Charlie and Marcus Tucci are twins, but they can’t stand each other.
Charlie loves books, zombie movies, and greasy pizza. Marcus thrives in the spotlight as the school’s swimming star and cringes at how awkward his sister can be. They don’t talk, they don’t hang out, and they definitely don’t team up.
But things weren’t always like this. Back when their parents were still together, the twins and their best friend Sam were inseparable. Now, Charlie is left to find her own way while Marcus and Sam bask in the glories of their jock lives.
When heartbreak—and the worst guy you’ve ever met—threatens to take them both down, the Tuccis are forced to work together. With the help of a group of misfits and a zine that blows up everything fake about the awful people in their school, they might discover they have more in common than they thought.
The Summer I Turned Pretty meets Heartstopper in a story about twins, friendship, and a romance that will catch you by surprise.
Charlie and Marcus Tucci are twins, but they can’t stand each other.
Charlie loves books, zombie movies, and greasy pizza. Marcus thrives in the spotlight as the school’s swimming star and cringes at how awkward his sister can be. They don’t talk, they don’t hang out, and they definitely don’t team up.
But things weren’t always like this. Back when their parents were still together, the twins and their best friend Sam were inseparable. Now, Charlie is left to find her own way while Marcus and Sam bask in the glories of their jock lives.
When heartbreak—and the worst guy you’ve ever met—threatens to take them both down, the Tuccis are forced to work together. With the help of a group of misfits and a zine that blows up everything fake about the awful people in their school, they might discover they have more in common than they thought.
The Summer I Turned Pretty meets Heartstopper in a story about twins, friendship, and a romance that will catch you by surprise.
Before Doomsday: October 2009
“Sam, I think that my neighbour might be a secret warlock.”
The two of us are lying on a carpet in my room, sharing a bag of sour gummies and a pile of dusty comics. Some pages are sticky, and others are covered in weird soda stains, but we’ve been exploring them like our own secret treasures.
“Why? He spends all his time working on those flowers.” Sam finally lifts his eyes from an old edition of Spiderman. All he wants to do these days is dig through his dad’s old comics and, don’t get me wrong, I love superheroes, but I’m itching to do something more exciting.
“Maybe he’s making magic potions.” I’ve been toying with this idea for a while and, as my best friend, Sam’s the only person I know who can help me dig into it. He thinks it over, sitting upright with his knees folded to his chest.
“Okay, Chaz, I guess we could investigate,” he tells me. I don’t know if he’s just saying that to make me happy. That’s the type of stuff Sam would do, but I’ll take what I can get.
“Let’s launch a mission!” I announce.
“I’ll grab the notebook!” he declares, already running for his backpack.
“And I’ll grab the x-ray binoculars!” I start roaming through the large wooden chest overflowing with toys.
My garden has this massive tree in the corner, an ideal portal for us to sneak into Mr. Bernstein’s backyard. We normally use it when we want to tease his big old Saint Bernard, but it will also help us with this particular mission.
“So, you know the drill: I’ll lift you up and you use my shoulders to climb up the trunk. I won’t let you fall!”
Sam’s nine, which is only one year older than me, but I’m pretty sure that he’s the smartest person I know: He always has a plan and his plans almost always work out. Almost.
I hold on to his shoulders and he gives me a smile before counting me up. It’s a specific type of Sam smile, one of my favourites: It’s a full-body smile, that takes over his eyes, his mouth, his cheeks. Even his ears perk up. It’s infectious.
Our mission starts out okay. I’m tiny and Sam lifts me up like I weigh nothing, which is just a little bit annoying. It’s a cold afternoon out today. Soon, Canadian winter will take over and we won’t be able to stay outside anymore so this plan has to work. The tree trunk is way too slimy, and a bit disgusting, but I push through. I have to drag myself up using Sam’s hand as a ladder and eventually I’m stepping on his face, grunting and complaining while my friend just laughs. Doug spots us right away, running over and jumping on the fence with his massive paws and his tongue peeking through the side of his doofus mouth. He’s still cute, even when he’s barking and letting Mr Bernstein know that we’re sneaking over the fence. I guess we’ll have to come up with a better plan next time.
Marcus arrives a few hours later to find the two of us sitting on my bed sketching Mr Bernstein’s garden. My brother is late because Mum took him to the dentist. No one is ever happy to go to the dentist, but he has this rotten egg look on his face. He hates being kept from doing precisely what he wants to do when he wants it.
“We think that we should find a way to spy on the neighbour through the fence,” I tell him after carefully detailing the situation.
“Yes, we can just make a hole in that far corner.” Sam picks up the explanation, pointing towards the garden and lifting the sketch for my brother to see.
