Book Review: The Secret Year by Jennifer R. Hubbard

Summary: For the past year Colt and Julia have been secretly together. No one knew. Julia was rich and popular while Colt was just Colt, living on the flats. When Julia dies in a car accident, Colt torn apart but he can't tell anyone how he feels. Why would he be upset when to everyone else, they didn't even know each other? When Julia's brother gives Colt her old notebook full of letters to him, Colt has to relive the time they shared together. Colt has to get over the girl who wasn't even supposed to be his in the first place. 


Review: After reading so many light-hearted books, I kind of forgot how serious books could get. The Secret Year is definitely one of those serious books. Colt had been hooking up with Julia for an entire year until she died and he couldn't even tell anyone he was upset. If one of my friends had died, even if I only knew them for a year, I'd be an absolute mess. I liked Jennifer Hubbard's writing style and how Colt would read a passage from Julia's notebook and then it would flash back to that night when they were together. It never got boring and those flashbacks really brought out the relationship that Colt and Julia shared. Yes it was mostly physical, but they really fell for each other. My favorite character of the book though was Kirby. She never took any crap from anyone and she did what she wanted, not what other people expected her to do. I liked how she became an important part of Colt's life while he tried to forget about Julia. What I really didn't like was how this book ended. I'm not going to give anything away, but Colt dealt with his Julia drama, but he didn't really deal with any of his other drama. I was really upset about how it just ended in a sort of cliche way instead of in a different way. Other than the ending, I flew through the rest of the story because it was really interesting and I could feel the emotions Colt was going through. The Secret Year is a serious book, but it was still a really good read.