Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

I’d been looking forward to this book ever since I heard it was coming out; as someone who loved The Time Traveler’s Wife, I couldn’t wait to see what else Niffenegger had in store for me. But Her Fearful Symmetry was a surprise – it’s nothing like TTW and I still can’t say whether or not I liked it. this is at it’s heart, a ghost story that also tries to be a love story. When Elspeth Noblin dies, in a final act of spite against her estranged twin sister Edie, she leaves everything to her 20-year old twin nieces, Valentina and Julia. The twins decide to move to London, to their new flat outside Highgate Cemetery in a building that is also occupied by two other tenants – Robert, Elspeth’s lover, and Martin, a man suffering from extreme OCD. But the twins aren’t that interested in London, they’re more interested in getting to know Elspeth, who is now haunting her old apartment. And Elspeth notes with interest that Robert is bcoming more and more attracted to her young niece, Valentina. While Valentina starts to pull away from her twin, Julia becomes jealous and disapproving, leading Valentina to come up with a plan to allow her to live her own life. Of course, this plan goes south, as these things often do, and the outcome is a weird twist that you will probably see coming. I don’t know if I should recommend this book or not, there’s just something so weird about it. I think anyone who reads this after having read and loved Time Traveler’s Wife will be sorely disappointed.