Pop Culture Gender Bender

A friend has passed on a marketing E-Mail about "VC Andrews" latest posthumous novel Celeste:

Cleo Virginia Andrews was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, and initially made her living as a fashion illustrator and ad designer. She published her first novel, Flowers in the Attic, in 1979. More than 40 novels later, there are over 90 million copies of her works in print. Following her death, the Andrews family worked with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Virginia Andrews' stories and to create additional novels inspired by her storytelling genius.

In Celeste, the first book in the new Gemini series, Celeste and her identical twin brother, Noble, are as close as can be -- until a tragic accident takes Noble's life. It's a loss that pushes their mother, a woman obsessed with New Age superstitions, over the edge.... Desperate to keep her son "alive," Celeste's mother forces her to cut her hair, wear boys' clothes, and take on Noble's identity. [my emphasis]

At Amazon.com, Flowers in the Attic is described as a "dark, terrifying tale of passion and peril in the lives of four innoocent children". Celeste just strikes me as dim.