A fascinating look at the ways we lie to others and to ourselves, how we abandon who we are to create who we are and what we sacrifice along the way...

The Vanishing Half is a story of two identical twin sisters, born with light enough skin to "pass" for white in certain situations, if no one around them knows the truth. One sister, Stella, will choose to perform this life as a white woman, but it costs her a relationship with everyone she knew and loved and makes life isolating for her as no one can ever truly know her after crossing over. The other sister, Desiree, will make her life as a black woman.

The book explores how these opposite choices create entirely different life paths for the Vignes twins and how those choices lead to radically different lives for the daughters of the next generation. Stella's daughter, Kennedy, is blonde haired and blue eyed, and whiteness is all she has ever known. Desiree's daughter is so dark that camera's can't quite focus around the color of her skin. Desiree knows her family and trusts her mother. Kennedy can't help but think her mother is hiding something.

This book had potential to be great, but I don't think it entirely lives up to that potential. The pacing of the book makes the middle third drag by so slowly that I could have put the book down and not felt bad about not finishing. I felt like this book only scratched the surface of some of the topics it tried to cover, perhaps because that list of topics is so long.

I love that the author included multiple ideas around the concept of "passing" and realize that no one character can tell every story, so I'm not so hung up on how the character of Reece "passed" so easily as cisgender. I do wish the author gave a little more complexity to queer spaces and identities, but if this book is an entry point for white, cis bookclub moms to understand a bit more about the complexities minority communities face, then I'm all for it.

I wish the emotional depth of the main characters' stories was plumbed all the way to the core. I felt like, in most instances, it was only danced around. I was left wanting a bit more in most aspects.