Keeping Secrets: Two Books in One: Saving Zoe and Faking 19

by Alyson Noel

A beautifully repackaged two-in-one reissue of Saving Zoe and Faking 19 by #1 New York Times bestselling author Alyson Noël

Secret wishes, hidden heartaches and painful truths. Everyone has them—but some secrets are harder to hide.

We usually tell our best friends everything. Our crushes, our embarrassing stories, our secrets—but sometimes there are truths so deep and dark that we can't tell anyone. Not our parents, not our sisters…not even our best friends. Some secrets are so unspeakable that we keep them safely locked away so no one will ever discover them.

But what happens when they become more than you can handle alone? In these two magnificent novels, two girls can't tell anyone about the terrible burdens they carry. But as they're about to learn, it's not our secrets that matter most—but those who still love us once they learn the truth.

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Chick Lit, Drama, Young Adult Romance

448 pages, Paperback

First published June 5, 2012

About the author

*Note to readers: I'm slowly adding to the long list of books I've read, books I'm reading, and books I want to read. I only add books I loved, hence all my ratings are 5 stars.


Alyson Noël is the #1 NYT best-selling author of many award-winning and critically acclaimed novels for readers of all ages.

With 9 NYT bestsellers and millions of copies in print, her books have been translated into 36 languages, and have topped the NYT, USA Today, LA Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Wall Street Journal, NCIBA, and Walmart Bestsellers lists, as well as several international bestsellers lists.

She is best known for THE IMMORTALS series, THE RILEY BLOOM series, and SAVING ZOË, which was adapted into a movie now available on Amazon.

Upcoming works include:

RULING DESTINY- book 2, in the STEALING INFINITY series

STEALING INFINITY- Optioned for TV by Valhalla Entertainment - available now!

FIELD GUIDE TO THE SUPERNATURAL UNIVERSE - Optioned for TV by producers Charles Matthau and Michael Zoumas with Andrew Orenstein and Matt Hastings attached as show runners

Born and raised in Orange County, California, she’s lived in both Mykonos and Manhattan and is now settled in Southern California. Learn more at www.alysonnoel.com.

Instagram:
http://instagram.com/alyson_noel

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/AlysonNoel/

Facebook:
Official me: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alyson...

Pinterest:
http://www.pinterest.com/alysonnoel/

Reviews

[Melissa Reise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Firstly, since it's a book with two stories in it, I will talk about the first part. So here goes...
Faking 19: I thought it was a very good story. Alyson Noel really touches on the feelings and things teens go through. I thought the romance between Alex and Connor was such a sweet thing. Even though Connor is 23 and Alex is only 17, I totally could not wait to see what happened next in their relationship. The fact that M is rich and has everything, yet is totally miserable is a testament to what rich spoiled kids really go through. I was so happy with the ending of the book and the turn Alex had made throughout the book. From being irresponsible and careless to being hard-working and devoted was a wonderful thing to read. This story is one of my favorites by far!
Now, onto Saving Zoe. I was perplexed by all the things that Zoe was experiencing that her sister, Echo didn't know about. Throughout pretty much the whole book, Echo thinks that she was the one who knew her sister best when really, it was Zoe's boyfriend who knew her better. I was so sad to find out how Zoe died and to read the journal entries she had written was so amazing. I felt like I was in Echo's place, feeling what she felt. I would totally recommend this one!
Overall, both stories were two of the best ones I've read! They were filled with sadness, happiness, hope, and love. And much more. I can't wait to read more of Noel's stories!

[JenacideByBibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keeping Secrets is one of those awesome book reissues involving two stories, Faking 19 and Saving Zoë. I decided to split this review into a “Part 1/Part 2” review, just so nothing gets confusing, and because they both deserve their own attention.

Faking 19 -

Opinion: I truly had no expectations going into these two stories, except for the fact that I knew it was a Tween/YA read that would be light and fun. It proved to be just that: fun and exciting, innocent and mischievous, incredibly secretive but very honest. I think it was a great first start to the two books in this reissue collection.

Faking 19 is about a girl named Alex who lives in Orange County with her mother, and is dealing with the few weeks leading up to her possible graduation from high school. With her best friend M, who also happens to be one of the most beautiful and popular girls in her school, they decide to make their current situation more exciting by going to Los Angeles and experiencing the glamourous lifestyle. After soon meeting Connor and Trevor, two older and wealthy guys from England, the lies about their age any other things start to form. Readers follow Alex and M as they struggle with their social and personal lives, and secrets that they keep buried.

I read The Immortals by Alyson Noël in back in the day, and got completely hooked on her young adult romance writing. Her writing has always been simplistic and real, in the sense that I always get hooked right in but it is also usually an even paced read. Faking 19 proved to keep to the author’s style, but with a definitely more realistic take on a teenage girl. The reader catches up with Alex as she seems to be in quite a funk; she’s failing most of her classes, she isn’t as involved in her school as she used to be, and she is angry at her dad for not helping her and her mother financially when he left. M, Alex’s best friend, might be gorgeous and extremely wealthy but her parents are never home. Alex and M are your stereotypical California girls who are dramatic and “just wanna have fun”. They decide to start visiting L.A. more and eventually meet two older guys from London named Connor and Trevor.

I think the relationships between the girls and the two guys they meet was actually fairly realistic in most ways. I found myself becoming suspicious of Connor though, especially when it came to either of the boys realizing how young they were! I mean come on, I think you would know. …then again, the girls these days do look quite a bit older. Weird. I think the author did a great job of portraying the very different issues that M and Alex share in their home life, but that they are both quite similar in the sense that their parents are a bit absent. I think this read really proved to be a great coming-of-age story, and it dove into a lot of issues that young girls face when they are trying to figure out who they are or who they want to be.

All in all, cute story. This isn’t a genre I would probably read still, but it brought me back to my teen years and was enjoyable. I have no qualms at all with this story, so give it a try if you’re into the Tween/YA genre and want to read something laid back!

Saving Zoe -

Opinion: I would first like to say that it was a FANTASTIC idea to put Saving Zoë as the second story in this reissue. If it had been first, than I would have been pretty disappointed reading Faking 19 after a story like this. This is one of those books that will leave your inner child feeling a bit squirmy and queasy, but ultimately leaving a reminder behind about the dangers of the internet and strangers. Books like this need to be required reading in junior high and high schools; but since they are not, I recommend sipping this dose of reality.

Echo is fifteen and starting high school with her two best friends, Abby and Jenay, who are more than optimistic at their chance of meeting new friends and boys. But if starting high school wasn’t stressful enough, the looks and whispers that Echo receives when she walks by her classmates doesn’t help. Readers connect with Echo just one year after the disappearance and murder of her older sister Zoë, and her feelings of loss are more present than ever. Not only are the people around her accidentally dropping constant reminders; but being in the same school with Zoë’s old boyfriend Marc proves to be challenging, especially when Marc was a suspect in her murder. But when Marc reaches out to Echo one day and gives her Zoë’s old diary, her world is split wide open as she falls into the life of a sister she thought she knew inside and out. Soon Echo realizes the true story behind what happened to her sister; as well as finding herself along the way.

After reading this book, I sat in my chair for a few minutes feeling disgusted and sad. I am really not a big reader of any book that involves sexual abuse, stranger danger, or gruesome murders. Call me a pansy (I dare you ;) ) but it just gets way too serious for me sometimes. But here I am, reading another book that makes me scream WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO YOURSELF, and not giving one single damn! Though these kinds of stories completely “weird me out”, I still find myself coming across them and getting sucked into every detail of the plots. Most of the time, these stories always turn out great because of the message they leave behind for readers. If an author can make me feel physically and mentally drained and saddened by a fictional story, they have my full attention from then on.

The character of Echo is your typical teenage girl that was cast in the shadow of her amazing and bubbly older sister. Echo is a prime example of a sibling that has faced a loss at a young age, while also trying to figure out how to find who she is and what she wants. I found Echo to be a bit confusing, and I didn’t connect with her character nearly as much as I connected with the story as a whole. I think the reader gets the general sense of her and how she acts/reacts, but I don’t feel like I really got to know her as much as we get to know Zoë. On another note, I loved how to author gave a little bit of what happens to Zoë throughout the story instead of just throwing it all at us at the beginning. I find that I stay interested when I only get hints towards what happened in a story about someone being killed, and it builds towards the ending in such a better way.

