The Secret Year
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Take Romeo and Juliet. Add The Outsiders. Mix thoroughly. Colt and Julia were secretly together for an entire year, and no one—not even Julia's boyfriend— knew. They had nothing in common, with Julia in her country club world on Black Mountain and Colt from down on the flats, but it never mattered. Until Julia dies in a car accident, and Colt learns the price of secrecy. He can't mourn Julia openly, and he's tormented that he might have played a part in her death. When Julia's journal ends up in his hands, Colt relives their year together at the same time that he's desperately trying to forget her. But how do you get over someone who was never yours in the first place?Publishers WeeklyJulia is from the rich crowd on Black Mountain while Colt lives “in a house with [his] 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. (Jan.)
