Someone Else’s Secret – Julia Spiro

After graduating college with no job prospects, Lindsey, who has very large breasts, agrees to spend the summer on Martha’s Vineyard as a nanny in the hopes of meeting the right people and securing a job in the art world.  With the summer winding down and having landed the job she was hoping for, everything comes crashing down when something happens to Lindsey, who, again, has large breasts, and is witnessed by Georgie, daughter of the family she has been nannying for.  10 years later, Georgie finds she can no longer keep what she saw secret, reconnecting with Lindsey and trying to right the wrongs of a summer that impacted them both.

Someone Else’s Secret, the debut novel from Julia Spiro, must have been part of Amazon’s First Reads program at some point, so at least I know I didn’t pay anything for it.  She could have paid more heed to the Chekov’s gun principle, which states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed.  Irrelevant elements like the size of the protagonist’s breasts, which was mentioned numerous times throughout the book, only to learn in the time jump that she had undergone a reduction.  Had you dropped the entire plotline, if you can call it that, of her breasts, you’d have the exact same story told in probably 5-10 fewer pages.  I think what she was going for was the thought that large breasts were inherently sexualized, and, as a result of the <spoilers> rape, Lindsey’s character had turned away from that part of her life and reducing her breasts thus reduced the sexual part of her life.  But, that is contradicted by the numerous thoughts the Lindsey character had about her breasts prior to the rape. </spoilers>

At the end of the day, Spiro put together a perfectly readable tale, but not one that puts her on the “must check out again” list.  There is certainly talent here, but I don’t know that I’ll see if it gets focused into something better her next time out.