I think every female should read this, or a story similar, because it gives us all that little reminder to be aware of who we talk to on the internet. The internet, and the world for that matter, can be a scary and twisted place when we don’t have that constant reminder that terrible things could happen if we aren’t careful. I found that coming across books like this in high school kept me aware for myself, because sometimes listening to your parents repeat it constantly loses its impact. I HIGHLY recommend this to girls, women, boys, and even parents! This is a very insightful and heart wrenching story that I think can benefit a lot of people.

[Rayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a 'two in one' book that, in my opinion, was written very well. I enjoyed both stories, but although I believe that they were both very good, but the second story featured in the book was the better read, I believe.

Faking 19 is the first story and although at the end l could say that I enjoyed the story, there were times when I contemplated not reading the end of it.

Saving Zoe is an emotional story that honestly touched my heart. Again at the start is was for lack of a better term 'boring' but it picked up and gained my attention quickly. This book is enjoyable, but it also raises awareness of some dangers in the world.


Overall I enjoyed these stories.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saving Zoë was an emotional story about a girl, Echo, that loses her older sister, Zoë, through a murder a year before. To say that this rattled and shook their world would be an understatement. Echo's parents are as tense as they can be and constantly fight, Echo herself has started feeling distant towards her friends and everything around her, and the need to know more overpowered her when Zoë's boyfriend gives Echo Zoë's diary. Marc had it with him and felt that Echo should get to know the 'real' Zoë. Not the one everyone is talking about. Thus the journey through Zoë's last couple of months began.

In all honesty I expected something major to be written inside the diary, but the beauty of this novel is that Zoë really is just a normal teenage girl that parties too much and wants to get her break at fame. Echo starts to get to know Zoë more and more through each journal entry and for an attempt to feel close to Zoë she starts to hang our more with Marc. Now i've read a book similar to this idea which almost a year ago and while I might have understood the sudden attachment to the deceased sister's boyfriend, now I understood the pain and need to feel close to your loved one would let you do. I found Marc to be just as lost as Echo and I really did like his character. I think Alyson Noël did an amazing job portraying the fractured family of Echo, their overprotectiveness, the different kind of loss each character feels, and also the realistic aspect of losing a loved one.
Saving Zoë isn't about literally saving Zoë from her murder or even unraveling the story behind her death and who her murderer is, it is a story about the now and present, about the people Zoë had to leave behind and how they have to deal with this pain, even one year later and how Echo, through reading Zoë's diary, finally gets to know her sister like she's never known her before, giving her the chance to finally cherish Zoë's short life and try to start living her own.

-----------------

Faking 19 was a fluffy enjoyable contemporary for the most part. You've got two seventeen year old girls who hit the clubbing scene and pretend they are nineteen. The two girls, who are best friends, are total opposites. We've got the protagonist, Alex. Rewinding a couple of years back, she was the perfect student. Extracurricular activities, an A student, and just responsible. However, now? she's the opposite. She doesn't care about school, attending classes, bothering to submit her assignments and just as unmotivated as one can get. The other best friend M, is the A student that Alex used to be, on the fastback to princeton. Another difference is that Alex's parents got a divorce and her mom is struggling to make ends meet financially while M is a 90210 rich kid. I really didn't like their friendship; the opening scene shows Alex forgetting to write an important paper for a class and promising herself to write it when she gets back home, now M, who submitted the paper, asks Alex to go out, and Alex tells her she has to write the paper. M, being the good friend she is, tells her to write it after she comes back home! however Alex doesn't end up writing it and keeps on promising herself everyday for the next week!. Does anyone find this annoying? Shouldn't M guide her and motivate her and help her since she want's whats best for Alex? I just felt M was unbelievably selfish while Alex was unbelievably annoying.

