Book review - Mirror Girls

 

Title: Mirror Girls

Author: Kelly McWilliams

Genre: history/magical realism

Similar books: Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

                      The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones by Daven McQueen

Rating:

 

good idea, a bit lacking in execution

Summary (provided by publisher):  As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were secretly separated after the brutal lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line. Now, at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, while white-passing Magnolia is the heiress to a cotton plantation in rural Georgia.
Magnolia knows nothing of her racial heritage, but secrets are hard to keep in a town haunted by the ghosts of its slave-holding past. When Magnolia finally learns the truth, her reflection mysteriously disappears from mirrors—the sign of a terrible curse. Meanwhile, in Harlem, Charlie's beloved grandmother falls ill. Her final wish is to be buried back home in Georgia—and, unbeknownst to Charlie, to see her long-lost granddaughter, Magnolia Heathwood, one last time. So Charlie travels into the Deep South, confronting the land of her worst nightmares—and Jim Crow segregation.
The sisters reunite as teenagers in the deeply haunted town of Eureka, Georgia, where ghosts linger centuries after their time and dangers lurk behind every mirror. They couldn’t be more different, but they will need each other to put the hauntings of the past to rest, to break the mirrors’ deadly curse—and to discover the meaning of sisterhood in a racially divided land.

My opinion: We get plenty of books about kids on opposite sides of the racial divide during the civil rights movement but I can't say as I'd ever considered what that would look like when the kids in question are biracial twins raised apart. Charlie and Magnolia, then, represent the difference between biological ties and experience. Root magic and spiritualism also play a strong role in the girls understanding their family history, their ties to the land, and what is poisoning the place. Those parts are strong but the characters are underdeveloped. More complex characters would make for a more compelling read but there's enough to consider in this book to make it worth reading.

 Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley