The Secret Life Of CeeCee Wilkes

The Secret Life Of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Many of the books I've picked up lately have been on themes of secrets and identity, and though this was a book club selection and therefore not my choice, it fit right into the current direction my reading had been headed.



CeeCee Wilkes is a teenage girl, living on her own, surviving as a waitress with a roommate who shares her single bedroom in a rooming house. A child of the 60s and 70s, she has lost her mother and never knew her father, and is adrift in the world when she is found by Tim, a handsome and charismatic graduate student whose motives are not wholly genuine, but whom CeeCee comes to love with her whole heart, and turns her world upside-down to hold onto.



At times I felt as though the character of CeeCee was a little contrived. Were girls really this naive in that era? Would they buy a story a guy gave them hook line and sinker, without ever checking a fact or even wondering if they should do so? While her naivete was crucial to the story, I feel as though the author perhaps initially wrote the story with CeeCee being perhaps 19, and was told there was no way a 19 year old would be this stupid; fix it. Instead of explaining the character's flaws, she chose to shave a few years off of her age, turning her into a minor. The problem with this is that there is no explanation of how she was emancipated from foster care before the age of 18, no explanation of how a waitress in a rooming house got a learners permit to drive with no parent around to be the supervising driver, no explanation of a lot of things that left me feeling a little bit like the author was trying to put one over on me.



The rest of the story, though, is genuine and interesting, including the struggle CeeCee goes through in her life to hide the person she used to be and justify the choices she has made in her life. We all have moments we wish we could forget, though they rarely are as pivitol in the person we become as CeeCee's are. Ineveitably, it all comes crashing down around her, and she has to face her past. The message behind it all seems to be one that love can overcome any obstacle, something I do agree with, and believe with ferocity. Overall, an interesting read with only a few trouble spots.



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