The Secret Year - Jennifer R Hubbard

Summary: (from back of ARC)

How do you get over someone who was never yours to begin with?

More than anything else in the notebook, I had wanted to read this entry, the last one. I wanted to know what Julia thought about the last time we saw each other. I wanted to know if it ate away at her the way it did at me.

If she'd broken up with Austin, would she still have needed me? If she could see me or talk to me anything, instead of squeezing our whole relationship into Friday nights and unsigned notes and secret phone calls, would she still have wanted me?

And would I have wanted her?

Info:
Release Date: January 7, 2010
Publisher: Viking Juvenile
Pages: 192
Buy: amazon / indiebound / book depository

Grade:
Originality: 19/20
Characters: 15/15
Writing: 10/10
Voice: 10/10
Ending: 10/10
Entertainment: 10/10
Cover: 10/10
Recommendation: 10/10

Total: 99/100 = A+

Review:

If The Secret Year is any indication of how 2010 debut novels are going to be, then WOW. This book was amazing. I've been in quite the reading slump lately, yet I devoured The Secret Year when I was reading it.

I've seen this book being related to another amazing book, The Outsiders. I can kind of see that -- one of the main things in The Outsiders is the divide of the town because of money. This is one of the main themes in The Secret Year, too. There is the really rich part of town, and the really poor part of town, and these two don't associate with each other - they HATE each other.

I really liked the characters in this book, namely Colt - the main character. There aren't many characters in this book, but that's okay. You're really just focused on Colt and how he's getting over Julia. It was really nice to see a guy as the main character of a book. Colt had faults, yes, but that just makes this book that much more realistic.

This book is definitely character driven, and it has a really dark, raw feel to it - I loved this. It was easy to relate to the characters, they are all really down to Earth and just... REAL.

Overall, The Secret Year is an amazing book to start out 2010 with. It's released January 7th - this Thursday! - and you should definitely check it out. (:

Book received from Penguin for review.