Leah Duplessis
                                                        The Secret Year                              
         "The Secret Year",  by Jennifer R Hubbard, is a romance novel about a boy named Colt who lost the love of his life. He, a rather poor young man and Julia, a wealthy and beautiful older girl had been secretly hooking up every Friday night for over a year until she was enexpectedly killed in a fatal car accident. The book revolves around Colt's ways of trying to cope with this heartbreak, and faces many personal obstacles when he cannot express how he is feeling due to the fact that she had a boyfriend throughout their relationship, and not a soul knows about their Secret. I think that the book is really unique in the sense that we never are introduced to Julia while she is alive, but as the book continues on you feel like who know her due to Colt's description of her, and his memories which he reminisces on. Eventually Julia's brother comes across a note book which she had written to Colt and gives it to him, and obviously discovers their secret, but leaves it to remain unknown. Colt reads this journal every night and obsesses over it. A lot of the language used in this journal is risky and may make you uncomfortable as a reader. She is very straight forward about sexual scenes. A lot of the book consists of corny concepts that I feel are very unrealistic, and kind of uncomfortable to read. Over all I feel as though the story of the novel is very well thought out, but the details are a bit strange and over analyzed. Overall I would not recommend the book unless you are heavily into romance.