The Secret Year

Reviewer: Kristen
Author: Jennifer Hubbard
Pages: 193
Format: Hardcover
My Rating: 5 out of 10

Summary (love you Goodreads): 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?

My Summary: I'm not sure how to accurately describe what I felt through this book. The five is deceiving - I thoroughly enjoyed it, but bare with as I try to explain what I thought. The first half of this book was stellar, it made me want to read more and it made me want to figure out every aspect of Julia and Colt's relationship. However, after that half way mark, it's like it lost it's magic. I almost felt like I was reading the book just to finish it. I thought that this had so so so much potential to be an amazing, heartfelt and emotional read and it just didn't reach what it could have been. Throughout the entire thing, I was waiting for Colt to feel something, and it became pretty obvious that it was just not going to happen. Colt was a little too one dimensional for this story, in my opinion. I think had Colt felt Julia's death, and experienced what I'm sure is a wide range of emotion to follow it, it would have made this book a solid ten - seriously. The second half of the book dragged. There were things that I didn't find necessary at all to the story, and were just thrown in as filler. I wish that the author would have focused more on the death of Julia and how much it had affected Colt. But she didn't. The book was good, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't great. It wasn't awe worthy. It wasn't what it could have been. 

Final Thoughts: Interesting read. Had so much potential. A bit disappointing.