4 wheels on a rusty truck * 2 gray eyes * 1 secret that could ruin everything…All Hannah wanted was a summer break from being “perfect Hannah Cohen” and a chance to forget about the devastating family secret that could ruin her seemingly perfect life. So when she takes off for her eccentric aunt’s house in the mountains of North Carolina and everyone makes one big (wrong) assumption about her past, Hannah figures that it’s easier to live a lie than have to face the truth.
She never expected to make any real friends, like the hilarious and spontaneous Kate and Ashton, who drag her to late night bonfires and ice cream marathons. And she especially never counted on meeting Jude Westmore, the brooding bad boy next door with gray eyes and permanent oil smudges on his fingers, or that he would ever take an interest in her.
Between moonlit movie nights in the bed of Jude’s truck and nearly romantic Ferris Wheel rides, Hannah’s old life seems further away than ever, but can she keep her secret, or is the truth worth the risk of losing everything, including Jude?
THE SECRETS BETWEEN YOU AND ME is a companion novel to THE BOYFRIEND THIEF and the second book in Shana Norris’s Stolen Kiss series.
My review: This book very much exceeded my expectations. It was a quick read for me, but I did enjoy it. I appreciated the “coming out of your comfort zone” aspect of the plot. I feel that it’s far too common for YA characters to either be perfect, or super troubled. But this character development of Hannah coming out of her shell was fairly unique to me, and made the story much more personal. I felt that the writing was fairly strong, and interesting through out. Overall, I was vey impressed! The synopsis did not do it justice.
I was asked by Paper Lantern Lit. To do a post about a theme I enjoyed in the book. Here it is!
My favorite aspect of The Secrets Between You and Me was the friendship that Hannah and Jude had. They were genuinely good friends. I think it’s far too common for YA couples to go straight from acquaintances, to ‘true love.’ Here there was a real bond, they were actually friends, before anything else. They enjoyed each other’s company, and actually got to know each other before any romantic relations even started to form. Does that make sense? Who are we kidding: YA readers love a good romance. But my one biggest YA pet peeve is when authors a throw in a love interest super fast, just so to get to a make out scene. Despite being a contemporary romance YA novel – the most common genre to have such relationships – Jude and Hannah had a real friendship, before all else, in my opinion, at least. Friendship is pretty important. I mean, think about it! Without a solid platonic friendship, most romantic relations will crumble. Most of my favorite YA couples are ones who started out as good friends, and then developed their relation ship from there.
Having a girl and boy be friends in YA is also pretty uncommon. So I really appreciated that aspect of the book. Seriously, the scenes where Jude and Hannah were just just hanging out were literally my favorite part of the book. SO CUTE. I just wanted to hug the both of them. They just loved being around each other, and had a blast hanging out. Who wouldn’t want that kind of friendship, am I right?
Overall, a very sweet read. Jude and Hannah had a pure, adorable friendship, that really made me want to read more. I really appreciated that the two were genuinely good friends before all else. It gave the book a much more relatable ‘feel’.