the girl is 12 and speaks like a 6 year-old... or like an adult depending on the moment hard to like the book after that. It is totally unrealistic because of the immaturity of the kid when her step father is concerned. For other things, she speaks like an 18 year old. Her BFF is thinking of having sex with a boy. She is 12 and he is 13 and everyone seems to believe it is normal to have such ideas at that age... A while later, the 13 year old boy rapes the 12 year old girl, with 2 of his friends -pure gang raping, and the boy is treated like a hero at school. Plus I hate the way books and movies mix up real blood relationships and created ones. I hate the way kids are told to call friends of their parents Aunt or Uncle - that is another lie... which does not make sense. I don't know if the book is meant to be closer to the life African-American families lead. I know the average age of first sex is earlier, marriages are less frequent, most kids are born out of wedlock, etc... but still, we are talking about girls from nice middle class families. And Jillian calls her step father Daddy, like a baby, though he forces her to have sex with him. The book is horrible, because instead of telling girls to say no and search protection, it seems to be almost normal to be abused. The author concludes with a page of false numbers, saying that a child out of five is sexually abused, etc, etc. According to reliable stats, it is around 1%, maybe more because of the non-reported cases, but nowhere close to 1 out of 5. On the top of it, all females in the book react like victims, and all males like predators. I won't read any other book by her, I am feeling nauseated. I had the weird feeling to be reading a novel from the early 50ies with perverse parts added just recently. A really lousy book for me. two stars is more than its worth. This book was very disturbing to me. It is about a middle school girl name Jillian. Jillian is being molested by her stepfather sense the day her little sister Layla was born and she's kept ''A deep dark secret'' it to her self. she is afraid of telling her mother or anyone else because her stepfather has threaten her by making her afraid and making her believe that no one will care and will turn there back's on her, so it goes on for year's now and yet she has not told a soul about her stepfather what he call it their special time but one day she has the courage to do something about it.
What do You think about A Deep Dark Secret (2009)?
a very disgusting book about sexual abuse but i couldn't stop reading
—Sonal
The story was good (though tragic), but I the dialogue was bad.
—Jimmycraig
So real. So touching. Shows that Alers has a range!
—walker
