Family Secrets

Family Secrets (1985) is a young adult novel written by Norma Klein. Leslie and Peter are childhood friends who become lovers the summer before their senior year in high school. Their romance is immediately complicated by Leslie’s discovery—by reading her mother’s diary—that her mother, Aline, and his father, Nelson, are having an affair. Before the summer is over their parents have announced their impending divorces and Leslie and Peter’s lives are thrown in disarray. The pair spends the next few months of their lives dealing with senior year in high school, the divorces of the parents, and the quick marriage that legally makes them stepsiblings. In addition, Peter is striving for early acceptance at Harvard while Leslie spends much of...