SECRETS: The Truth Will Out – A Review

Perfect is the enemy of the good, as the saying goes, but not to Elise Thames. She has the perfect looks, the perfect social circle, and the perfect boyfriend in Finn Burke, one of the most popular football players in Jefferson High. So what if her mom is a demanding, shrill shrew who is not home from her shift most mornings? That just means Elise can sneak out to join the queen bee of the high school, Nikki Thacker, at the other girl’s wild parties without getting caught. She and Nikki have been best friends since childhood, anyway, and no one ever says no to Nikki – not without regretting it fast.

But the morning after one of Nikki’s parties, just the smell of eggs cooking sends Elise scrambling for the bathroom to throw up. An offhanded comment makes Elise panic and try to remember the last time she had her period. It has never been irregular before but now she realizes she missed it.

Trying not to panic further, Elise digs out an old test in the bathroom at her house. It shows up negative but her mom finds it and warns that she would kill Elise if her daughter was pregnant. Unable to avoid the consideration that she might yet be pregnant, the girl buys a second, newer test...and it shows positive.

In a panic, Elise tells Finn, who accuses her of cheating on him and dumps her. With no one else to turn to, Elise runs to the only family member who cares for her: her maternal grandmother, who lives in a swanky retirement home that doubles as psychiatric ward in Chicago. At the same time Elise does this, she decides to “undo” her mistake. She finds out where the nearest abortion clinic is and plans to go there after spending the night with her grandmother in the elderly woman’s golden cage.

But her grandmother has a secret of her own, one she decides to tacitly share with her granddaughter. She gifts Elise a charm bracelet which she has never parted with before. When Elise goes to the abortion clinic, she starts hearing voices and seeing visions that frighten her, including witnessing an abortion worker’s rape and subsequent abortion. Running back home and back to the school, the bracelet allows Elise to hear other students’ less-than flattering thoughts about her.

With her belief in how others see her shattered by hearing their thoughts about her in real time, Elise is left shaking and cold. Not long afterward she is literally kicked to the curb by her mother for one too many lies. But what can a sixteen-year-old with no money, no job prospects, and no roof over her head do? Why can’t everything just go back to normal…?

Verity Lucia returns with this sequel to her novel HIDDEN: Don’t Fear the Unseen. Focusing on popular girl Nikki Thacker’s best friend Elise, Lucia explores what it means to commit to your boyfriend out of wedlock and suddenly find yourself a mother as a teen. The book is delicate in its descriptions but pulls no punches about the challenges and realities of teen motherhood. With compassion and understanding the author shows Elise navigating a changed world where everyone seems to abandon her. This is after they have proven by the thoughts she overhears, or their actions, that they have either been lying to her for years or never valued her in the first place.

One of the interesting points made in the novel is that Elise and her boyfriend Finn “both made that choice together.” When others insinuate it was Finn’s fault that she became pregnant, Elise bristles even if she does not answer the statement. Considering Finn was told to deny the child was his and accuse her of cheating on him with someone else, this reaction says a lot in favor of Elise. The pressures on Finn to be a perfect student so he can get into college and how his life is altered by becoming a teen father are also explored.

As the title says, secrets are the theme of this YA novel, as most secrets are kept with lies. Small lies become bigger, forcing more and more desperate actions. Elise’s unwillingness to admit to her pregnancy or her telling the wrong people about it cost her, while the various pressures in her life push her in unhealthy and unsafe directions more than once. But the Hound of Heaven never gives up on her. While Elise may be nominally Christian and not a baptized Catholic, she soon learns that Christ does not abandon any of His children – including the one she carries.

SECRETS: The Truth Will Out includes a list of resources for teens with unplanned pregnancies to utilize in the very back of the novel. It is not a book for the faint of heart nor one to be given as a lesson, but one meant to help teens who are pregnant, who know someone who is pregnant, or who may be considering actions that will lead to pregnancy understand that life does not have to end when you have a new human being growing inside you. Life may take more effort, it may involve more cost, but it is not over. In fact it is – somewhat literally – just beginning.

Libraries will order SECRETS: The Truth Will Out, too, so if you want this book on the shelf where teens can find it, talk to your local library about their request policy. In today’s world of secrets and lies, a book that puts the truth out where anyone can find it is an important one indeed. Verity Lucia is doing yeoman’s work to reach the teens that would otherwise be swept up and away into various evils. Let’s help her out any way we can!