However, ignoring that sorry excuse of a friendship I found the novel to be a cute contemporary and while I had issues with the absentee father and, I did like how Alex's mother realized how her daughter was sinking fast. Also, Alex learned a few lessons the hard way, by dating a 23 year old guy (while pretending she's 19) and then her lie backfires on her. Also, I am glad she realized her friendship needed some mending or a makeover or something. All in all, I liked how Alex figured things on her own and did not have a sudden realization in the last 10 pages. It was a pretty realistic fiction of a girl who lost her way and motivation and dreams. I do recommend it to any realistic fiction lover, but not to the younger YA population.

[Deanna]

I think I was about 30 pages away from finishing Faking 19 when I stopped reading. I REALLY DID NOT like this book. I would read like five pages and then throw it down with a huff of displeasure. The whole pretending-to-be-a-certain-age-when-you're-not thing has always been a great annoyance to me so that just exacerbated my problem with the book. The other thing that turned me from the book was all the mature material. I know this is not considered a book of mature content according to whoever officially deems it to be so, but I found the material to be too mature for me. I was expecting it to be a more normal YA level of appropriateness, but it was actually one of the YA books that is for mature readers only, at least that is my opinion. My brother asked me why I was reading a book I so obviously did not like and was just filling my head with trash that I didn't want to be there and I responded with "I just want to finish the book since I bought paid for it." But I realised that it was a horrible reason to continue reading so I took my brother's advice and stopped reading the book.

I didn't even try to read Saving Zoe after the whole Faking 19 fiasco. Better off leaving it alone than starting it and filling my head with more garbage that is unwanted before abandoning yet another book which I have no doubt was bound to happen.

[Brianne Durrant · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't really like this book because I didn't like how the plot was written out. It was too confusing. "Keeping Secrets" is two books in one.
The first book, "Faking Nineteen" is about this girl named Alex who has given up on herself and her grades, because she sees no point in going to college since she can't afford to pay for one. She feels really insecure, and the people who were her friends dragged her down.
I would recommend this book to Freshman and up because the word choice is a little confusing for Middle Schoolers.



The second book, "Saving Zoe" is about this girl named Echo who reads Zoe's diary, after Marc, Zoe's boyfriend has given it to her. Zoe is Echo's dead sister. When she reads her diary, she feels connected and closer to her then when she was alive. Since Echo is sick of living her boring life, she decides to live Zoe's life, by kissing Marc and going to parties.
I think "Keeping Secrets" describes both stories very well because they both either have secrets, or have secrets kept from them.
I would recommend this book to Freshman and up because the word choice would be a little confusing for Middle Schoolers.

[Ivonne · Rating 5 out of 5]

keeping secrets:
this book has two in one, the first story is about two best friends that go throe a lot in their high school life. Drama, parties,and a lot of secrets, this girl's know each other but it doesn't stop them from keeping secrets from each other. This book show's us that everyone keeps secrets but there some secrets that people share and others are to keep for yourself. My opinion of this book is that it's a really good book i kinda can relate to this girl because some of her secrets that she has I'm kinda going in the same track.Some of my secrets are for me to keep but sometimes i wish i could tell someone what's going on, this also happens to the girl in the book but even though she has her secrets she kinda gives a hint to her best friend M. I really like reading this book because i related to both of the girls in the story and i know how they feel to keep secrets that sometimes you wish you could share.The other port of the book "saving Zoe": talks about how she goes on in life and a lot of drama happens to her. it's kind of the same thing as "faking 19" but only this time is saving her and helping her out.

[PinkAmy loves books, cats and naps · Rating 1 out of 5]

FAKING 19=DNF

Zoe was murdered two years ago, now Echo has her sister’s diary and learns more about Zoe’s life and death than she could have imagined.

SAVING ZOE is a bad book with good intentions. Echo learns that her sister was drugged, raped and videotaped, none of which had anything to do with her murder. Zoe’s diary showed her to be a horrible person (although that wasn’t Alyson Noel’s intention). She had a job as a receptionist to a psychologist and made fun of the clients, even reading her boyfriend’s file. She uses the word “retarded” to describe people she didn’t like. I could go on, but why dump. I’m sorry for any person who is drugged and raped, but that didn’t change my opinion of her.

Echo was aloof, distant and lied to her friends. Yes, she was grieving, but that’s not an excuse to treat her friends badly.

