Keeping You A Secret, by Julie Anne Peters

Found this one while browsing the teen fiction section at the bookstore. You must know by now that I love my teen fiction and secretly harbor the desire to write a teen novel, even though I'm quite sure I'll never be able to.

In any case, this one was a very quick read, driven mostly by plot. Here's the plot - not really popular but not social outcast, protagonist girl whose name I've already forgotten notices the new girl in school is a lesbian. And proudly so as she wears many t-shirts mentioning this fact. Soon protagonist finds she can't handle her boyfriend and her friends and family, since she's now obsessed with new girl who shamelessly flirt with protagonist.

Eventually protagonist and new girl kiss and the light bulb goes off and protagonist is ready to scream everywhere that she's a lesbian and happily so but new girl doesn't want her to.

Twist! The out and proud asking the newbie protagonist to remain closeted! Eventually though, the cat gets out the bag and protagonist is met with some homophobia and fear, and her mom ends up kicking her out. Protagonist's life switches - her main concern now is no longer ennui and having to make a decision about college, but about survival.

Here is when the book goes weak - or stronger depending on how you look at it. After going through the motions of getting protagonist a new place to be, new work, new priorities, protagonist confronts new girl only to find out that the secrecy came from fear of having to share the protagonist. We don't deal with protagonist's anger from this, nor do we get a hint as to what'll happen after high school except maybe attending the local college everyone put down. The reader is left to make their own conclusions. It wasn't until now that I realized that Peters is careful not to say "gay is good" or bad for that matters. She speaks if it matter of factly, and does not make the homophobic characters in the book ugly or easily hateable. Quite clever indeed.

Not super amazing literature, but I'm sure looking forward to reading her other work.

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