Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers - normal, at least, for identical 'mirror' twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn't know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block.

Julia and Valentina Poole, normal American teenagers who happen to be mirror twins and have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when an aunt they didn’t even know existed dies and leaves them her flat in a block overlooking Highgate Cemetry in London. They feel at last their own lives can begin….but have no ideal that they’ve been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive compulsive crossword setter to their aunt’s mysterious elusive lover, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins’ mother – and who can’t even seem to quite leave her flat.