Can’t Queer Women Find Joy? | The Secret of You and Me by Melissa Lenhardt

Title: The Secret of You and Me
Author: Melissa Lenhardt
Published: August 4, 2020
Genre(s): Romance: Contemporary
Page Count: 384
Rating:

Summary from Goodreads:

Nora hasn’t looked back. Not since she fled Texas to start a new life. Away from her father’s volatile temper and the ever-watchful gaze of her claustrophobically conservative small town, Nora has freed herself. She can live—and love—however she wants. The only problem is that she also left behind the one woman she can’t forget. Now tragedy calls her back home to confront her past—and reconcile her future.

Sophie seems to have everything—a wonderful daughter, a successful husband and a rewarding career. Yet underneath that perfection lies an explosive secret. She still yearns for Nora—her best friend and first love—despite all the years between them. Keeping her true self hidden hasn’t been easy, but it’s been necessary. So when Sophie finds out that Nora has returned, she hopes Nora’s stay is short. The life she has built depends on it.

But they both find that first love doesn’t fade easily. Memories come to light, passion ignites and old feelings resurface. As the forces of family and intolerance that once tore them apart begin to reemerge, they realize some things may never change—unless they demand it.

If you ask a reader what a “romance” is, you’re likely to get a few different answers. But most likely, the common thread will be something along the official definition from Romance Writers of America: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying ending. This is a broad description and covers a variety of stories. But—not every book with a central love story and a “happy” ending is going to feel like a romance, because I’d add one third element: optimism. In a romance novel, the characters and readers should have a hopeful outlook on the relationship and the final “outcome” of their journey. Often, I’ll describe romance novels as taking place in a shared fantasy between the characters, author, and reader where everything is just a little bit easier and more rose-colored. Just a smidge.

Respectfully, The Secret of You and Me is one of the darkest, most depressing “romances” I’ve ever read. (Note: Melissa Lenhardt describes this as “women’s fiction” but at its core, this book is still a romance novel.) While there is a love story and a Happily Ever After, this book is basically 400 pages of two closeted queer women (one a lesbian, one bisexual) being lambasted by the extreme ignorance and homophobia of small-town evangelical Texas Republicans. Honestly, this book is less a story about two women falling in love and more a story about two women deciding whether or not they can risk coming out in their hyper-conservative community.

This book is exhausting.

Is bigotry a real obstacle many LGBTQ+ couples face? Absolutely. Do I necessarily want to read an entire book where the main characters are verbally and physically abused, manipulated, ostracized, called every slur in the book, and live in daily fear of the repercussions should anyone learn of their sexualities? Nope. This is a marathon of a read that forces readers to walk alongside Sophie and and Nora as they are beat down over and over and over. On every page, there is more pain. Towards the end of the book, when Sophie does the thing she’s most scared of and comes out to her daughter, the daughter’s immediate reaction is to react with disgust and loathing and call her a “dyke”… That was the moment when I said fuck this misery porn. Whatever support the protagonists have is won only after an intense battle against hatred. It’s too much.

I’m not saying these subjects shouldn’t be in fiction. They should. However, I think there are better ways to show the real-world implications of bigotry than drowning your characters in endless misery. There is no joy in The Secret of You and Me—it’s all one long clusterfuck of fear and alienation and reprisal. On the page, you never see Nora and Sophie interacting together without a dark cloud hanging over their heads—at no point does the author show them so much as hold hands without fear of discovery or blowback. A Happy Ending is lovely…but where were the soft, tender moments between the main characters? Why couldn’t Lenhardt give them a chance to be open with each other without immediately chasing after them with the stick of homophobia? Why?

And I have to wonder, is this what makes the book “women’s fiction”? Does inflicting misery after misery upon your protagonists raise the book up from the lowly level of “mere romance” to something more elite? (It’s no secret that romance is generally the punching bag of the fiction world.) I’ll just say that there is nothing inherently more worthy in stories of tragedy than in stories of empowerment and happiness. Especially when we’re dealing with characters who are marginalized in some way.

Alongside that…the author seems to have made purposeful narrative choices that serve only to enhance Nora and Sophie’s difficulties. For instance, this book takes place in 2013, pre-Obergefell, so even when they’re “together forever,” they know they can’t get married. Why do that? Why did the author purposefully set her story in a time before marriage equality? There was no purpose. Just another way for Nora and Sophie to feel that their relationship was doomed to fail; another obstacle to overcome.

There are better ways to handle a story about two closeted women reconnecting after twenty years apart. Instead of focusing on the blowback from bigoted neighbors and relatives, Lenhardt could have centered the love and connection and happiness her protagonists brought to each other’s lives, even after so long apart and so many misunderstandings. Instead, what we got with this book is an endless train of abuses endured and injuries catalogued. (A litany of misfortune that’s meant to telegraph how “worthy” their happiness is, when it’s finally attained?)

If you’re going to write about queer women falling in love and struggling to come out in small town America, perhaps consider that by showing the process as a horribly painful thing where misery is certain to follow, all you do is reinforce the narrative that there is no joy for LGBT+ folk. Just because Nora and Sophie got together in the end doesn’t prove that love conquers all—instead, it felt like a war of attrition and small defeats, won only in some ways and through great sacrifice. The Secret of You and Me is honestly a book that the word “triggered” was made for. While never once condoning homophobia, by giving bigotry such a huge platform for all 400 pages of this book, Lenhardt merely served to give ignorant, hateful people a voice.

This is not a book about queer women finding love; it’s a book about hatred and violence through the eyes of those who are oppressed.

As far as romances go, it’s pretty terrible.