Review: Can You Keep a Secret by Sophie Kinsella.

Hero: Jack Harper
Heroine: Emma Corrigan
Grade: 4.5 out of 5

Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets: Secrets from her mother:

• I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur.

• Sammy the goldfish in my parents’ kitchen is not the same goldfish that Mum gave me to look after when she and Dad were in Egypt.

Secrets from her boyfriend:

• I weigh one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. Not one eighteen, like Connor thinks.

• I’ve always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken.

From her colleagues:

• When Artemis really annoys me, I feed her plant orange juice. (Which is pretty much every day.) It was me who jammed the copier that time. In fact, all the times.

Secrets she wouldn’t share with anyone in the world:

• My G-string is hurting me.

• I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is.

Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger. But come Monday morning, Emma’s office is abuzz about the arrival of Jack Harper, the company’s elusive CEO. Suddenly Emma is face-to-face with the stranger from the plane, a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her. Things couldn’t possibly get worse—Until they do.

I read this book for Nath’s Reread Challenge and I couldn’t think of a better book to start this challenge off with. When I first read this book, I laughed a whole lot and I just had a ball reading it but that was years ago. It’s been so long since I’ve reread this book that I wasn’t sure if I’d like it anymore considering the amount of books that I loved before and don’t really care for anymore. I was so happy to find that I enjoyed this book just as much this time around as I did the first time that I read it.

This is one of those books that you’ll read when you need a laugh, when you need to laugh at someone else other than yourself and it’s just that book that you pick up when you need that pick me up. This book is that funny.

You’ve got the main character, Emma Corrigan, who is on a business trip and her airplane goes through some crazy turbulence and she thinks she’s going to die so she turns to her seat partner and starts talking. She starts confessing things she’s never done, she starts confessing every little thing in her head and by the time the plane has landed, she’s told this virtual stranger every embarrassing moment of her life. All of the moments mentioned above and so, so much more. She’s not too embarrassed about it since she doesn’t think she’ll ever see him again with him being an American and she’s British. They live on two different continents so what are the odds of them ever seeing each other again?

Not very good.

Only the odds turn out to be VERY good because the American from the airplane turns up at Emma’s job and turns out to be the big boss of her entire company and he knows all of her dirty little secrets, including her on the job secrets that nobody would want their bosses to know about. Having Jack (that’s the American’s name) around makes this book just that much more exciting. Seeing Emma jump through hoop after hoop to steer clear of Jack and then everything she went through in this book is one laugh after the other. You’ll seriously be laughing from the start of this book to the very end and I can’t recommend this for a good laughing read enough. You’ll laugh at Emma, you’ll laugh at her crazy best friend and room mate, you’ll laugh at her obnoxious cousin Kerry and you’ll just keep right on laughing until the very end.

Jack Harper was a fantastic character as well. He was perfect for Emma and I thought that they made the perfect match. They were the perfect mix for each other because they balanced each other out. She was the loud and crazy one where he was the opposite of that. The way that Jack was with Emma was perfect. He wanted to take her on the perfect date and he did. He wanted her to understand the depths of his feelings for her and he did. He wanted to turn his back on her after the betrayal he thinks she’s done to him but he doesn’t because he knows that his Emma wouldn’t do something like that but more than anything, Jack Harper was a good man and the perfect hero for this book because he loved Emma for who she was and not because she was this perfect woman. He knew every little secret of hers, bad and good and still, he loved her. He knew every little bad thing about her and it didn’t matter. He didn’t try to change her, he loved her exactly the way she was and I adored that about him. She didn’t have to shed a pound for him to notice her, she didn’t have to jump through hoops to impress him and she didn’t have to change for him. Ahhhh, I loved this guy!

It’s a great book and I can’t recommend this book enough to those of you who are wanting a light and extremely funny book to read. This is the book you want to read if you’re in the mood to laugh your socks off. I’m so glad that I read this book again and Nath, seriously…you rock for starting this challenge. I’m so in love with this challenge, I’d marry it if I could.

Until next month’s re-read entry…read this book!

This book is available from Bantam Books. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

Related Posts