Books about Twinloss No 8 "Bang, Bang, you're dead" by Narinder Dhami

This book is an atrocity! I startet perusing through the German version in a bookstore and then found out I could purchase it via amazon.de for 0,01 Eurocent (+ E 3,00 shipping from the UK). So, I did read it, eventually, and was livid afterwards.
I have read other books by the same author and liked them. They were all about indian girls in british society and they were fun, but this one isn't nor is is designed to be.
The plot: Mia is fourteen an telling her story. That her twin brother Jamie is dead she mentions almost first thing on page one. She then proceeds to tell about how she and Jamie and their mother who has bi-polar disorder try to make it through life together. How her beloved grandfather died some years ago after shouldering most of the responsibility of the small family (the twin's father vanished before their birth). How her mother's behaviour becomes more and more unpredictable and bizarre and how Jamie threatens "to do something" and that he "may no longer be there" soon. So, when the rumour runs through school that someone with a gun is in the building, Mia believes it may be Jamie driven to something desperate and she sets out own her own to find him.
She tracks the shooter through the building rather smartly, finds out is is NOT Jamie, manages to lock him into a room, gets rescued just in time, ends up in hospital and when she frantically asks for Jamie meets the astonished gaze of a doctor asking her "Who is Jamie?".
At this point the intelligent reader realizes that Jamie as a figure has remained a bit vague, and for good reason: he died at the twin's birth.
The rest of the story is unraveled at high speed level. Mia sees a psychologist, tells her she has always known Jamie is a ghost. The shrink doesn't believe her. It takes Mia only two more pages to realize that she has made up Jamie herself, that she is even more bi-polar than her mother and has to have therapy. Knowing this truth about herself, she curls up in her bed, whispers "Good-bye, Jamie, I don't need you any more" and finita la comedia!
Thus Narinder Dhami turns the whole subject of twinloss at birth into an illness that can be cured, and in a jiffy!
I tried to contact the author and give her a piece of my mind, but her contact form would bounce back my emails and I couldn't find any other address on the web.
So, if you like a criminal story with a surprising end - or, since this isn't a surprise to you any more, know someone you might like to give it to - go ahead, but as far as twinloss is concerned it is worthless and possibly damaging.

Books about Twinloss No 7 "The secret twin" by Denise Gosliner Orenstein

This book is special. I must admit I haven't managed reading it through, yet. I read more than half and then started leafing through to find out about later events, because I was too impatient to get their in due time ;-). And this book isn't an easy read. This book is literature to be taken seriously, yes, Sir.
The story sounds simple enough. A little boy lives with his grandmother. She has to go to hospital and a temporary caretaker moves in with the boy. They have a not-too-easy time getting to know each other, but in the end become fast friends, which is all the more beneficial for both because the grandmother dies.
So far, so not-at- all to the clue. Noah is no ordinary boy and his grandmother whom he calls Mademoiselle is no ordinary grandmother. Noah was born a conjoined twin, but it was clear from the start that only one of the twins could survive. An unprecedented operation saves Noah's life and ends his brother's. He keeps the newspaper articles on the event under his bed in a box.
Noah's parents died in a car accident and he grows up with his grandmother. We learn to know her mainly through her grandson's appearance to the caretaker Grace - who has a story of her own about life and loss.
This book is magic and NOT because the author choose to weave the symbols of the Tarot cards into the story. The plot includes a mysterious murderer whom Noah confuses somehow with his twin and who leaves cards of the Great Arkana behind, but the story is magical enough without this feature. Grace's perspective on life. Through food. The way she fights for her own little boy who got lost - her little brother killed in an accident - and later for Noah. The way Noah finds out about his grandmother, how she loved him, how she not loved him and how he loves her, in the end. The way Noah comes to term with his twin and his twinship, how he climbs from being half a boy to being someone like no other, maybe, but still himself, and maybe, most miraculous, the way Orenstein manages to describe a clearly obese and simpe-minded young woman like the most insightful and important and precious person in the whole wordl - not only for Noah.
It's hard to describe this book without adapting the magical style Orenstein weaves. It's sure like none of the other twinloss books I read. I'm still not sure whether I like it or not, but it sure is special.