Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood Book Review

Full disclosure: I was given a free advance reader copy of this book by Books Forward in exchange for an honest review.

As I mentioned in my review of Childless Mother: A Search for Son and Self by Tracy Mayo, adoption stories have always been compelling to me. I’ve always wondered what the lives of adoptees were like with their adopted families. There are plenty of books written about that, and I was lucky to come across one of them with today’s subject Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood by Julie Ryan McGue. It’s a lovely book about Julie and her identical twin sister Jenny’s experiences after being adopted into an Irish Catholic family in the metro-Chicago area.

Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood details what it was like to be adopted and raised with one’s identical twin. In this coming-of-age memoir, set in Chicago western suburbs from the 1960s to the 1980s, twin sisters Julie and Jenny become the oldest daughters of a family that consists of both adopted and biological children. Their bond is tight as the two strive for individuality, identity, and belonging. But Julie’s parents’ constant need to add more adopted and biological kids leads to a ton of complications like infertility, infant mortality, and a child with special needs. When Julie is sixteen, tragedy strikes in the family. Faced with these challenges, Julie questions everything such as who she is, her adoption, her faith, and her idea of family. As familial values and relationships are tested, she realizes her adoptive family is held together by love, faith, support, and her parents’ commitment to each other and family. However, the life that her parents envisioned for Julie is not one that she wants for herself. As she gets older, she realizes that her parents’ goals and dreams differ from hers, and how the experiences that have formed her provided a road map for the person and mother she wants to be.

Before I go any further, I want to mention that this memoir is actually a prequel to the one McGue published in 2021 called Twice the Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging. I haven’t looked at that one, but it didn’t impact my experience reading Twice the Family. While it’s good to read both, they are still standalones.

The writing is really good. It’s clear that McGue took plenty of time to flesh out her story. Each of the main characters has their own distinct personalities. This is important because the main focus is on Julie and her twin Jenny. While they are similar in many ways, they are different, and McGue lets readers know that. Julie is studious, overthinking, and can get sick quite a lot, while Jenny is the healthier and more ambitious one even though she has a hard time studying and gets nervous when speaking in public. I could immediately tell who was talking even if “he said” or “she said” weren’t there. In addition, I loved how each chapter ends on a cliff hanger like, “Nikki’s death [the family dog] was not the first time I had experienced a life altering moment in our family, and it would not be the last” (p. 151).

This might read to some people as manipulative, but Twice the Family earns it because so much happens to Julie and her family. Plus, McGue gives plenty of time to her and her family’s thoughts regarding certain events. I kept wondering what was going to occur after I finished a chapter. 

The best part of this memoir was seeing the relationships within the Ryan clan. I know I said this before, but I’ll say it again: I can’t believe that Julie and her family went through all that. In many ways, it helped to build up the bonds Julie had with her adopted family. For example, McGue recalls how her adoptive mother could have emotional outbursts and depressive episodes. She admits that it was difficult to live with her mom during those times, but after the tragedy, her mother became more emotionally detached. Overtime, Julie realized that each member of her family, “regardless of who [they were] and where [they came] from, [carried] within [them their] own brand of brokenness. What [they] do…determines the people [they] become and the course of [their] lives” (p. 204).

In the later chapters, her mother seems fine, but it would have been good to know how she lifted those dark clouds.

I also loved reading about the relationship between Julie and her twin sister Jenny. Julie always knew that she could trust Jenny with her secrets and true feelings. Despite their differences, they held a strong bond that got tested over and over again. When Julie won a beauty pageant, she should have been happy for herself, yet when she saw her sister look disappointed because both tried out, it soured her good fortune. On the other hand, when Julie was finding her place in the world after she graduated from college, she saw Jenny moving up the corporate ladder, and it made her feel left behind. Regardless, they still found ways back to each other.

Another thing that I want to point out about this memoir is that it contains a set of discussion questions. They relate to the various events and themes. As someone who runs a book club, I think that it would be a good choice for a book group. It’s thought provoking, and there would definitely be someone who will connect to the story beyond the surface level.

Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood by Julie Ryan McGue is a good memoir about growing up with an identical twin sister in a blended family. McGue writes in a straightforward manner that leaves readers anticipating what’s to come. Most importantly, the story itself and the relationships among various family members, especially her mom and twin sister Jenny, are worth reading. I would recommend it to readers who love books about identity and belonging regardless if they’re adopted or not as well as stories about adopted families. Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood will be out tomorrow, February 4, so go check it out wherever you get your novels.

Before I go, I want to let you know that I had the opportunity to interview Julie Ryan McGue for the website. The transcript will be posted soon.

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