The premise of the book sucked me in. With sliding doors references but set within the roles of gender. The same person born in two different lives. One a girl, one a boy. I went into this expecting an exploration of gender roles which isn't entirely what this story is set to portray, which is a misunderstanding on my part heading in. It's a contemporary fiction/women's literature piece, not the deep observation of gender and the variation it plays in society. So I was slightly disappointed, however I still enjoyed the narrative which Cohen developed. It was easy to identify the two stories without being confused throughout and the separate stories meshed well when they were combined. At the heart of it it's a story about 3 kids growing up in a small industrial town and the choices made that alters all their future plans and ambitions, and their friendships with one another and their home town.