Product Description

Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets: Secrets from her boyfriend: I’ve always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken. Secrets from her mother: I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur. Secrets she wouldn’t share with anyone in the world: I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is. Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger.…Until Emma comes face-to-face with Jack Harper, the company’s elusive CEO, a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6724 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-27
• Released on: 2005-12-27
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780440241904
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Things are suddenly starting to look up for the hapless but optimistic Emma Corrigan. She has kept her job at Panther Cola for nearly a year, has the perfect boyfriend and hopes for a promotion to marketing executive should her first opportunity to strut her stuff and land a business deal be successful. Unfortunately, things don't go quite as planned, and on her unusually turbulent return flight from a disappointing client meeting, in a terrified state, she confesses her innermost secrets to the good-looking stranger sitting beside her. When she shows up at work the next morning, she is horrified to discover that her mystery man is none other than the revered and brilliant Jack Harper, American CEO of Panther Cola, on a weeklong visit to the company's U.K. branch. Thus begins a series of chaotic, emotionally exhausting and funny episodes that thrust Emma, with her workaholic best friend, Lissy, and their awful flatmate Jemima, into a world of fairy tales, secrets and deceit. Venturing beyond Saks and Barney's, the bestselling author of Confessions of a Shopaholic and Shopaholic Ties the Knot entertains readers with backstabbing office shenanigans, competition, scandal, love and sex. The plot is gossamer thin (Jack is keeping secrets of his own) and the lopsided romance not entirely believable, but Kinsella's down-to-earth protagonist is sure to have readers sympathizing and doubled over in laughter.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The author of the Shopaholic trilogy offers up a delightful new novel, filled with her trademark wit and humor. When her plane en route from Glasgow to London experiences horrible turbulence, Emma Corrigan is convinced she is going to die. She babbles all of her most intimate thoughts and secrets to the handsome American man sitting next to her. But the plane lands safely, and Emma bids him an awkward good-bye. When she enters the office on Monday and learns the CEO of the company, Jack Harper, is in for a visit, Emma is horrified to learn Jack is actually the man in whom she confided on the flight. He knows everything, including that she hates her job and that she is not quite sure she loves her boyfriend. But Jack does not fire her on the spot; instead, he quietly replaces the office coffeemaker she hates and gives her advice about her personal life, which she finds infuriating. So why can't she stop thinking about him? Kinsella has another irresistible hit on her hands. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Backstabbing office shenanigans, competition, scandal, love and sex.... Kinsella?s down-to-earth protagonist is sure to have readers sympathizing and doubled over in laughter."
--Publishers Weekly -- Review

Customer Reviews

I'll Tell You A Secret---I Love This Book!
It's light, fun, and totally entertaining. No deep plot, no bio-terrorism or horrific religious scandal. Just a breezy and funny slice of life as seen through the eyes of Sophie Kinsella's newest heroine, the endearing Emma Corrigan.

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.

Promise you won't tell!
Readers who've been enchanted by the Becky Bloomwood character of Sophie Kinsella's SHOPAHOLIC series will not be disappointed by CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?

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.

Improbable story using recycled characters
Emma is a ditzy, 25-yr-old junior marketing assistant whose career outlook is not too bright. She's in debt and estranged from her parents who have found a surrogate daughter in Emma's over-achieving, overbearing cousin. About the only bright spot in Emma's life is her perfect boyfriend, but even their relationship may not be all that it seems.

The books starts out kind of fun and I chuckled while reading the list of Emma's secrets. However, Kinsella follows the stereotypical chick-lit plotline religiously and after the first 20 pages, the laughs and the surprises are gone.

The pages are full of stock characters with no qualities to make the reader care about them. They are bland and completely unmemorable. If this were a movie they'd have all come from the Acme Talent Agency - and they probably will when Hollywood turns this into another tired romantic comedy. None of the characters are capable of depth or any beliveable motivations, they are either all good or all bad and there is no room for any shades of gray - or for any realistic behavior.

Kinsella proves even her stereotyping talents are limited as she seems capable of writing about only one set of characters. The people in this book are exactly the same as in her Shopaholic series, only with different names. Emma and Becky are the same person right down to the frequent and annoying "Erm..." Jack and Luke are identical, as are the catty rivals, the sincere best friend, and the handsome but doomed boyfriend.

As in Shopaholic, I once again found myself wondering what a successful, intelligent businessman would ever see in the scatterbrained and annoying female character. There is certainly no chemistry between the pair and Jack just comes off looking stupid for putting up with Emma. The storyline is completely unbelievable and the climactic moments are so ridiculous they were painful to read. The ending is sudden and sappy, but resolves nothing.

I gave it two stars simply for the first chapter. I can't recommend this but if you must read it, get it from the library like I did. Don't waste your money.