Keeping You a Secret

My paperback copy is falling apart, I've read it so many times. I remember first reading this book when I was in middle school, under the covers with a flashlight, absolutely terrified that my parents would catch me reading a book about lesbians. Since then, I've moved the book from its sorry home stuffed under my bed in my box of Beanie Babies, to a proper resting place on my bookshelf, next to other favorites.

I've given this book to two other girls. It's so raw. So beautiful. So real. I want to share it with the people most special to me.

Holland is, by all appearances, the perfect high school student. She is student council president, she's taking extra and advanced classes in pursuit of a college scholarship, she's on the swim team, and she has a popular and devoted boyfriend. Despite all this, she feels pressured by her mother, friends, and guidance counselor to pursue a particular kind of life that she's not sure she wants. Everything changes for her one day when CeCe transfers from another school. CeCe is confident, beautiful, and openly gay and Holland feels drawn to get to know her better. I thought that this book was a perfect representation of a novel for teens. It involves a touching and sweet representation of first love, but combines it with all of the show more uncertainty and awkwardness involved in figuring out who you are and how to be proud of it. Although the romance is between two girls, I don't think that its appeal would be limited to gay and lesbian teens. Everyone who's experienced the agony of growing up, wondering where you fit in, and wondering whether the person you like likes you back will be able to relate to this sensitive and honest book. It certainly spoke to me, and I'm in my thirties and straight. I can only imagine how vividly it would speak to a teen living through those difficult high school years. show less

After reading this book, the hype around it has me perplexed. I was expecting a poignant coming of age tale about sexual identity, but just hours after finishing the book the story and characters are fading from my memory. The writing is juvenile, like something that should have been kept in a journal, and the characters are so stock and one-dimensional that empathy for them is hard to muster. You have the popular girl, the fiercely out lesbian, and a laughable "Goth" stepsister who is used to associate the subculture erroneously with Columbine and disparage it completely.

No one in the story really develops or grows as a character besides the main character realizing she's a lesbian, but that's a given. You would expect more from a show more young adult novel so often compared to Nancy Garden's wonderful book Annie on My Mind, but perhaps such a comparison only arises because this subject matter is a glaring void in young adult fiction. This book does little to help that. show less

This is a very good book, with a very realistic protrayal of how hard it can be to come out, and the consequences. Probably my all-time favorite lesbian book, and no question my favorite teen coming-out story.

One of those books that was pretty groundbreaking in its time, one of a handful of titles that came up when I looked for stories for teens with a f/f relationship at its centre. And this is a solid story that holds up well enough in comparison with those that followed, but from this distance it no longer seems like anything particularly out of the ordinary: another romance, another coming out story, another account of homophobia both institutional and personal. I'd love to have read it a decade ago, or more.

[review written 2011]

I finished Keeping You A Secret last night. It was a really good book, since it happened to be one of the few romance novels that hooked me and kept me reading until 1:00 in the morning. The only one, actually. I loved Cece and Holland’s relationship; it was really sweet, and the way Holland’s mother reacted when she found out her daughter had a girlfriend was extreme and made me really feel for Holland.

The one thing I didn’t like so much is that Cece seemed to advertise the fact she was gay more than anyone I’ve ever seen in any book, movie, or TV show, along with the fact that she was in a mostly homophobic school, but once she started dating Holland, she seemed to retract into herself. It seemed like a show more jerk move to me. show less

I thought this was a well-written, emotionally suspenseful lesbian YA coming out novel. I had a little trouble empathizing with the main character because of her refusal to take control of her life earlier in the book--but I'm an adult and I think a lot of teens are like that and would relate to that. I especially liked the developing relationship between her and her young Goth stepsister. I have great respect for any author who writes lesbian YA novels because there are so few out there and there is such a need for quality GLBT fiction.