In Under Shifting Stars, Alexandra Latos's lyrical debut, teenage twins struggle to deal with grief and changing self-identities.
Formerly inseparable twins Audrey and Clare have slowly become divided by a series of complicated family dynamics. Now they barely speak, but privately mourn both their lost connection and the death of their older brother, Adam. Imaginative, artistic Audrey is neurodiverse and attends a separate school from neurotypical Clare, who is outwardly more socially adept than Audrey. Clare secretly admits that the hard part is feeling Audrey's "pain like my own, and sometimes it's a lot to bear." Additionally, Clare is exploring a more masculine gender expression, which is jeopardizing their relationships with friends and family. Clare's grief over the literal loss of their brother and metaphorical loss of their sister beautifully and achingly dovetails with their struggles around gender presentation and identity: "When I spied on Adam and his friends, I not only wanted to be like them, I wanted to be them."
Latos portrays the twins' personal trials and messy relationship through chapters that shift between their perspectives, their inner monologues throwing into relief each twin's deep misunderstanding of the other. Audrey's chapters are devoid of quotation marks, blurring the line between silent thoughts and spoken words and drawing attention to her neurodiversity. In these punctuation-less chapters, readers are given access to Audrey's mind and heart, a mystery to most everyone else in her life.
Latos does justice to the marginalized identities of her characters, who are white, in Under Shifting Stars, creating character arcs that feel authentic and lovingly rendered. --Kieran Slattery, freelance reviewer, teacher, and co-creator, Gender Inclusive Classrooms