The Secret Year
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4.4 • 20 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
For fans of Laura Nowlin's If Only I Had Told Her, a deeply romantic novel that explores the raw emotions of love, pain and grief.
Colt and Julia were secretly together for a year . . . and nobody knew. Not that anyone would suspect—Colt and Julia were from two different crowds: Julia in her country club world on Black Mountain and Colt down in the flats. They’d meet in secret by the river—their chemistry electric, exhilarating, intoxicating.
Until everything came to a screaming halt.
Julia is pronounced dead from a car accident, and suddenly Colt’s memories come flooding back. One about the fight they’d had on their last night together . . .
When Julia’s diary falls into Colt’s hands, it gives him the chance to learn all her hidden thoughts, private details she refused to share with him. It might even answer his questions about what happened on the night she died.
Julia’s words have the power to mend Colt’s broken heart, or they can reveal a web of secrets that threaten to shatter his entire world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Julia is from the rich crowd on Black Mountain while Colt lives "in a house with father's junked cars all over the yard." For a year they meet secretly for sex and intense conversation by the river between them, until Julia is killed in a car crash. Colt navigates his grief privately until Julia's brother, Michael, gives him Julia's journal. Debut author Hubbard effectively intermingles Colt's memories, Julia's secret letters to Colt, and the present, as Colt falls into a relationship with a friend, deals with the aftermath of his brother's coming out, and falls in love again. The journal, as well as hints of the fight Colt and Julia had their last night together, create hooks that draw in the reader, but it's the smooth pacing and well-drawn characters that elevate the book. The community's class animosity is realistic and stark but, as in life, is never fully resolved. When Michael gives Julia's poems about Colt to the student literary journal, Colt and Julia's secret is finally revealed. It's a moving portrait of grief and the sharp societal lines that divide. Ages 12 up.
Customer Reviews
So sad :(
I loved this book it's just so sad idk how I would go through what Colten did. Good book tho