ADOPTION MEMOIR REVIEW by Patricia Knight Meyer

“Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood”

Author Julie Ryan McGue | Available Feb. 4, 2025 | She Writes Press | Memoir / Nonfiction

As a small child, I often fantasized I had a twin somewhere in the world. Separated at birth, one day I’d find her, and the hole in my heart would be filled. Although reunions of separated twins happen, it turned out that was not my story. Like many adoptees, the hole I felt was not of a missing sibling, but a missing mother. Though a twin and an adoptee, luckily this was not memoirist Julie McGue’s story either. She and her twin sister Jenny were kept together and adopted by a couple looking to build a big and loving Catholic family. 

One can never know what it is to be an adoptee, or a twin, unless you are one. Few can know what it is to be both. My initial feeling picking up Julie’s first book, “Twice a Daughter” (2021), was envy. An adoptee, Julie got to grow up with not only a full sibling but her twin — someone to mirror her, share and understand her primal wound, a soul mate to lean on and confide in. Yet, when I read that she and her sister were the oldest in a family that seemed to never stop growing, I thought again. Raised as an only child, I would have struggled to share my parents’ affections with other children, especially biological ones. 

While reading “Twice a Daughter,” which chronicles Julie’s five-year search for her birth family, I’d become eager to learn more about Julie’s relationship with her family members; many of whom we don’t hear much about in her first book. These include her twin sister Jenny, her four other siblings (adopted and biological), and her parents, especially her adoptive mother, who in the first book struggles with her daughters’ reunion journey, and who I had an inkling had quite the backstory of her own. 

Having loved Julie’s first book, I looked forward to her new prequel “Twice the Family,” which takes readers back to the formative years that shaped Julie’s understanding of family, adoption and identity. I couldn’t wait to meet a younger Julie and learn more about the family dynamics in Julie’s adoptive home. I wondered about the parental impetus for wanting so many children, and the complex aspects of being both an adoptee and identical twin in the mix. Julie does not disappoint, as she peels back the layers of her childhood to find who she is separate from her adoptive family, and, yes, even her twin sister Jenny. 

Set in Chicago’s western suburbs between the 1960s and ’80s, the story begins as Julie and her sister provide their parents with an “instant family” and expands into a sweeping saga of family resilience in the face of multiple losses, as their parents strive to add more children to the household. From her adoptive mother’s struggle with miscarriages, to a stillborn brother, to the loss of a younger sister, to a neighborhood fraught with unthinkable tragedies, and the twins initial relinquishment; it seemed everywhere Julie looked, the threat of unimaginable loss shook her Catholic faith. Yet despite the heavy subject matter, Julie does a wonderful job illustrating familial strength, personal resilience, grace and hope in the face of loss, and personal aptitude and agency.

From sports, to grades, to pageants, and job interviews, Julie seems to have the golden touch, but as any “successful” adoptee can tell you, winning, making the grade, or nailing the job interview has much more to do with our feelings of never being enough. Julie keenly illustrates the adoptee-centered insecurities driving her quest to prove her worth, stake her claim, and attain a true sense of self.     

This memoir also shines in its exploration of twin identity within the context of adoption. Julie deftly portrays how she and her sister maintained their close bond while struggling to individuate. I especially appreciated Julie’s exploration of how hard it is to claim one’s personal identity as an adoptee, let alone when both you and your sister are twin adoptees. 

As she questions everything—her identity, her place within the family, her adoption circumstances, her faith and differences from her sister and family—she gradually builds a blueprint for the person and mother she wants to become, even if it means choosing a path distinctly different from her parents’ rigid expectations.

I found the last third of the book especially beautiful, as Julie navigates the challenging time of early adulthood, from first jobs to first loves, to Mr. Right. The raw, honest and vulnerable places she takes her reader are a testament to the powerful forces at play during that time, and her love for and patience with her future husband is evident.