| Switched | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Sienna Mercer |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | My Sister the Vampire(Book One) |
| Publisher | Harper Trophy |
| Publication date | July 24, 2007 |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 199 |
| ISBN | 9780060871130 |
| Followed by | Fangtastic! |
Switched is a novel by Sienna Mercer, and the first of sixteen books in the My Sister the Vampire collection.
I have a twin? And she's a vampire??
When Olivia Abbott moves to town, she's excited to join the cheerleading team and make new friends. Then she meets Ivy Vega. At first, Ivy, pale and dressed all in black, looks like Olivia's opposite. Then the girls look beyond the glittery pink blush and thick black eyeliner to discover they're identical-identical twins! Olivia and Ivy are brimming with plans to switch places and pull every twin trick in the book. But Olivia soon discovers that she and Ivy aren't exactly the same. Ivy's a vampire. And she's not the only one in town.
Summary
It's about two thirteen-year-old 8th-grade girls, Olivia Abbott, who has just moved to Franklin Grove because of her dad's job, and Ivy Vega, a girl who's grown up in Franklin Grove. The girls find out that they're long-lost identical twin sisters who were adopted into different families when they were just a year old, and Olivia later finds out that Ivy's actually a vampire. Then they come together to find out who their birth mom was, then find their necklace and their ring has the same symbol on the back.
Plot
On Olivia Abbott's first day at Franklin Grove Middle School, she encounters a fashionably dress Goth girl who points her to the main office. The girl turns out to be Ivy Vega, who, upon running into Olivia, feels a strange sensation, as if she had met her before. While at the main office, Olivia meets and best friends, Camilla Edmunson, a sci-fi obsessed blonde girl with long curly hair.
In their first period social studies class, Olivia's introduced to the students. Ivy has a strong feeling of upon seeing her again, and asks her best friend, Sophia Hewitt, if they know her, to which Sophia replies, "She's 2 pink 4 us 2 know!" (it's also revealed that the vampire-slang term for a human is "bunny").
After class, Olivia's cornered by The Beasts, a gang of four greasy, creepy Goth boys, who call her "new meat" (their names are revealed to be Garrick Stephens, Kyle Glass, Dylan Soyle and Ricky Slitherman in the second book). Ivy comes to Olivia's defense and fends off the goons, to which Olivia gratefully thanks her. Ivy's hit by a powerful wave of nausea mixed with strangeness, and rushes off before Olivia can finish talking (which Olivia feels guilty about because she thought she must have been coming on too strong).
In her P.E. class, Olivia meets her new gym teacher, Ms. Barnett, who's also the school cheerleading coach. She also meets and befriends Charlotte Brown and her two minions/best friends, Katie and Allison. Later at lunch, the three girls invite Olivia to sit at their lunch table, and Olivia reluctantly agrees, who had been hoping to sit with Camilla. Charlotte explains the "rules" of Franklin Grove Middle School, which mostly just revolves around her, the cheerleading captainship, and the color pink (which they all love). As Ivy and her friends pass by their table, Charlotte makes a snide remark, but Ivy says nothing. Olivia's shocked and stands up for Ivy, but Charlotte dismisses Ivy, saying, "the walking dead don't have feelings!"
In science class, Ivy's annoyed that Olivia had seemingly been sucked into Charlotte's circle so easily and was now her new BFF. Instead, Olivia comes up to Ivy's table and apologizes for Charlotte's insult and compliments her on her incredible style. Ivy admits to Olivia that she's used to Charlotte's petty ways and reveals that they're actually next-door neighbors. Ivy also reveals to Olivia that she actually tried out for cheerleading in 6th-grade and made the squad, beating out Charlotte, who was originally an alternative. Ivy goes on to explain that she ended up quitting after the first week after realizing that cheerleading just wasn't her thing—she joined the school newspaper and Charlotte got to fill the spot Ivy left, which was apparently the only reason she actually made the squad in the first place (and she's never gotten over it).
While working on the lab experiment, Ivy notices the dark emerald ring on Olivia's middle finger and realizes that it's identical to the ring Ivy wears on her neck. The ring is the only thing Ivy has from her biological parents and she had received it on her tenth birthday (Ivy had been adopted). After class, Ivy pulls Olivia to the science hall bathroom (which Ivy claims is the least frequented bathroom in the school) where they discuss their rings, their birthplace and birth date, their adoptive parents, and find out that they're long-lost twin sisters.
