Secrets of Truth and Beauty is a multi-layered coming of age story of 17-year-old Dara Cohen. Once a junior pageant winner, Dara is now an overweight teen with some very deep-seeded self-loathing and dysfunctional parents. When an English assignment is misinterpreted, she is removed from school and forced to go to therapy. Striking out on her own, Dara tracks down the long lost sister she never had and spends the summer working with her on a goat cheese farm. During the summer, Dara makes a good friend; finds love; and self acceptance.

At first, Dara constantly insists that she is not constantly obsessing about her weight or hates her body. As we get deeper into Dara's inner conversations, the more it is revealed that the opposite is true. Her inner conversations with herself include put downs, insults, and isolating herself from things that she would like to do. A misconstrued comment from her newly acquired gay BFF about Mama Cass from the Mamas and the Papas acts as a catalyst for Dara to become the person she has been keeping hidden out of fear of being ridiculed for her weight.

This book is engaging, well written, and thoughtful. It has a high readability level. Once you're into the story, it is hard to put down.

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Enjoyable, warm, engaging and thought-provoking.

I particularly loved Dara herself, with her insecurities, her humor, her compassion, and her joy she really struck me as someone I would have liked to have as a friend. I also enjoyed all the sweet and quirky details about the characters of Jezebel farm. So much of this rang true to me with respect to perceptions of weight and how it impacts our self-worth. Some passages were painful to read, but the pain was always leavened by Dara's personality. And in the end I believed that she had achieved something truly significant.

At its heart, this is a coming-of-age story about accepting oneself and looking beyond exterior labels to the person beneath, moving past one's history to create something new. The culmination isn't a big surprise, but where this book shines is in the characterizations: in lesser books, the Fat Girl's goal would be to lose weight to win over the boys; the gay characters would either be on a crusade to end discrimination everywhere or become the Fat Girl's Cause To End All Discrimination. Here, though? Yes, Dara is a Fat Girl, but it's not her whole identity. Yes, her friend is gay; yes, her sister is gay, but "gay" is not who they are, or even what they are. What could be labels as a shorthand to personality are more background details; they could just as easily have been "redheads" or "Canadian" for all it mattered. And that's an excellent thing--while they occasionally discussed the problems of being stereotyped for what they were, in Frazer's hands they were never treated as stereotypes.

(Disclosure: Meg and I went to library school together and I'm pleased to call her my friend--and chagrined that it took me this long to get around to reading her excellent book!) ( )

Back when she was young and cute, Dara was a talent pageant star. Now, however, she’s in high school and fat. When her interpretation of an English class autobiography project causes the adults—especially her controlling parents—to freak, Dara decides to spend the summer with her estranged older sister, a family secret that her mother never talks about. Summer on a goat farm is like nothing Dara has ever known, but with the help of some new friends and a long-lost sister, Dara just might learn a few things about the importance of love, family, and self-acceptance.

SECRETS OF TRUTH AND BEAUTY is a surprisingly sweet read with strong undertones of Sarah Dessen’s work. At times a little choppy, the novel is overall a nice and quick read, perfect for those days when you want a little slice of optimism in the face of hardship.

Characters are strong in this book, but Dara is by far the most well-drawn and most likable. Unlike many other protagonists in books that deal with weight, Dara is not constantly apologetic of it, and undergoes a very real struggle to not let her weight define who she is. Dara’s infuriatingly controlling mother is the perfect foil to her growth in self-esteem; you’ll want to step right into the story and give Mrs. Cohen a good hard slap in the face. We can relate all too well to Dara’s struggle to love herself, when other important people in her life cannot seem to love her as she is.

When the plot moves to the goat farm, the story loses a bit of its footing and credibility as we are introduced to a number of characters that are never quite fully fleshed out. In the second half of the book there is a bit of wavering as to the story’s main conflict. Is it still about Dara’s learning to work with the body she has? But wait! What about that slightly weird arc regarding homosexuality? And what is UP with the romance that comes out of nowhere? The numerous elements introduced to us in the back half of the story conflicted with one another and made for some confusion.

Still, I definitely enjoyed SECRETS OF TRUTH AND BEAUTY. Dara is a darling protagonist, and you will not be able to resist cheering for her as she learns how to believe in herself and not let others’ words affect her so deeply. ( )

Reviewed by Marta Morrison for TeensReadToo.com

What would you do if you found out that you actually have an older sister that you have never even met or knew about?

This is what happened to Dara. She accidentally found out that she had a sister who was seventeen years older than herself. Her parents don't speak of her and no one else will say anything except her uncle.

Dara has a debacle at school and decides that she needs to meet Rachel and goes to find her in Massachusetts. She finds her on a goat farm which makes cheese. Dara stays on the farm with Rachel and finds another family - and herself - in the process.

This was an interesting book filled with wonderful, diverse characters. There are a number of gay characters written in a realistic, loving way. The main character wasn't a skinny-minnie, and the fascination that society has with thinness was also explored.

The relationship between Dara and Rachel is awkward, as it should be, and endearing as well. It really makes a case to teens to be who you want to be and not what society or others want you to be.

This book was one that I kept wanting to return to while I was on vacation, which tells me that it is well-written and one that many should like. So do yourself a favor and pick up Megan Frazer's debut, SECRETS OF TRUTH AND BEAUTY. ( )