Laura Lam

To save her twin, she must take her identity One night Tila stumbles home, terrified and covered in blood. She's then arrested for murder, the first by a civilian in decades. The San Francisco police suspect involvement with Verve, a powerful drug, and offer her twin sister Taema a chilling deal. Taema must assume Tila's identity and gather information to bring down the drug syndicate. The police may then let her sister live. However, Taema's investigation raises ghosts from the twins' past. The sisters were raised by a cult, which banned modern medicine - yet as conjoined twins, they needed life-saving surgery to replace their failing heart. And with help from co-conspirators, they escaped. Taema now discovers that Tila had found links between the cult and the city's criminal underworld. The twins were once unable to keep secrets, but will learn the true cost of lies.

False Hearts

Didi Chanoch

This is the story of Taema and Tila, formerly conjoined twins in a future San Francisco. 10 years ago, they escaped the cult they grew up in so they could get life saving surgery. Now, Tila shows up at Taema's apartment wet and covered in another's blood, and is almost immediately arrested for murder. To save her sister, Taema must go undercover AS her sister, in San Francisco's criminal underworld. 

This story is thrilling, fast paced, and combines the mystery of Tila's arrest with the story of the twins' lives in the cult and eventual escape. It's about drugs that allow for powerful dreams, and all the dirt beneath a seemingly ideal future. Lam gets her SF RIGHT. Alongside Malka Older's INFOMOCRACY and Emma Newman's PLANETFALL, it's a great recent book to throw (literally, perhaps) at dudes who say "well, women don't write proper SF, do they?" 

It's a very good story, with compelling characters, built around two women who spent their first 16 years together, and are forced to spend most of the novel apart. It is, I should warn, sometimes graphically violent, though the narrative does not linger on the violence. I'm squeamish, and got through it fine, but your mileage may vary.

Laura Lam's adult sci-fi debut False Hearts: Two formerly conjoined sisters are ensnared in a murderous plot involving psychoactive drugs, shared dreaming, organized crime, and a sinister cult. Raised in the closed cult of Mana's Hearth and denied access to modern technology, conjoined sisters Taema and Tila dream of a life beyond the walls of the compound. When the heart they share begins to fail, the twins escape to San Francisco, where they are surgically separated and given new artificial hearts. From then on they pursue lives beyond anything they could have previously imagined. Ten years later, Tila returns one night to the twins' home in the city, terrified and covered in blood, just before the police arrive and arrest her for murder--the first homicide by a civilian in decades. Tila is suspected of involvement with the Ratel, a powerful crime syndicate that deals in the flow of Zeal, a drug that allows violent minds to enact their darkest desires in a terrifying dreamscape. Taema is given a proposition: go undercover as her sister and perhaps save her twin's life. But during her investigation Taema discovers disturbing links between the twins' past and their present. Once unable to keep anything from each other, the sisters now discover the true cost of secrets.

Maggie Gordon

False Hearts was a rather innovative sf release this year featuring a former conjoined twin as a protagonist who was trying to prove that her sister didn't commit a murder. I certainly haven't seen this set up before, and it was an interesting headspace to look into, that of someone so intimately close with someone else. The two sisters were once part of a cult that eschewed technology, and they escaped when their heart began to fail, and were surgically separated once they arrived in San Francisco. The two ended up being very different people, with Taema becoming an engineer and Tila a hostess, but were still incredibly close until Tila started acting strangely. One night she bursts into Taema's apartment, covered in blood, and is arrested shortly after for the first murder in the city in years. 

The world of False Hearts is an interesting mix of utopia and dystopia. While scarcity seems to have been dealt with, people live under an exceptional amount of scrutiny from the government. The book touches on these issues, but it seems like some of the glimpses of how things could go horribly wrong are only teased at. Sequel hook, perhaps?

The real meat of the story involves Taema's undercover work as she tries to figure out who is developing a drug that can both spy on people and change their personalities. Everything seems to hearken back to her days with Mana's Hearth, but what would a group that rejects all technology have to do with a group of mobsters led by a technological genius?

False Hearts is an enjoyable read, but I wish that the author had slowed things down and settled into the world a bit more. Though a book aimed at adults, it feels very YA in its pacing, and everything is fast and compressed. The plot is well structured though, I just felt like the book could have used a bit more detail and slowness at parts. On the other hand, it was a creative story with a fascinating protagonist and future world!

Flavia Louise

This was very different from what I was expecting but I really liked it.

Sheila

Such a wonderfully unique addition to sci-fi and, dare I say it, cyberpunk! I've never read a book with conjoined twins as the MC & it was just so cool to explore their lives pre- and post-separation. 

The main plot definitely had some good Orphan Black vibes, but I thought that the pacing was uneven between the major plot points. I think this was in part due to the author switching POVs between the twins at irregular intervals; Tima's chapters were slower in pace as they focused primarily on the twins' time while conjoined back at Mana's Hearth - the cult they were born into and a part of until the age of 16. Taema's chapters were all about the present events & the hunt to track down who was really responsible for Tima being put in prison. There would be huge chunks where only Taema would narrate, then as things worked up to a frenzy for her, suddenly it was back to Tima & past events. The POV switches were important for the development of both the twins, but the execution was jarring.

All the futuristic elements of future!San Francisco were done well & were super interesting. Huge emphasis on implant technology. This book was a quality purchase!!

Becky

I wanted to love this book for the cover and the design of the book so I am so glad this book met all expectations and surpassed them.

This book was just thrilling and I didn't want to put it down. The story was original and the future created in it was believable. It was a slightly dystopian future but it wasn't a dystopian book. This was a book about twins and the lives between them and the idea of a cult in the future and a murder in a world where crime was virtually irradicated by a drug which let you dream out whatever your heart desired. It was just brilliant. One of my favourite reads this year.

To save her twin, she must take her identity. One night Tila stumbles home, terrified and covered in blood. She’s then arrested for murder, the first by a civilian in decades. The San Francisco police suspect that the drug Verve is involved, and offer her sister Taema a chilling deal to save her sister’s life. Posing as Tila, she must infiltrate the crime syndicate running the drug to help bring it down. However, Taema’s inquiries raise dangerous questions. The sisters were raised by a cult which banned modern medicine. Yet as conjoined twins, they needed surgery to replace their failing heart, so had to escape. Now Tila discovers disturbing links between the twins’ past and their present. Once unable to keep secrets, the twins now learn the true cost of lies in False Hearts by Laura Lam.

False Hearts

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