Keeping You a Secret

By: Julie Anne Peters

Narrated by: Rebekah Levin

Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

First time I saw her was in the mirror on my locker door. I'd kicked my swim gear onto the bottom shelf and was reaching to the top for my calc book when she opened her locker across the hall. She had a streaked blonde ponytail dangling out the back of her baseball cap.... We slammed our lockers in unison and turned. Her eyes met mine. "Hi," she said, smiling. My stomach fluttered. "Hi," I answered automatically. She was new. Had to be. I would've noticed her. She sauntered away, but not before I caught a glimpse of her T-shirt. It said: IMRU? Am I what?

©2003 Julie Anne Peters (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Enjoyable and rewarding and not just for YA

Oh wow this book gave me all the feels. Reminds us that a lot of lgbtq+ people had to go through a lot of pain and joy to get us to where we are now. This is a great love story between 2 young adult women, and at the same time an honest, no holds barred look at how family, friends and society react to gay people. It truly is amazing to think back on how far we have come. Wish I had had a book like this when I was a teen. It doesn't gloss over the difficulties and emotional minefields, but it truly encourages any young person to search their souls and be true to themselves no matter what. Well written and heartfelt. Highly recommended.

My heart is squealing!

I absolutely loved this book! It made my heart pound at every moment of suspense! It drew me in as I listened on and on non stop. I actually finished it in one day! I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is having a hard time with finding themselves or dealing with life problems like abuse or rejection, or anything else really! Just read it or listen to it! Its so intreging! The love that they shared makes me want to lovesomone the same.

Quick listen

I listened to this all day at work and it was easy to listen to. Interesting story.

Great coming out youth story!

I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. It made me(in my middle age) remember how it felt coming out at around that age. It had been so long, I forgot some of the great feelings and some of the bad! It's a great book to realize, whew, things really do get better! loved it!

Overall okay

It was a good book, but I don’t like how to throw around the word “love” and they should have given a ~some time later~ instead of ending it the way the did

Narration needs work

The book itself was ok but pretty hard to get into because the narration was bad. The storyline was pretty good for a young girl coming to terms with her life but I was barely able to get through it due to the horrible voices.

Good look back vs now

This book is clearly not new and honestly it hasn’t stood up to the passing of time just because being LGBT is so much easier now. It is a good look back though for anyone that is struggling now to see how much different it was just 20 years ago.

A story of how not to love

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Yes for the perspective of what love isn't. The relationship between the two girls is abusive. Cece is abusive of Holland and when you love someone you just aren't. As an attorney who has helped many women in such relationships with men the fact the other person is a woman doesn't change the situation.

Would you recommend Keeping You a Secret to your friends? Why or why not?

Obsessive love is not love. It is possession and selfish. As an example of this yes.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Yes.

Did Keeping You a Secret inspire you to do anything?

Yes to write this review. I had not written any before reading this book. It took me six months to get around to it and I even wrote other reviews prior to this one but reading this boom left me with a desire to say what happened in the book was not true love.

Struggled with the narrator but a good story

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

The story itself is a pretty good one. It's not stellar or complicated and the characters aren't totally developed but it is a good LGBT young adult book (and with the absence of any descriptive sex scenes beyond kissing and some suggestive hand placements, it isn't necessarily a "mature young adult" novel) and there aren't tons of really good ones available, especially with a lesbian protagonist.

The story got a little narrow at times--like the setting and side stories that the author had spent lots of time in early chapters developing suddenly disappeared and it felt a bit out of place almost. I kept wondering about the things that were created early in the book but there were little to no mentions of them.

The story of realizing one's sexuality and then coming out read as having moments of true authenticity and moments of, "well, that probably wouldn't have happened" or "wouldn't someone notice this and asked or done something?". The emotions were often on the mark and the potential for total disaster was all too true, but other aspects were just felt a little off.

I really wished the book had been a bit longer and had a bit more meat. Some better character development for the supporting cast, maybe a little more into potential teacher relationship (it bugged me that a student like Holland could suddenly have grades plummet without at least one teacher checking in... and a few other strange moments that just didn't seem plausible) and even a little bit more to the ending. Although I have hankering for some resolution, this is not a book that has me desperate for finding out more or wanting a sequel or sad that the story is over.

It was good, but not so amazing that I'm hooked to the story or the characters (though this may be in part due to the narration that I struggled to deal with). In the immediate aftermath, I am curious, but I suspect that by tomorrow I will have moved on. But, that isn't to say the book isn't worth the read... it tells an important story and is better than some on this topic.

I'd probably recommend the book over the audio book, but that's just me.

How could the performance have been better?

I really struggled with handling the narrator's voices that she used. I nearly quit listening a few times because of how she read the story but I was invested enough in the story (and my local library didn't have the book copy that I could just go and read) that I wanted to know what happened.

You don't really hear it on the audio sample, but she voices one of the characters with this obnoxiously annoying nasely voice, there is valley-girl twang in there at times, and the male voices were over-exaggerated and just pleasant to me.

I'm sure to some people it was lovely, for me the voices really detracted from the book and it gave me a really hard time.

Was Keeping You a Secret worth the listening time?

For the story, yes, absolutely. It was a pretty quick listen (finished in a few days because I got invested in the story and wanted to know what would happen).

For the narration, no! It felt like forever until I could finally stop listening (i finished in a few days because I wanted to be done listening to the narration asap).

Good coming out story for teenagers

Story was good, it touched on the real life issues of coming out in high school, and the pain that accompanies it.
The romance was weak, no passion or build up, then once the girls kissed, let went from attraction straight to love.
So it was a poor romance story, but a great story about the issues with finding out your gay..... in high school