I can’t think of a reason for anyone to read this book.

[Huong · Rating 1 out of 5]

Shelving this book as a "Did-Not-Finish." I got this book a month+ ago and started reading it last night (without any memory of what it was about at all, except it was likely a YA from the cover). Got through 10 chapters before I finally had enough and looked it up on GoodReads to see what exactly this book is about, because for the life of me, I couldn't quite figure it out. There was absolutely no depth to the main character. It was like a badly written version of Clueless' Cher.

So after reading the synopsis, I realized this book is actually 2 stories written in 1 (explains the 357 pages. I couldn't quite fathom the story stretching so long!). The other reviews turned me off and just further cemented my desire to close this book.

[Darcy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried both of these stories, but neither one hit a chord with me.

In the first, Faking 19, I found Alex to be apathetic and not very interesting. It drove me nuts that she refereed to her friend by only her initial, and the way that she would just zone out and set herself in some I need a daddy fantasy.

The second one, Saving Zoe, wasn't much better. I can see why Echo is a shade of herself, but it drives me nuts that she just lets herself exists in that state. That she can see her friends slipping away, but doesn't really do anything about it or even talk to them.

In the end, this one just wasn't for me.

[Cathy *Booklover4everandever* · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these two books so much...

I honestly don't know what to say except for god sake I hope girls are a little bit smarter then Zoe was in her book. Not everyone is truthful especially on the net. There is alot of perverts in the world, unfortunately, and to hear stories like Zoe's breaks my heart.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Faking 19 several years ago and wasn’t that impressed—I remember I kept shaking my head as the character made bad choice after bad choice and her lies kept piling up, but then again I knew people like her in high school and they’re all the same. I don’t recall anything about the love interests so the story had little to no impact on me. I was so over the teen fluff sort of story I didn’t read Saving Zoe after. Recently read Saving Zoe and liked it a lot better once the story took off. The writing was good and I kept with it as I tend to get distracted and tend to DNF books a lot when they don’t hold my attention, but I finished it no problem. I enjoyed the story but the one issue I had was that the main character never got to explore who she was as a person without influence—and I don’t think she really ever noticed it happened to her, but every choice she made was based on what her friends wanted or the fantasy of what her sister would do, which is not healthy. The other issue I had was the story of Zoe’s disappearance/murder was very confusing all around and as a true crime enthusiast I was expecting more in terms of the case and what happened but it was so sloppy you didn’t know half the time what truly happened to her. But honestly I did enjoy it, moreso near the end it picked up and I’m glad Echo got closure and hopefully will find herself afterwards.

[Myreadbooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been wanting to read these two books for so long now, I love the author's addictive writing.

In It's necessary to save Zoe, we find Echo who is left behind by her parents who are in depression, her friends are moving away from her and she is not thriving in high school.

How can she cope with the memory of her sister murdered a year earlier? She'll get her hands on her diary and stumble upon the well-kept secrets her sister had. And that may well help Echo rebuild.

In Facking 19, we find Alex who at 17 is beautiful and smart and his best friend is M the most famous girl in school. In Orange County they get bored and decide to go to a night scene in Los Angeles. They will lie about their age by pretending to be 19 years old and meet Trevor and Connor, two rich men. Alex is going to believe herself as in a dream with the trendy Hollywoood parties, the clubs of L.A. These famous weekends will distract her and change her ideas with her bad grades in senior year, an absent father and her disoriented mother. But in the end she will find out that M is hiding a lot of things from her.

Two books read in a short time, so much so that I hung on to the story, so moving in certain passages, addictive, captivating, full of suspense and twists and turns with very endearing characters.

[Kim Tarry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two books in one:

Faking 19: ⭐️⭐️
I think a lot of authors that write teenage girl characters very often write them too young. Alex is way too immature for her age. She is constantly fantasizing about men and very bothered about how she fits in and looks which is fine for the age range but then the language of always saying things are dorky and referring to herself as 17 and a half (who mentions half after maybe the age of 10?). I also thought there were way too many celebrities mentioned and since the book is a little old there’s no way a young reader would understand half of the references. I grew up around the same timeframe as this book was released and I didn’t know who every person was.
I will say that it was an easy and fast read. The short chapters made the flow work so nothing dragged out too long.

