Book Review – The Secrets We Keep by Trisha Leaver

While I do not have a sister, the idea of giving up one’s whole existence for the sake of another is both poignant and painful to absorb. In The Secrets We Keep by Trisha Leaver, readers travel through Ella Lawton’s life – that of a semi-outcast whose popular twin sister, Maddy, has cast her aside for the sake of the “in-crowd.” It is a shunning that Ella finds horrifically painful, but she deals with it by shutting out many people, her parents included.

The one friend she has is Josh, a fellow art-addict and equal misfit.

All Ella wants is to leave the cliques of high school life behind with Josh at her side and reinvent herself at Rhode Island School of Design. That’s their plan . . . until one night on an ice-covered road leaves Maddy dead and Ella devastated. Mistaken for Maddy, Ella takes everyone’s relief and joy that MADDY is alive as a sign that maybe she should leave herself dead, and take over Maddy’s flawless life. She believes everyone will be better off if she buries herself and her dreams, but she quickly learns that Maddy’s perfect life was built on lies and insecurities . . . and staying dead may not be possible for long, especially when Josh begins to suspect that his beloved Ella is not really six-feet-under after all.

Great story with fabulous characters who walk off the page. A sister story unlike anything I have ever read and guaranteed to grab onto teen readers and keep them turning pages late into the night! My 13-year-old daughter would devour this!