If Audrey Niffenegger’s debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, was based on love, her follow-up calls on much darker fare: jealousy, possessiveness, immaturity and dishonesty.

Her Fearful Symmetry follows twin sisters in their early 20s as they travel to London to live in an apartment their late aunt Elspeth bequeathed them with the condition that their parents — Elspeth’s twin sister and her husband — never set foot in the place.

The more dominant Julia decides they should go, so they do, despite Valentina’s reservations. This is how things are with the inseparable twins: Valentina wishes for more independence but — true to her nickname Mouse — doesn’t stand up to her sister. “You just open your mouth and say, ‘No,’” the twins’ mother instructs her at the beginning of the novel. Valentina’s inability to do so leads to one of the more dramatic and unexpected plot twists in this strange story.

Upon arriving at the apartment, the twins soon find out that their aunt is a ghost, and they seek to uncover the mystery surrounding her estrangement from their mother.

In the backdrop of this tale is Highgate Cemetery, the resting ground for Karl Marx, George Eliot and Christina Rossetti. Niffenegger is a guide there and sprinkles the book with tons of vivid descriptions and colorful history.

The book, however, falls short in several ways. After introducing the central characters, tensions and unanswered questions, the story drags to the point that midway through the novel, the reader is still unclear where it’s headed. Then suddenly, the last 100 pages or so are packed with action and long-awaited — if not slightly anticlimactic — revelations.

The personality faults of characters can make them more relatable, even endearing. That’s not the case with this novel’s main characters, whose weaknesses are off-putting and almost unrealistically extreme.

As she did with time travel, Niffenegger manages to make the existence of ghosts a believable reality. Her talent in storytelling shines through in several sections of the book, but sadly, not enough to make up for the slow pace and stunted characters.

– Rasha Madkour