a little older, a little less hopeful.”
“She's had my life for years. She's stolen it.”
“Some bad conclusion.”
“The anger, the animosity.”
“Merciless games.”
“People always love to meddle, to interfere in dramas that have nothing to do with them.”
“Everything in it would always belong only to him.”
“Good Prince Charmings don't exist.”
“When you didn't want something to be true, you just pretended it hadn't happened.”
“Take away what freedom's he'd allowed me to have.”
“Dismissive scorn.”
“I haven't trusted her for a very long time.”
“Terrible questions.”
“Paranoia, cruelty, or delusion.”
“Furious urgency.”
“Believed handsome Prince Charmings were sly. Never, ever to be trusted.”
“Bloody wee mentalists-”
“The whole house was his domain.”
“He won't ever, ever stop.”
“That horrifying truth of what we were.”
“Why was it alwasy her?”
“The hoose.”
“Martyred despondency,”
“Dreadful certainty.”
“We believed what we were told to believe.”
“She was never picked. She never belonged.”
“Never be loved, to never belong.”
“How suffocating it was: her need, her desperation.”
“Never once listened to her.”
“Curre.”
“Loved to be feared.”
“No one will ever see you. Because no one ever had.”
