SECRET ME

A Prince Edward Island teen chooses between popularity and coming out of the closet.

Tage doesn’t like her popular lifestyle or her friends. She doesn’t like her boyfriend, Ben, much either. If she fails to perform as expected, however, she risks letting deeply queerphobic Hayley, leader of their clique, discover that Tage herself is queer. So, Tage is complicit in publicly bullying her secret crush Wren and her fellow cheerleader Rain for being nonbinary. When the pressure gets too much, Tage has an explosive breakup with Ben. A snowstorm leads to her unexpectedly spending the night with Wren—and revealing her feelings to them. A secret relationship ensues between the two, but the cruel actions Tage is forced to commit to fit in socially threaten to drive them apart. The theme of a closeted queer character engaging in oppressive behavior to hide their sexuality has been explored before, and it is not well executed here. Tage engages in bullying her fellow students both on Hayley’s orders and her own initiative; while she does experience a vast amount of guilt, her wishy-washy attitude to owning up to her mistakes and committing to change means her final attempt to do better—which comes very late in the story—may only lead to readers wondering if she will backslide once more. Main characters are cued White.

An unremarkable novel for reluctant readers.