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A review by maggiemaggio
Sekret by Lindsay Smith
3.0
Sekret. This book. I should have liked this book, right? I love historical fiction, I love spies, I love YA and this book is all of those things, and it’s not bad at any of those things, but still I struggled with this book in a major way. I picked it up, I read 80 or so pages, I put it down for a week, I picked it up again, but still it took me several days to finish and that is not a normal thing for me. I had three major issues with the book: my lack of connection to the main character, the nature of a story about the Soviet Union, and how much this book reminded me of a book I read last year called The Naturals.
Let’s tackle that last one first. If you haven’t read The Naturals this won’t be an issue, but it’s just not something I could ignore. I’m not accusing anyone of plagiarism or anything like that, I think it’s just an odd coincidence, but still, it was uncanny. Sekret is the story of Yulia, a girl whose family has been torn apart by the Soviet leaders. Yulia has a secret ability, she can read minds through touch. The KGB (the Soviet CIA) pretty much kidnaps Yulia and forces her to work for them, along with a group of other psychic teenagers, to try to win the space race against the Americans. In The Naturals, Cassie, a natural at reading people, comes from a broken family and she’s recruited by the FBI to be part of a group of gifted teenagers who work on solving crimes. In both stories the teens live in a house together and work together on missions. There’s also, oddly enough, similar love interests; both have one outgoing, handsome boy who seems like the obvious choice and one quiet, handsome boy who may or may not be able to be trusted. The similarities between these stories were just creepy and for a lot of Sekret I felt like I had already read it (even though the actual missions are quiet different, obviously).
Enough of that, moving on to Yulia. I wanted to like Yulia, but it was really difficult for me to connect to her and root for her. Despite a lot of story taking place in Yulia’s head I never felt like I really knew her. Part of her being surrounded by other psychics (they all have slightly different psychic gifts) is that she needs to hide her emotions behind layers of mental armor and some of that felt like it was blocking Yulia from me. The girl has been through a lot: her father left their family, her mother, her bother, and she have been living in hiding for the last few years, she’s coerced into working for the KGB, and her life may be a risk. I liked her, and I sympathized with her situation, but I still never had the depth of emotion or felt myself rooting for her like I would have expected.
Then there’s the whole premise of the Soviet Union. I will admit that Russian history is not my favorite, but I really love any history. I especially appreciated getting to experience the 1960s, a period I find fascinating (I took 1960s history classes in high school AND in college), from the perspective of a normal (as normal as a psychic can be) Soviet girl. It was especially interesting to get to experience something like JFK’s assassination from their perspective and hear their opinions of Jacqueline Kennedy (who I may or may not have been fascinated by as a child).
Anyway, even with the history Sekret read a lot like a dystopian novel. There’s this evil power of the KGB/communist party/Soviet leadership who force Yulia and her fellow psychics to work for them against their will. They threaten their family, they hold horrible things over their heads to get them to obey, and they do what they want with little regard for anyone else. With dystopian stories there’s always this expectation that the main character and those like her will rise up and beat their captors, but with Sekret and the Soviet Union I knew that wasn’t going to happen for another 25-ish years. I think that’s part of why I had a difficult time relating to Yulia because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be rooting for. In some ways I appreciate having no idea what was going to happen, but mostly it just left me constantly feeling off balance and not in a good way.
Bottom Line: All I’ve done is rag on this book, which isn’t fair, because I don’t think it was a bad book at all. The writing was very strong and the story had obviously been meticulously researched. If it interests you I would absolutely encourage you to pick it up (especially if you haven’t read The Naturals) because I do believe it’s worth reading, it just wasn’t necessarily worth reading for me.
I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley (thank you!). All opinions are my own.
This review first appeared on my blog.
Let’s tackle that last one first. If you haven’t read The Naturals this won’t be an issue, but it’s just not something I could ignore. I’m not accusing anyone of plagiarism or anything like that, I think it’s just an odd coincidence, but still, it was uncanny. Sekret is the story of Yulia, a girl whose family has been torn apart by the Soviet leaders. Yulia has a secret ability, she can read minds through touch. The KGB (the Soviet CIA) pretty much kidnaps Yulia and forces her to work for them, along with a group of other psychic teenagers, to try to win the space race against the Americans. In The Naturals, Cassie, a natural at reading people, comes from a broken family and she’s recruited by the FBI to be part of a group of gifted teenagers who work on solving crimes. In both stories the teens live in a house together and work together on missions. There’s also, oddly enough, similar love interests; both have one outgoing, handsome boy who seems like the obvious choice and one quiet, handsome boy who may or may not be able to be trusted. The similarities between these stories were just creepy and for a lot of Sekret I felt like I had already read it (even though the actual missions are quiet different, obviously).
Enough of that, moving on to Yulia. I wanted to like Yulia, but it was really difficult for me to connect to her and root for her. Despite a lot of story taking place in Yulia’s head I never felt like I really knew her. Part of her being surrounded by other psychics (they all have slightly different psychic gifts) is that she needs to hide her emotions behind layers of mental armor and some of that felt like it was blocking Yulia from me. The girl has been through a lot: her father left their family, her mother, her bother, and she have been living in hiding for the last few years, she’s coerced into working for the KGB, and her life may be a risk. I liked her, and I sympathized with her situation, but I still never had the depth of emotion or felt myself rooting for her like I would have expected.
Then there’s the whole premise of the Soviet Union. I will admit that Russian history is not my favorite, but I really love any history. I especially appreciated getting to experience the 1960s, a period I find fascinating (I took 1960s history classes in high school AND in college), from the perspective of a normal (as normal as a psychic can be) Soviet girl. It was especially interesting to get to experience something like JFK’s assassination from their perspective and hear their opinions of Jacqueline Kennedy (who I may or may not have been fascinated by as a child).
Anyway, even with the history Sekret read a lot like a dystopian novel. There’s this evil power of the KGB/communist party/Soviet leadership who force Yulia and her fellow psychics to work for them against their will. They threaten their family, they hold horrible things over their heads to get them to obey, and they do what they want with little regard for anyone else. With dystopian stories there’s always this expectation that the main character and those like her will rise up and beat their captors, but with Sekret and the Soviet Union I knew that wasn’t going to happen for another 25-ish years. I think that’s part of why I had a difficult time relating to Yulia because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be rooting for. In some ways I appreciate having no idea what was going to happen, but mostly it just left me constantly feeling off balance and not in a good way.
Bottom Line: All I’ve done is rag on this book, which isn’t fair, because I don’t think it was a bad book at all. The writing was very strong and the story had obviously been meticulously researched. If it interests you I would absolutely encourage you to pick it up (especially if you haven’t read The Naturals) because I do believe it’s worth reading, it just wasn’t necessarily worth reading for me.
I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley (thank you!). All opinions are my own.
This review first appeared on my blog.