Jennifer R. Hubbard is another debut novelist from the class of 2K10. Her YA romance novel, The Secret Year, has just been released by Viking (Penguin). I asked her to give us a summary of the book and talk about what inspired her to write it.
Seventeen-year-old Colt has been sneaking out at night to meet Julia, a girl from an upper-class neighborhood very unlike his own. They’ve never told anyone else about their relationship: not their family or friends, and especially not Julia’s boyfriend. When Julia dies suddenly, Colt tries to cope with her death while pretending that he never even knew her. Then he finds a journal Julia left behind. Colt is not prepared for the truths he discovers about their intense relationship, nor to pay the price for the secrets he’s kept.
“What inspired you to write this book?”
I had a mental image of a boy who had been involved in a secret relationship, and whose girlfriend had just died, leaving behind a notebook. I wrote the book to find out what was in the notebook and why the relationship had had to be secret.
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