Twin Flames

Gr 9 Up–In this New Visions Award–winning book, Abtahi uses fantasy tropes to explore coming-of-age in a multicultural family. Bianca and Leila Mazanderani have grown up together, identical twins in an Argentine-Iranian home, but they couldn’t be more different, or so it seems to them. Bianca likes punk culture, while Leila tends toward prairie-chic. Bianca wants to be like their mamá—a career woman—while Leila wants to be like their baba—a stay-at-home parent who specializes in sourdough and pickles. Everything changes on the twins’ 18th birthday when djinn show up in their small college town, demanding payback for a long-ago wish. Now the twins have to learn to work together and find their path in life before the world burns down around them. Abtahi weaves Persian mythology with many of the usual challenges of young adulthood—determining one’s sexuality, redefining parent-child relationships, and identifying a career path. This book recalls shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though it incorporates the food, stories, and language of Latin America and the Middle East into the genre of demons-in-small-town-America.