Review: "Let's Get Together" by Brandy Colbert

Let's Get Together by Brandy Colbert
Published September 2025 via Clarion Books
★★★★

Brandy Colbert takes on The Parent Trap? Yes please.

In Let's Get Together, everyone's favorite secret-twins movie gets a modern twist. For Kenya, starting grade 6 is just another move in the right direction. She has a happy life with her father and grandmother, and she sees no reason for a new direction. But for Liberty, things are more complicated—she's in the best foster home she's ever had, but her entire living memory is nothing but uncertainty. And Kenya is the biggest uncertainty she's seen in a while—because although Kenya and Liberty have never met before, they're mirror images of each other.

Although this is based on The Parent Trap, in some (limited) ways It Takes Two is a more direct comparison—in The Parent Trap (and yes, you'd better believe that I've seen the 1998 and the 1961 versions, and also read the original Das doppelte Lottchen), the girls are both happy in their single-child-of-a-single-parent lives, not a little spoiled (especially in the film versions), and in their predicament because their parents willingly split them up. It Takes Two mixes it up with doppelgängers rather than twins, and with one girl living in a truly miserable foster care situation. (Man was that movie terrible, and also man did I love it. I wonder whether the library has a copy...?)

Colbert delivers a more realistic take: without spoiling the "how" of the split, I'll say that the reason the girls were split up is, you know, not a case of the parents dividing the assets. And although Liberty has had her fair share of rough foster placements—the book doesn't go into details, and it doesn't need to—she's finally in a good one, one that feels like it could be the real thing...until her world is turned upside down. Again. Now, I've read enough about foster care (although not specifically in a California context) to question some of the details of the book; as far as I know, some of the plot points (like Liberty's foster mother and biological father being able to decide Liberty's medical care) are...very unlikely...but then, this is a middle-grade book and I don't think those details need to be pitch perfect to work. I love how readily Liberty and Kenya take to being sisters—they're cautious (Kenya in particular has to get used to sharing her space), but they want it to work, so (well, for the most part) they try to reach out and put themselves in the other's shoes. I also like that things don't work out exactly as the girls plan—again, no spoilers, but there's another twist of a sort at the end, and it keeps things interesting.

A good one for middle-grade readers...but also for those of us adults who grew up on lost-twin stories and love a fresh take.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.