The Divided Twin by M. Billiter [book review]

About The Divided Twin:

The Divided Twin is a new age book by M. Billiter. It was published June 27, 2020, by Tangled Tree publishing. This book follows identical twins Aaron and Branson. In this book, we follow them as they are in their final year of college. Aaron is in Ohio and Branson stayed in Wyoming. As they are entering adulthood and trying to figure life out David, the third twin emerges to wreak havoc on their lives. Finding out that their mother has cancer brought Aaron and Branson together, but David only wants to bring the two of them apart. As the twins navigate through their problems will things get worse? Or will they find the help that they truly need?

What I thought about The Divided Twin

The Divided Twin deals with mental illness and how one of the twins goes through it and the other doesn’t. Or does he? Despite that this book puts a twist on things it doesn’t exactly make the person look bad. Or it at least gives you a better understanding of how mental illness affects people and how it can affect everyone differently.

The Characters

Despite something bad happening in the book it just makes you realize that the longer you wait to get help the worse things will be. On top of that, waiting so long could wind up making you explode. That’s kind of why I feel like you shouldn’t really hold your feelings in either. The littlest things can set someone off if they are holding pretty much everything in. That’s what I feel happened in The Divided Twin. This particular person was so scared of what would happen to him if he told his family he was hearing things that it caused things to get much worse.

The only downside of this book for me is that it was a bit confusing. There are times when I got the twins confused because they are so similar. I think I would have liked it better if there were more differences between the two and that I sometimes wouldn’t have to reread over certain parts to figure out whose perspective I was reading from. That was literally my only problem with this story.

The Plot

Despite getting confused at times I still really ended up enjoying the book. I honestly never would have guessed who exactly was having the problems since the author pretty much kept it a secret through the book. At least it was a secret up until towards the end. I know you shouldn’t really assume but I assumed it was the same person going through problems as before and wound up hearing someone else. But I was wrong and I kind of should have guessed it since the author was keeping it a secret. But I am glad that I was surprised with who it was and I wish he would have gotten help much sooner.

Reading through the book I can honestly see why it’s so hard for Branson to make any friends. He’s the type of guy that is very pessimistic. It’s hard being friends with someone who constantly has a negative outlook on everything. I know I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone like that because it would make me depressed. It’s understandable getting in that mindset every so often, but it seems like Branson is always in that mindset. It makes me wonder if that’s the result of having a mental illness (a mental illness that isn’t depression)?

The ending of A Divided Mind is actually pretty sad. It was something I didn’t really expect because I thought the twins would really be able to help each other and we would be left with a happy ending. But nope that doesn’t happen and I get that. Not everyone gets a happy ending and it’s something we just have to live with.

Also make sure to go and check out my post for the first book here!