My feelings about twists are pretty wrapped up in how the information is withheld or revealed. It needs to make sense with the POV.
ie, there's a first in the series book from the late 80s 90s, I think, that keeps referring to the female protag's partner Sam (or something like that) -- i don't think it uses partner but avoids saying boyfriend/girlfriend or pronouns -- this character appears in scenes and has conversations with the protag (who is also the POV character) and at the end SURPRISE SAM IS A LADY, YOUR HEROINE IS GAY!) And i absolutely fully sympathize with the context that a mystery author in the era would have had to fight to get that in/would be challenging ppl who may never have read about a lesbian relationship, but storytelling + pov wise it makes no sense.
As opposed to a couple examples i can think of where the author gave the 1st person character a gender neutral name and didn't dwell on gender/ doesn't have it come up in the story, but that's not really a twist.
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ie, there's a first in the series book from the late 80s 90s, I think, that keeps referring to the female protag's partner Sam (or something like that) -- i don't think it uses partner but avoids saying boyfriend/girlfriend or pronouns -- this character appears in scenes and has conversations with the protag (who is also the POV character) and at the end SURPRISE SAM IS A LADY, YOUR HEROINE IS GAY!) And i absolutely fully sympathize with the context that a mystery author in the era would have had to fight to get that in/would be challenging ppl who may never have read about a lesbian relationship, but storytelling + pov wise it makes no sense.
As opposed to a couple examples i can think of where the author gave the 1st person character a gender neutral name and didn't dwell on gender/ doesn't have it come up in the story, but that's not really a twist.