Book Review: Secrets

Secrets by Jacqueline Wilson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m coming to the end of my two week holiday (I still haven’t managed to relax yet and I return to work on Monday), and I have managed to read several books. Three, in fact. And that is excellent for me.

This morning I woke up quite early. I wasn’t ready to face the day, but I couldn’t return to sleep so I decided to make myself a cup of tea and sit in bed and read.

Secrets by Jacqueline Wilson is the current book I’m reading. I had already reached the half way point last night and I sat in bed until 9.30 this morning (which is uncharacteristic for me) and finished the book.

Here’s the blurb:

Treasure and India are two girls with very different backgrounds. As an unlikely, but deep, friendship develops between them, they keep diaries, inspired by their heroine, Anne Frank. Soon the pages are filled with the details of their most serious secret ever.

In my opinion, the story started out a little slow. I like to get straight into the action, but the author took several chapters to set up the two characters – Treasure and India. The book is written in diary form – a chapter from each girl’s viewpoint. When the story finally started to unfold, I was completely hooked and the little things that I thought were just page fillers suddenly became important.

The book covers a number of “real” issues too, ie broken families, broken promises, aggressiveness, friendship and more. All these issues are handled well, and they certainly endear the characters to the reader. I was able to relate to the girls and their individual problems. I wanted to see how things would turn out, and to do that, I had to keep reading.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is woven into the story. I won’t tell you how, because I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone wishing to read Secrets, but I did think this was well done too.

Recommendation: Yes, go out and get this book. You’ll enjoy it.