Keeping You A Secret has the sub title saying: Is it worth falling in love if you have to keep it a secret?
I have heard a lot of people raving about this book and it took me a year later to actually order this book online. I wanted to know the secret, why is it a secret until I opened the first page and got stuck to what I read, “ IMRU”.
I haven’t read much lesbian stories, but this isn’t just a normal love story, it’s a story based on two teenage girls and there teen world. Holland being the protagonist is the top student of the school, she is the Student President.
In some way she is the popular girl, she is the socialite of her peers, so many people look up to her.
What most don’t know she is fighting a battle within herself, and that battle only got discovered when a girl name Cece, came to her school.
As I quote online reviews of the book titled, Keeping You A Secret.
“Not just a gay love story, this book transcends barriers, allowing readers of all persuasions to level in its universal truths about self- knowledge, acceptance, pride, and the hardships of wrestling with the perceptions and comfort of others…”
“Keeping You A Secret will give you an updated look at the pressures, emotions and fears that today’s teenagers face while trying to make sense of their own identities. The love story is a joyful one, though marked by pain inflicted by the outside world….the main characters are appropriately complex and convincing, and even the most likable do some unlikable things. A lesbian love story, a self- discovery narrative and a tale of two struggles.”
I read “Keeping You A Secret” in one day, I couldn’t stop reading it because I felt like this was my life; this is what I am currently experiencing. Feeling that you never felt before comes to the surface. When I met my girl friend I was dating a boy, who I have been on and off with for two years. It was that feelings that would do flip flops and making flutters in the pit off your stomach.
When I came out trying to accept this new life, this new identity. It wasn’t easy, it was confusing. There are so many things you think about. I keep saying no I am not, I don’t like girls. That isn’t who I am supposed to be. I am supposed to follow the plan, meet a boy, and fall in love and have 2, 5 kids. Buy a house, marriage that is what is expected, that is what all our parents want doesn’t it.
I remember laying in my room, crying myself to sleep, I keep saying I want to be me, just let me be normal, yet I can’t be normal what is normal really.
I thought about everything as I was in that room. I was thinking about my world, my family, my parents, my friends, I was thinking about all this other people. How fitting my new lifestyle would be to them.
I didn’t want to lose them. Its has been a year since, I am still in the closet. Too afraid to be rejected.
It has been a painful struggle; the mere thought you are always weary on what is going around you. Would they know I am gay, will my friends not hug me when they find out, and will they act differently around me. It might have been one of the biggest challenges to finally admit to myself that I am a lesbian, but the worst part of being one was the fact I feel alone and lost most of the time.
How I envy Cece in this book, how openly and proud she is to be herself and not to pretend, to cover up almost everything.
Through all this turmoil of my identity, I met a girl. The first time we spoke on the phone I was falling for her. It was that instant attraction, like how can this person do this, where no boy has ever made me feel. Gosh I love her, I still do, we have been dating for a year and a month now and the thing that holds me back is the fact I can’t tell my friends or my family. I want to shout out and say I love her so much, this is my soul mate. I just want to be with her in every way, I hate living with this secret, its weighing me down, because I want to let my secret out.
Why don’t parents understand us? Why can’t they let us live our own lives?
My dad disowned me, but not because I am gay, he disowned me because I didn’t want to accept him in my life. My dad abandon me when I was a few months old, I was raised by my mother and my grandparents who both died, that was a tough period for me as I became a different person. I became rebellious, questioning myself.
He was in my life but not regularly, he was a drinker and would blame me on several accounts about his life being screwed up, about having me, that I was a mistake. The only man that should’ve taken care of me couldn’t do that. He rather blames me for faults he has done as a father. When it came to school and activities he wanted to take credit for everything, he even applied me to a college to study for something I didn’t want to excel in. It was his dream and not mine. In “Keeping You A Secret”, it’s Holland and her mother going through this, whereas her mother wants to live vicariously through her achievements and not what she wanted. At the end Holland’s mom lost a daughter because of being homophobic, but why don’t people see that we just want to be happy? We don’t stand in there paths, but it’s easy for them to do that to.
So many of us, still in the closet hiding because we fear that we will end up losing everything just like Holland, she lost everything she knew, but she was strong, she chose happiness. They say love trumps fear. What about us scares our parents, our friends and the world? Do we stand in there paths, keeping them from being happy. Do they even consider us at all?
When someone ask me once, how do I feel, what is it like to. I just said she’s the one I wished for.
I am going to take a text out of the book, “Keeping You A Secret, by Julie Anne Peters.”
“I love her, I love her so much. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. We are connected, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Its like she is inside of me.”
That is what my love is like for my girl friend, she is the air I breath and the arms that holds me when days are unkind to me, she is always their.
The love story between Holland & Cece, is one of the most inspirational yet heart wrenching and powerful relationship I have ever experienced, and I know many of us feel that way about our first true love, that girl that makes your heart goes tud, tud tud…it just want to explode as you try to calm yourself down, most times I get to stutter when I am in her presence that my face turns red and on fire.
Every page had me in this book, every feeling, every emotion and inner chats Holland had with herself, and how she would just want to be around Cece, no matter where are who is looking she didn’t care. She just wanted to be with her, but Keeping it a secret was the only thing that she couldn’t face, she wanted to shout it out on the rooftops the highest mountain I AM IN LOVE, AND PROUD TO BE ME.
As I come to the ending to this review, I would suggest you read the book, whether you are straight, gay, lesbian, and bicurious. Read it, if we could get a lot of straight young people to read this book it could change so many lives and people’s view on being gay.
It’s a sickness in this world how LGBT teens gets treated at schools all around the world. Not too long ago I college in Cape Town, South Africa, had this petition with a pink closet set in the foyer of the institution, it was like a riot going under where students of the GSA was injured and name bashing, the closet was also burnt down.
How can we change the world? How can we safe our fellow brothers and sisters from not taking their own lives, from keeping their true identity a secret, also how can I one day come out and tell the people in my world that I am a lesbian.
I am more me now since I accepted who I am, by reading this book it proofs to me I am not alone in this. That there are places to go and seek help. You aren’t alone; I now know I am not.
I want to thank the author Julie Anne Peters for her beautiful ability through writing, to bring such an amazing book like, “ Keeping You A Secret” out in our midst. She is an amazing writer and all her books is a must read.
I signed of with this. Losing your heart’s desire is tragic, but gaining your heart’s desire…it’s all you can hope for.
