If you are familiar with Wattpad, you must know that some authors there like to put a few celebrity pictures of their choice to help you visualize the characters you are about to read. I, for one, do not like a picture of a famous someone being imprinted on a character's head when reading, so when I read Wattpad in high school, I would always skip through the visual page.
It is safe to say that I don't normally imagine what the faces of the characters would look like when reading, much less use celebrity faces to differentiate them. My mind usually adapts the way the show Tom and Jerry presents its human characters, the way it intentionally cuts out the frame so our TV would only show them from the neck and under. For me, book characters are more or less like that. I imagine their figures with blurry faces that I know if sharpened would be "so handsome" or "really pretty".
Something was different when I was reading Can You Keep a Secret by Sophie Kinsella though. No matter how much I tried to detach myself from thinking about a particular someone, I couldn't stop picturing young Hugh Dancy playing the role of Jack Harper the entire time. He seems so fitting for that role (even more than him being Luke Brandon, in my opinion). He just has the right charisma.
Can You Keep a Secret follows the story of Emma Corrigan, a twenty-five-year-old junior marketing representative from Panther Cola who accidentally spills all of her secrets to a handsome stranger on the plane during a life-and-death situation. Or at least that is what Emma thinks. She proceeds to tell the man that Connor, her boyfriend, is so Ken-like; that her office's coffee sucks it almost tastes like poison; that she has been secretly watering her annoying colleague's plant with orange juice; and so on.
Upon recovering, Emma realizes how humiliating the experience has been. But since the man is only a stranger, she doesn't worry about it too much... that's it, until she comes face-to-face with the company's CEO from the State, and she discovers that the stranger is actually Jack freaking Harper. One of Panther Cola's founders.
I knew I could always rely on Sophie Kinsella's rom-com for a good laugh. Can You Keep a Secret was an awesome, hilarious read that I finished in almost one sitting. Emma was a typical Kinsella heroine—she had to suffer some major humiliations, she internally blabbered a lot, and she ended up with the boss—though you wouldn't see me complaining. Kinsella had proved that she could weave these similar tropes into different entertaining stories, and I would always be here for them.
While this book was quite predictable from the start, it had some unpredictable moments too. Some scenes felt rather far-fetched, but I was ready to turn a blind eye and defend them with "It's the beauty in rom-com, possible only in fiction". I liked that this book also offered us more than a few glimpses of friendship and family issues. It bummed me a little that we didn't get the latter one truly resolved though.
In the end, my intuition had been right all along: I wholeheartedly adored this book. If you are looking for something cute and haven't read this book yet, consider yourself lucky to come across this review. Emma and Jack's romance could be something cute (and fun) that you are currently looking for.
Actual rating: 4.3★
