The Girls by Lori Lansens focuses on conjoined twin sisters Rose and Ruby. When they were born, their mother ran away from what she thought was a monster, and so one of the nurses decided to raise the girls as her own. Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash, as the girl's called them, were faced with the challenge of raising these girls who don't have the ability to do many of the  things that any other kid can easily do. Thanks to Lovey and Stash, the girls were able to go to school,keep a part time job at the local library, and were able to live until their early thirties, becoming the oldest living craniopagus twins ever recorded.

A reason that Lansens may have written this book is to show how conjoined twins really are normal people. Rose and Ruby worked for most of their adult lives reading stories to kids at the library, and all of the kids loved them. I think a point Lansens might have wanted to get across to the reader is if the kids at the library treat them like people, and are not scared or disgusted by them, then why don't the grown ups treat them like equals. The central theme in the story is that all people should be treated equally, and it is conveyed by how the girls are not treated like human beings and how they deal with it. Whenever people see the girls for the first time, they are either scared or disgusted by them. Even the people who have known them all of their lives treat them a little differently than the other people they interact with.

Something interesting about the story is watching how the girls figure out how to do things that they have never done or accomplish things that doctors told them they wouldn't. I personally did not like the style in which the book was presented, where it is a story of their lives that is not in chronological order. But that can be overlooked when you focus on how amazing of a story it is about these girls who were doubted by everyone who came across their paths and who did the things that everyone told them they could not. This is definitely a book that I would recommend to any reader who enjoy inspiring stories about people overcoming all of the struggles of their lives.