The Rule of One

Fiction by Ashley and Leslie Saunders

https://www.audible.com

In the dystopian world of this novel, every American couple may have only one child, and every citizen is microchipped and carefully monitored by the government. In the state of Texas, Darren Goodwin is head of the Family Planning Division, overseeing compliance with the "rule of one." But no one would guess that Darren himself is in defiance of that rule; he has identical twin daughters masquerading as a single girl.

Mira and Ava Goodwin are almost eighteen, and they have been pretending to be only one person their entire lives. But what happens if they get caught? (You know they will. Where else could the story go?)

This was an exciting story to begin with, and I liked the characters. The novel suffered, however, from some annoying plot contrivances that I found hard to swallow. Most notably, near the end, the author(s) had the main characters behave in ridiculously uncharacteristic ways that made everything complicated, for no reason except to rev up the suspense. ( I can't explain specifically without spoilers but it's basically I-Can-No-Longer-Suspend-My-Disbelief-Syndrome++) 

Anyways, I did want to know what happened at the end, so I kept listening. I think I would have liked this story better in a regular book so I could skip the parts I found over-the-top unbelievable.

++I-Can-No-Longer-Suspend-My-Disbelief-Syndrome: 

(See Dangerous Habits by Susan Hunter)

This is when the plot twists push the boundaries of believability too far, (such as a long-lost-identical twin showing up at the last minute to take the blame when it had never before been mentioned that the person has a twin) or too often (such as three or four coincidences lining up to reveal the final twist.) You just want to yell out, "Oh, Bulls***!"