Blog Tour: Tell Me A Secret by Holly Cupala

Check out Holly Cupala's blog for tour info including a chance to win prizes! Comments here count towards weekly prize drawings!

Rating: 4/5 Stars

Genre: Contemporary

Release Date: 6/22/2010

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About the Book: Miranda has spent the past five years living in the shadow her sister, who died and left Miranda as part of a family that is falling apart. Her mother has always told her not to end up like her sister, but when two pink lines appear on a pregnancy test, Miranda's perfect daughter act is up. Her boyfriend has left her for her best friend, who might not really be a friend at all, she ditched her former best friend and now she won't talk to her, and all Miranda wants is her sister to help her through it all. Miranda searches for more about her sister's past and in the process finds out secrets about her sister-and discovers some she was hiding from herself.

GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: I wasn't sure what to think of Tell Me a Secret. It combines two big topics familiar to "issue novels"-dead sibling lit and teen pregnancy lit-and how exactly were these two going to work together? At first I wasn't sure where the book was taking me-the first couple of chapters left me feeling lost and I was sure if it was past or present, but I soon got the feel of the book which alternates between flashbacks and present day to tell the whole story.

My heart broke for Miranda. She's so lost and lonely and some of the choices she makes-namely her friendships-are so horrible to read about. You know she's traveling down a bad path, but she doesn't and it's hard to read about it. You want to reach in and warn her and hug her and help her see the truth. And her mother is one of the worst mother's I have read about-she's awful which made scenes with her hard to get through. It did give the book an interesting twist, with the father as the submissive one and the mother the stronger parent who is feared.

There were moments of this book that were so emotionally heartbreaking that I had to pull myself away for a moment. I had to take a few days after I read it to full digest the whole book too. It's an emotional read but also not so emotional that it's hard to read. There's hope and that's what I love about YA-even when life is at it's bleakest, there's hope and that shows through in YA novels more than any adult book I've read.

I thought the story was going to be predictable and I thought I knew where things were going. And while I had some things figured out, other's I didn't, so I was glad that the author could keep me guessing. I did feel like I would have liked to know more about Xanda, Miranda's sister, but I guess we got what we needed to know about her and this to be Miranda's story. I also had a hard time forgiving some of the characters, but was glad to see that things were trying to work out. I did like that the ending is not a nice tidy little bow-this is realistic fiction and there are consequences to Miranda's choices. It does end happier than it could have, but I didn't think it felt like an out of place fairy tale ending.

I plan to give Tell Me A Secret to my teens who ask for realistic fiction-I think the story will be something they'll be excited about. I would love to pair it with The Sky Is Everywhere for a book discussion or lit circle. It'd be interesting to look at how the two main characters handle grief.

Full Discloure: reviewed from ARC sent by publisher for review as part of blog tour

TELL ME A SECRET Tour Contest Entry Rules

• Leave comments at any official tour stop or Holly’s blog (www.hollycupala.com) throughout the tour! Each comment counts as an entry (one comment per post*).
• Tweet about the tour (@hollycupala) and tell us what you think!
• Post about the tour, then leave a comment at my blog.
• Prizes available to US/Canadian shipping addresses only.


Each week's prizes will be announced at Holly’s blog the following week - check back to see if you've won and contact us at the contact link at www.hollycupala.com (we will hold prizes for 2 weeks).

* Comment calculation: for instance, during week one you can comment once at every official stop, and once on any of my posts for that week to be entered in that week's prize drawing.