This is the story of twin sisters, destined from birth to fulfill certain roles in their village: one is a truth-teller, who cannot tell a lie when asked directly; her sister is a safe-keeper, to whom you may tell anything and know it will never be divulged. The two sisters, despite their differences, grow up close, sharing a room and friendships.

The story is narrated by Eleda, the truth-teller sister, and tinged with her perspective on the world. Adele, her sister is “devious and secretive,” who eavesdrops and never shares the interesting things she overhears, and lies so sincerely that you would never guess it was the truth. Sometimes she doesn’t answer when you call out to her; and she never lets you know when she has injured herself or when someone bullies her in school. But the truth-teller tells the truth about herself, as well, admitting that she tattles, and volunteers hurtful truths about how you look, because “words wouldn’t stay inside” her.

The girls live normal lives until they are 12 years old, when a passing Dream-Maker (someone with the power to make a dream come true), points out their gifts. After that, local villagers and passing visitors at their father’s inn stop by to ask for truths and confide secrets. But they had to take care that they were speaking to the right sister – sometimes they assumed they knew which sister they were speaking to, and confided a secret to the truth-teller or asked the safe-keeper for advice about something. Usually it worked out, but sometimes it didn’t. And simply asking “are you the safe-keeper” or “are you the truth-teller” wouldn’t always work because sometimes Adele sometimes capriciously answered “yes” to her sister’s question. So people finally settled on, “Is it safe to tell you a secret?” which Adele always answered Yes and Eleda always answered No.

The girls’ main friend, Roelynn, is the daughter of the richest man in town, a miser who neglected Roelynn’s upbringing, with the result that she is somewhat wild. This is a problem for her father because he avariciously aspires to have her marry a prince, something she is set against. And Roelynn has young man after young man falling in love with her, all of them secrets that she keeps from her father, with Adele’s help.

As the girls grow up, Eleda becomes aware that, although Adele is keeping secrets even from her, that Adele’s “devious” methods – although different from her own – can sometimes be used for good. And Eleda uses her truth-telling as a threat to keep Adele alive. Then Roelynn falls in love with a most ineligible young man, and Adele and Eleda must use all their wits to help her avoid her father’s wrath. And a truth-teller tells a lie and a safe-keeper reveals a secret and the dream-maker does everything she can to keep a dream from coming true.

This was another hard post to write, since I kept wanting to read the book instead of writing about it. It’s a fun book to read, easy to follow, with lots of funny little anecdotes throughout. It’s a book of a magical land, where the people burn wreathes decorated with symbols of what they want most at Wintermoon and have lavish parties at Summermoon. Where rumors abound about miracles the dream-maker has wrought; and people trust explicitly that the two sisters will do as their titles portend.

I liked this book also, because it reminded me of my relationship with one of my sisters. We weren’t truth-tellers and safe-keepers – nothing as clear-cut as that – but we were very different and jealous of each other and fought a good bit. She was beautiful and cheerful and seemed carefree and could do no wrong in my mother’s eyes. I was smart and cynical and got things done and was never good enough. We often clashed, as Elida and Adele did, our methods so different. My sister once, on a trip to the Kentucky Derby, got to the rental car counter and only realized that her license had expired when they refused to rent her a car, no matter how prettily she smiled. She glanced down the counter, spied a handsome man picking up his keys, and persuaded him to be her chauffer for the weekend. (And he probably loved it.) I would never have had the chutzpah to do such a thing – and I would never have let my license expire in the first place. Only after my mother died were my sister and I able to make peace. So I envy Adele and Eleda their close relationship.

I also like Shinn’s cleverness in solving the problem at the end of the story, bending without breaking the safe-keeper and truth-teller’s mandates to get to a happy ending. You see a twist coming from the first line of the book but how it gets there is a lot of fun.

I picked this book up at work, as an advance uncorrected proof, so I never looked for it on the shelf in a store and didn’t realize, until I was reviewing it for this post, that it’s actually a sequel. So now I’ve got one more book to read. This is really terrible.

On a short train ride this week, I tried to finish two books that I had started on my phone. I was having trouble concentrating, so I started reading samples I’ve been downloading instead and four of the five were keepers. Oddly, three of those started with a door. In one, someone was standing in front of a door, wondering how to get in. In a second, the door comes late in the first chapter, where the main character knocks at the very ordinary door, it opens, and he finds a corpse inside and then, after a few more twists, finds himself going through another door into a different place altogether. In the third one, a knock at the door brings a family member back to an ancestral home, with news that a secret that he and his brother have been keeping has been revealed; followed shortly afterwards by a terrible knock by a woman that the child hidden in the house has never seen before and hopes never to see again.

Clearly doors are opening somewhen. Change is coming.