Keeping You a Secret by Julie
Anne Peters
Series: Standalone
Published
by Little, Brown
and Company on May 4 2005
Genres: contemporary, young adult, LGBT
Pages: 250
Rating: 4/5
With a steady boyfriend, the position of Student Council President, and a chance to go to an Ivy League college, high school life is just fine for Holland Jaeger. At least it seems to be. But when Cece Goddard comes to school, everything changes. Cece and Holland have undeniable feelings for each other, but how will others react to their developing relationship? This moving love story between two girls is a worthy successor to Nancy Garden's classic young adult coming out novel, Annie on My Mind. With her characteristic humor and breezy style, Peters has captured the compelling emotions of young love.
As you may or may not
have noticed, I read pretty much any and every lesbian YA novel that comes my
way. Because I can. This one has been on my radar for years – I mean, Julie
Anne Peters is a mainstay of queer YA contemporaries, and this is one of her
more popular books. Possibly the most popular? I’m not too sure. Regardless,
there is a distinctly familiar tone to this book that leads me to think that I
may have read it in high school and completely forgotten doing so. It happens.
Keeping You a Secret
isn’t the most creative book in the world, but it is an important book
nonetheless. Given that it was published nearly ten years ago, I’m pretty
impressed with it. I can’t say that I’d be pleased to read something with this
plot if it were a new release, but I’ll get into that in a moment.
The main draw of Keeping
You a Secret, in my opinion, is the relationships between its characters. To
start out, we have the main character, Holland. Holland has a lot of very
complicated relationships – her boyfriend, who feels more like an obligation
than a pleasure; her friends, who are sometimes judgemental and with whom
Holland doesn’t feel comfortable sharing her true feelings; her mom, newly
remarried and suddenly preoccupied with a ‘new’ family; her stepsister, a Goth
whom Holland just can’t relate to (not that she really wants to). What I really
loved about this book was that it went beyond the conventions of a simple love
story – while the blooming love between Holland and Cece takes center stage,
there is much more going on in Holland’s life. She is constantly navigating how
to manage her relationships without throwing things off balance.
Holland’s
relationship with her mother is one of the best and hardest parts of this book.
After a lot of sneaking around with Cece and trying to keep the lid on their
relationship, Holland’s mother finds out in a not-so-ideal way. Her reaction is
absolutely terrifying. Holland’s mom has the reaction that every gay child has
nightmares about. It isn’t unexpected – upon meeting Cece for the first time,
she demands that Holland stop being friends with her. Her homophobia isn’t well
hidden, but it is still shocking to see how she treats her own daughter. Just
thinking about it makes my eyes well up. I don’t want to give away the details,
but Holland’s life is plunged into a low that most people cannot relate to. The
sad truth is that Holland’s circumstances are all too common for LGBT youth
with bigoted parents.
The issue I have with
Keeping You a Secret is that it is very middle-of-the-road. I’ve read books
worse, but I’ve also read many books that are much, much better. The writing is
mediocre and simplistic, which is good for readability but bad for memorability.
I was never completely immersed in the story, mostly due to the fact that it
was very formulaic and clichéd in many ways. I also found Cece to be a rather
two-dimensional love interest, which was off-putting and disappointing. As I
said before, I think that this is a very important book, but there are better
LGBT YA books out there (Malinda Lo’s books are marvellous, The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth is wonderful, I’ve heard very great things
about Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour, even Peters’ newest release Lies My Girlfriend Told Me sounds more innovative).
If like me you’re
someone who devours every book about queer teenage girls that you can find,
this one is worth reading, but if you’re less passionate about the subject,
this might be one to skip.
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