Saving Zoe: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A big improvement from the first book but still a bit cringey at times. Echo is younger than the characters in the first book so a bit of immaturity is a lot easier to forgive. When she starts to pretend to be Zoe they’re the parts of the book that lost me. If she was completely changing her whole character and throwing herself into being her sister it would work but just the limited way it’s sprinkled in doesn’t really work.
The theme that both of these books really have in common is: teenage friends are pretty crap, especially if there are boys involved.

[Chy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only read the first story Faking 19 and it was so bad it put me off of even reading the second story.

It wasn’t that the writing was bad because it’s not. I found the writing to be good, nothing to rave about, but it was good. It was everything else about the story that was the problem.

The characters... were to put it simply AWFUL! They were judgmental, mean, unlikable and impossible to root for or even care about.

I also found the story incredibly slow.

My biggest problem with this book and why I gave it 1 star was the fact that the author kept using the word retarded. And it wasn’t even as if it she used it once. Had it been once I probably would have been a little more understanding, obviously not pleased but I could have moved on. But no she had to keep using the word over and over and over again.

I get that the book was written in the mid 2000s and that’s how teenagers talked back then, but jeez you don’t have to keep using every freaking chapter! There are other more appropriate words to use ugh.

[Hailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, so, this book is kind of unfair rating wise. Considering there are two books that don’t have anything plot wise in common except for the fact that the main characters have secrets. The first book; “Faking 19” was just not my kind of story. Being about a soon to graduate senior who has given up on her future so soon. I couldn’t really relate to the characters and it didn’t make me feel much either way for events. It was rather boring so I’d have to give it 2-3 stars. The other book; “Saving Zoe”, was amazing. About a girl who is dealing with the loss of her sister. This book grabbed me on the first page; filled with emotion, suspense, and mystery. It was very hard to put down and do other things. 5 stars.

[Danae · Rating 2 out of 5]

Normally, I love Alyson Noel's writing, but I feel like the two stories were missing something like in the first book "Faking 19" the romance shows up and disappears in the end. (Don't judge I was getting bored so I decided to read the last two chapters to see if it was worth continuing. It was not.) The second book "Saving Zoe", I could not connect to Echo. I found her so annoying and could not care if she ever got justice for her sister or not or even if she lived at the end of the novel.
I really wanted to love these stories, but I just could not get into it like her Immortals series.
2.5 out of 5 stars.

[EmilyJoanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to Dnf this book sadly… I ended up only reading one of the two stories included and was just getting bored with it sm 😫so I really don’t have much expectations for the second story and I have now decided to have it as my first DNF :(

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty good.

[Rox Bloss · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Catie · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's complete fluff and I loved it

[Ingo]

Two books in one
1) Keeping Secrets:Faking 19
2) Saving Zoe
Starting with 2, as it is / was filmed and will be on Netflix (?).

[Keshia Burchette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually really ended up liking this book. The first one, Faking 19 almost made me stop reading but I really liked Saving Zoe.

[Ana]

This two in one book was very different from my current reads it tells a great story, I was amazed bye how great the author wrote the story. I enjoyed my read.

[Jude Walko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alyson Noël is simply a superb writer, and trust me you don't have to be a teenaged high school girl to enjoy the impact of these novels. That's the review.

[Madison · Rating 1 out of 5]

These books kinda freaked me out because they were just very triggering and not the best. This is also the book with the girl named Madison who gets called "M".

[Meilyana Xu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faking 19: The ending didn't give me goosebumps. Although it's not a cliche but I feel like it could have a better ending with Connor, instead of leaving him hanging. When I read the last page of the story, I feel like there is some sort of second book which is the continuation of the first story. 3/5.

Savie Zoe: Definitely unexpected. At the end of the day, you are not sure whether the main character is Echo or Zoe. The way Echo thinks is what makes me love the character so much. Quite disappointed that Echo didn't end up with Marc yet it didn't feel like hanging, unlike Faking 19. 4/5.

[Rikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

As this is two books printed into one, it makes it a bit harder to rate for review. I'll give each book it's own review and rating, then for overall just rate it something between.
*****

Faking 19:
While I am not a fan of the perspective or the author's writing style, I was still somewhat pleased at how well the story flowed.

Alex would like to blame all of her troubles on her life; divorced parents, low on money, while living in the materialistic land of Cali, she knows her failing grades and attention span are her own fault. But that doesn't stop her from spiraling down the wrong path with some bad influences, clubs, lies and drugs.

I read this once as a teen and can't recall my thoughts on it, but as an adult (and mother) I can say that my perspective is quite different than before. My favorite part was page 167:

"...you cannot control other people's actions. You can only control your response to them. And you have to pick your battles wisely, because it just takes so much energy to be angry.... It's time you held yourself accountable for what happens next and not to use your past as an excuse for not getting where you want to go." - Alex's Mom. She nailed that pep talk, in my opinion.

Overall, Faking 19 was sadly realistic with tons of teenage problems and doesn't skim over the hard stuff. While I could appreciate it as a teen, now it makes me feel frustrated for many different reasons. Faking 19 earns two and a half stars because I thought it was 'meh', but to be fair as an adult the story means something completely different to me.

Saving Zoe:

Personally I found Saving Zoe a much better novel than Faking 19.

The story follows Echo in the wake of the loss of her sister. Echo and her sister Zoe could not have been more different. The more Echo discovers about her sister after her death, the more those lines are blurred as she tries to reconnect to Zoe. Echo was a great character and extremely relatable.

Saving Zoe strikes a perfect balance of having believable characters with real teen settings and issues, while at the same time not being over bearing. Because I found Saving Zoe to be meaningful while stressing real teen issues, but still relatable as an adult, I gave it four stars.

****
Overall, Keeping Secrets earns 3 stars as the two stories are on opposite sides of my ratings.

[Hayley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keeping Secrets is a book by Alyson Noel that has two separate stories in it, Faking 19 and Saving Zoe. Both stories share many similarities.

Faking 19 is the story of Alex and her best friend M. M has it made, she is rich with absent parents, an astonishing wardrobe, and a brand new convertible. She is pretty, smart, and popular. Alex is the exact opposite. Its not that she is a dumb, ugly, loner, its just that she is going through a rough time. After letting her grades drop so low that she lost most of her chances at college, and possibly graduating with her senior class. A brief reality check with the guidance counselor has Alex promising to do better. But when Alex and M's usual runs to the more sophisticated town of L.A. turn into a web of lies and secrets are being kept from one another, Alex may just lose her last chance. Will she ever be able to get her life together?

Saving Zoe is about a Echo's desperate attempt to find out what happened to her sister, Zoe. Zoe disappeared one day after sneaking out. Since then, Echo has been known as "Zoe's little sister". When she joins all of Zoe's old friends once she starts high school, Echo has to learn to get used to the stares and whispers. When she runs into Zoe's old friend, Mark, she knows she's in trouble. Mark is not a good guy, he was also the last person to see Zoe alive. When Mark gives Echo Zoe's diary, Echo discovers that her sister was living a double life, and it may have got her killed.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I decided to give Alyson Noël another chance with her chick-lit books, and I found it to be... interesting. I decided that I'm going to review both novels separately, since there's two novels in one volume, and then do a mash-up thing.


Saving Zoë:

This was the second book in the volume, and it ended up being my favourite, I'd probably give it a 4/5 star rating. I've never dealt with a murder/chick-lit book at the same time, so this definitely was a first, and I enjoyed it.

So we have Echo and Zoë, two sisters who both hide a lot of secrets. When Zoë tragically dies, Echo is on the run to find out what happened, and as she gets closer in finding out, she also has to deal with her own life.

Echo was the detective for me. I really ended up liking her.


Faking 19:

So this is the one I didn't like. I would give it a 2/5 star rating.

So this main character, Alex, is unsure about who she is, and has her unpredictable grades to go along with the whole chaos situation.

I really don't feel like talking about this one, but let me say, I just didn't like it. Bleh.



So both equal a 6 star rating, which isn't possible, so I divide by two to make it fair, 3 stars. Got it?