As the story progresses and Olivia and Ivy's sisterhood bonding grows stronger, they decide to switch places and fool everyone, sometimes for the fun of it, but also to fill in for each others' places in times of need. They switch places, everything from makeup to clothes and learning how to talk and act like each other—which wasn't easy, given that Ivy's low-profile goth (who doesn't like being the center of attention) with several close goth friends who use different terms like "suck" (meaning "good") and "deadly" (meaning "awesome"), and Olivia's a pink and perky cheerleader who doesn't mind being the center of attention and also bounces and smiles when she walks. Their eating habits are also a problem—Ivy's food always contains blood or strong iron content and absolutely no garlic, and Olivia's vegetarian who loves garlic (she's probably a pescetarian, because at the beginning of the story it's said that she likes sushi, which often has fish in it) and also loves tofu and salads. But the hardest part of switching identities is trying to fit in with the types of people the girls normally hang out with.
Olivia and Ivy face many other challenges as well after they meet: planning the All Hallows Hall (with Olivia pretending to be Ivy, who gets chosen as the head of decorations), Olivia badly wanting to make the Franklin Grove Middle School cheerleading squad (with Ivy pretending to be Olivia at the practices before the actual tryouts), Ivy really wanting to go out with Brendan Daniels, her long-time crush (they start dating at the end of the book and are officially boyfriend-and-girlfriend by the second book), and the two telling Ivy's best friend, Sophia, about the newly-discovered fact that they're definitely long-lost twin sisters.
Everything seems to go fine until Ivy finally tells Olivia that she's a vampire and proves so, and that Sophia and most of the other Goths in Franklin Grove are actually vampires, while the rest of the goths are "bunnies" just like Olivia. Olivia's obviously a little scared when Ivy explains the existence of vampires, but starts getting used to it (the girls also question how they could be siblings if one of them is a vampire and the other's a human).
Trivia
- Olivia does make the FGMS-cheerleading squad, but Charlotte ends up becoming the captain, which Olivia's okay with (she felt it was only fair since Charlotte had been on the squad longer than she had).
- When Ivy confessed to Olivia that she's a vampire, she explains that most of the stuff humans think they know about vampires are actually just myths. For example:
- Vampires actually have reflections.
- Vampires eat and drink other things besides meat and blood. They still need to drink blood in order to survive, but they eat normal foods too (like the foods that humans eat).
- Ivy also revealed to Olivia that vampires haven't actually sucked blood from humans since the 1600s, when they burned half the vampire population at the stake.
- Vampires aren't actually immortal, but they live for a really long time.
- Ivy and Sophia explain to Olivia that vampires age at the same rate humans do until the vampires reach adulthood (around the age of eighteen), and then they start aging really slowly (Sophia revealed to Olivia that her father is 212-years-old).
- One of the keys to their longevity is Rapid Self Healing (RSH for short). For example, if a vampire gets a cut or something, they heal almost instantly.
- Ivy and Sophia explain to Olivia that vampires age at the same rate humans do until the vampires reach adulthood (around the age of eighteen), and then they start aging really slowly (Sophia revealed to Olivia that her father is 212-years-old).
- Two of the few "myths" about vampires that are true is that garlic actually kills vampires and that vampires actually sleep in coffins.
- In the second book, Ivy and Sophia explain to Olivia that vampires upgrade their coffins like humans upgrade their cell phones, and that most funeral homes are run by vampires (so the showrooms for their coffins are multipurpose).
- Other stuff about vampires:
- Vampire skin is very pale and sensitive, so they have to wear a special sunscreen to protect it from the sun.
- Vampires have unusual eye colors, as Ivy revealed to Olivia that she was a vampire, the first thing she did was pull out her contact lenses, revealing that her natural eye color is actually violet. Even for vampires, violet is a very rare eye color, and that two of the more common eye colors for vampires are bright yellow and luminous green (vampires also have to wear special contacts to protect their eyes from the sun).
- Vampires have superhuman strength, speed and agility.
- Right after Olivia found out about the existence of vampires, she starts getting freaked out about who else at their school besides the Goth kids are vampires. But after seeing a menu for their school cafeteria menu that said the day's special was crab salad, it made Olivia realize that vampires are basically just like humans, similar to how crabs and lobsters are different types of crustaceans, but are still basically the same thing.