Queen of Secrets by Jenny Meyerhoff

Queen of Secrets by Jenny Meyerhoff was supplied by Around the World Tours and is set to be released June 22, 2010.

Esther "Essie" Green is ecstatic to be a sophomore on the cheerleading squad! She's been dreaming of getting to do this for quite some time and believes that it will help her place in the high school hierarchy immensely. She's starting to learn her place when she gets a shock: her cousin, Micah is on the football team. As if that's not bad enough, Micah is quite staunch in his religious beliefs and wears his kippah even while playing football. Essie is mortified, until she realizes that no one knows they are related. She decides to keep that a secret, so it won't hurt her chances of moving up in station.

As the school year progresses, the football team members continue to pick on Micah for being "weird" and even manage to toilet-paper his house. Essie doesn't know what to do with herself. On the one hand, she has gained popularity and even attracted the attention of her longtime crush Austin, but at what cost? Is getting to be popular and feeling overly-cherished more important than standing up for what's right?

I really wanted to like this book. I really did. I went in thinking that this was an interesting premise (especially with the religious element) and that I could really get behind it, but I found this book lacked a lot. The characters were very... predictable. Almost cliché actually. There didn't seem to be any real emotion behind the characters' actions other than jealousy and guilt.

While I did enjoy watching Essie grow as a person, I felt it took way too long. The story was just dragging along waiting for her to finally make up her scattered mind about what she wanted to do. Micah was the only character that I felt I could really relate to and that I cared about at all. Essie was just too flippant and self-absorbed, up until the end. The cookie-cutter friends were pretty much absent and I felt like they were just filler as no significant action really happened with them.

If you want a simple, light, predictable read, then this is great for that. There were some funny moments and there were some intriguing thoughts, but there was no real depth. Questions are answered almost immediately, so there is very little suspense. Give it a shot though, you may like it better than I did.