“I’ve been thinking.” Marcus interrupts us without hesitation. “We need to create a rule. No, actually, I think that we need three rules.”
Sam and I give him a curious look, unsure of where he’s going with that idea, and then share a concerned glance.
We call ourselves The Society of the Great Explorers of the Wild and Beyond. It’s a fairly exclusive club; we are the only three full-time members. Sean, Sam’s brother, joins as a special guest from time to time, and so does Doug, but otherwise, it’s just us.
We had initially been called The Society of the Great Explorers of the Wild until Sam insisted on adding the Beyond part:
“I was watching on TV yesterday that they’ll soon be exploring Jupiter. We need to add beyond to the name so that one day we can go into space.”
We nicknamed it The Society, for shorts. We might have a long name, but what our club doesn’t typically have are rules. Let alone three rules at the same time.
“Yes, we’ll call it the Three Sacred Rules of the Great Wild,” Marcus explains.
“And Beyond,” Sam adds promptly.
“Each of us will create one of the Sacred Rules,” my brother says, ignoring Sam’s interruption.
“And everyone else in the club has to follow?” I ask.
“Yes, everyone has to follow. To the rest of eternity.”
“What if I make a rule now and want to change it when I’m fifty-seven?” It usually takes me about half an hour to pick a type of candy in the supermarket, I can’t imagine having to follow the same rules for the rest of my life.
“You can change it five times in your lifetime, Charlotte,” Marcus answers as if that’s the most obvious thing in the world, but I know he’s just making it up.
I can’t say that I understand the point of Marcus’s Sacred Rules. My brother has these ideas, and sometimes they are okay, but sometimes they are plain silly. I’ve already decided that this is one of the silly ones. He really annoys me when he acts like he’s the leader of our group and starts coming up with stuff. The Society is the most important thing in the world to me and Marcus is not our leader. Not if I have any say in it.
“I know my Sacred Rule already,” Marcus states before I can think of a way to reply. “From now onwards, no one in our society can go on an adventure and not invite me.”
“That isn’t fair. What are we supposed to do if you’re not here? What if there’s something urgent, like Mr Bernstein being a wizard?” I’m ready to fight him on this. There’s no way he can keep us from going on our missions if he’s not around. We might be together most of the time, but who does he think he is?
“Well, the rule is that, unless it’s a matter of life and death, no one can go on an adventure and not invite me.” He stands his ground.
“And my rule will be that if I start dancing at any point, everyone else has to dance as well,” I announce, challenging my brother with a deep stare like we’re about to start a battle.
Marcus hates dancing and provoking him is one of my favourite activities. I can see in the way his brows tighten that I hit a sore spot.
Sensing that we’re about to go on one of our explosive twin fights, Sam quickly adds his own rule to the mix, a safe option because he is always one to keep the balance between us.
“My rule will be that we all have to go for ice cream whenever I want to go for ice cream.”
And that’s where this whole story starts: three simple rules keeping our Society together.
We've all experienced the pain of growing apart from a friend or family member, and it's debatable which hurts more: not knowing why we grew apart, or knowing exactly why and not being able to do anything about it.
In Celina Belotti's Wild and Beyond, twins Marcus and Charlie are bonded at the hip alongside their mutual friend, Sam, throughout their childhood. When their parents get divorced, their world comes crashing down in a very ugly way. To make matters worse for Charlie, not only does her father move out and her brother becomes angry, distant, and judgmental, but she loses Sam "in the divorce," as well, though it's less clear to her why they grew apart.
The novel picks up about seven months later, after the three of them have settled into an elite school known for its athletics, particularly its swimming program. Marcus and Sam are both popular and the top swimmers on the team, and they seem to have life and their whole futures figured out. Meanwhile, Charlie still loves pizza, comics, "nerdy" things, and spending time with her two new girlfriends, Steph and Caro, and she regularly finds herself accidentally in trouble, simply because she's clumsy and awkward in social situations, making her the bane of her popular brother's existence.
But when one of the other top swimmers on the team sets Charlie up for public embarrassment, Marcus and Samuel reappear in her life in surprising ways, and she has to decide whether to ditch the hurt and let them back into her heart, and what she'll do to take care of them in return. It's a celebration of getting to know and being true to yourself, as well as early love, family, and friendship.
Not only is this one of my favorite books of 2025 so far, but this warm and feel-good story had me giggling, kicking my feet, and grinning like an idiot, and I could not read the story fast enough to see if what I wanted to happen most actually happened ("spoiler" alert: it did and in the BEST way).
If you're looking for a great comfort read to wrap up the busy months at the end of 2025 with some fun, cringe, laughs, and heart, look no further than Wild and Beyond by Celina Belotti. I cannot wait to get a physical copy of this book to add to myself and to HUG the next time I read it, which will be soon.