Title: Keeping You a Secret Author: Julie Anne Peters
ISBN: 978-0-316-00985-0
Recommended Grade Level of Reader: 9th and Up
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Media Type: Book
Copyright: 2003
Genre: Fiction
Reader's Annotation: Girl loves boy. Girl loves girl. No one ever said that dating would be this complicated.
Plot Summary: Holland, the female protagonist in Keeping You a Secret by Julie Ann Peters, is by all accounts a heterosexual teenager. She even has a steady boyfriend. That is until CeCe, a new student at Holland’s school, allows Holland to experience thoughts and emotions never before felt. Holland begins a secret relationship with CeCe that eventually reveals itself. She becomes the recipient of other peoples’ narrow-mindedness and bigotry and is forced to choose between her family and CeCe.
Evaluation: (C) While Julie Ann Peters presents realistic characters in Holland and Cece, the plot line was slightly unrealistic. I believed Holland's inner conflict between maintaining her simple, mainstream lifestyle and her attraction and desires for the new girl. Her choice for the latter was also convincing as was her family's reaction to it; however, the realism in the sequence of events subsequent to leaving her family's house bordered on outrageous for a young girl Holland's age. While many real life teens may make the choice that Holland did, Julie Ann Peter's portrayal was not convincing.
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