Can You Keep a Secret? (Paperback)

Already a white-knuckle flyer, Emma goes to pieces when her flight from Glasgow to London encounters severe turbulence. Thinking the end is near, she spills every secret she has ever had to the stranger next to her. How she lost her virginity, what she really thinks of her boyfriend, the petty stunts she pulls on co-workers, the way she killed her parents' goldfish while they were on vacation and replaced it without their knowledge, her deepest thoughts on g-strings, cousins, Charles Dickens, and more. When the plane miraculously lands, Emma is thankful she will never again see this man who knows every little secret of her life.

Emma returns to her job as a junior marketing executive and as she attempts to climb the corporate ladder, every embarrassing secret of her life is exposed. How Emma combats this public humiliation and discovers another person's secret makes for a rollicking good read.

Emma is very reminiscent of Kinsella's other heroine, the shopaholic Becky Bloomwood. Equally appealing are Emma's two flatmates---her life-long friend Lissy and the irrepressible Jemima who will have you laughing hystericaly at her thoughts on men, jewels, and all things fashionable.

This is a quick and fun read, sure to satisfy fans of the Shopaholic series or chick-lit in general.

Emma Corrigan is a Junior Marketing Assistant in the London HQ of Panther Corporation, which makes, among other things, Panther Cola and Panther Bars. Sent solo to Glasgow to conclude the formalities of a marketing alliance with Glen Oil, thought to be a sure thing, the deal suddenly falls apart. Attempting to salvage the agreement, Emma spills a can of Panther Cola all over the shirt of a Glen Oil VIP. Distraught, Emma boards a plane for the flight back to London - and she's afraid of flying. Unusually strong air turbulence makes the flight terrifying. Her tongue loosened by the certainty of impending death, Emma blabs all her personal secrets to her seatmate, a reserved American. As a matter of fact, she spills her guts: her relationship with her boyfriend, girl roomies, family, and co-workers, and the details of her sex life, her underwear, and the little lie she put on her Panther Corp job application. You get the picture. Absolutely everything, including the fact that she accidentally killed her parents' pet goldfish and substituted a look-alike.

The following Monday, the quiet Yank shows up at Panther Corporation. As it turns out, he's multimillionaire Jack Harper, the company CEO and one of its co-founders, who's making a tour of his European offices. Corrigan's life will never be the same. But Jack has a secret also.

Except that Emma doesn't have Becky's relentlessly spendthrift habits, the two are soul sisters. Both are young, naive, just a little ditzy, otherwise intelligent, pretty, generous, charming, kind-hearted, and with a propensity for infinite self-deception. Both are incredibly endearing despite their faults.

Author Sophie Kinsella is a genius at creating absurd situations from which her heroines must extricate themselves. Her books are gems in the genre of Humor. As I read CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET on the train to work, fellow travelers must have looked at me strangely as I occasionally giggled.

This is light reading with a capital "L", but I heartily recommend it.

was it as good as confessions of a shopoholic? no, not quite, because Emma's flaws weren't as clearly defined as Becky's were. As someone who FREQUENTLY does the absolute wrong thing, knowing it's the wrong thing, feeling terrible about doing it and yet doing it just the same (like, for example, reading an entire Sophie Kinsella book in one sitting when I have 4 pages of paper demanding to be written), Kinsella's abilty to catch that kind of compulsive dread in Becky's shopping splurges was just exceptional. This book doesn't have something that resonates quite so forcibly.

HOWEVER, Emma is sweet, Jack is well, the kind of perfect, thoughtful, romantic, funny, handsome RICH man that exists only in chick lit lovels. He's really quite yummy. Emma's friends are lovely, her enemies are wonderfully icky and the humor is consistent and the plot is VERY engaging (read it compulsively in one sitting, no more able to stop myself than becky would have been able to stop herself from buying that second pair of shoes), even if it's not exactly surprising.

Great book for an airplane, beach reading, whatever.