Originally reviewed at http://canlitforlittlecanadians.blogspot.ca/2012/01/betsy-wickwires-dirty-secret...

Everyone has secrets. Sometimes we know they're secrets and try to keep them hidden, in closets and in diaries. Sometimes we don't even know we have secrets, because they're in our repressed memories or not fully realized yet. Betsy Wickwire, seventeen, has had a betrayal kept secret from her and, upon its revelation, she hides herself away in her Halifax home. But, to really hide herself away, she needs money. Everything comes together one day when: 1) she learns of the need for cleaning ladies, who are paid relatively well; 2) she goes to an obscure cafe to avoid people she knows; and 3) meets a former classmate, Meghan, now called Dolores, a green-haired, audacious girl who loves the idea of setting up a cleaning business. With indifference, Becky goes along with headstrong Dolores' enterprise, Lapins de Poussière (Dust Bunnies) Cleaning Service, and finds herself getting more out of the job than just the money.

While still tormented daily by the loss of her boyfriend and best friend and trying to work out how to deal with it, Becky is discovering a new life for herself, with Dolores and Murdoch, a client's son who Becky met in an intimate bathroom tussle. She also discovers that the prevalence of secrets amongst their clients (e.g., the need for anti-depressants, hidden alcohol, marital affairs, trashy reading, etc.) make it easier for her to clean their homes. But the realization that everyone has secrets, even Dolores, ultimately helps Betsy to understand herself, which makes her capable of being a better friend.

Vicki Grant has always successfully merged humour while looking at human behaviour. In Betsy Wickwire's Dirty Secret, the focus is on how secrets make us human but can impede understanding. From Lapins de Poussière's pink, fluffy branding, to Dolores' clever repartée with Betsy, Murdoch and their elderly client, Frank, to the shopping trips to Giant Tiger and Value Village, Grant makes Betsy's new circumstances seem fuller, almost larger than life or, at least, larger than her former life as a popular girl. The old Betsy, though perhaps considered better dressed, more popular and in with the in-crowd, was an insubstantial version of her true self, and it was fulfilling to share in the transformation with her. ( )

Betsy Wickwire has just graduated from high school when she walks in on her boyfriend of two years, Nick, and her best friend, Carly, kissing at the coffee bar where they all work. A chance meeting shortly after links Betsy with an odd duck, Meghan Morris, who prefers to go by the name Dolores. Betsy, devastated by Nick and Carly's betrayal, limply allows herself to become one part of Dolores's summer house-cleaning business, "Lapins de Poussiere" (Dust Bunnies)Cleaning service. Betsy finds solace and satisfaction in cleaning things up, gradually working through the depression that has been such a concern to her mother. In cleaning the homes of others, she discovers--sometimes by accident and sometimes by snooping--that even the most beautiful and apparently successful people whose houses she tidies have secrets--among them, Prozac prescriptions (for depression)and addictions (smoking, drinking, drugs). The discovery of these hidden vices reassures Betsy that she isn't quite the loser she thought she was in being dumped by boyfriend Nick.
On one of their jobs, Betsy literally topples upon tall, geeky, myopic (and very naked) Murdoch, just a couple of years older than she. He sleepily comes into a bathroom that she is cleaning, unaware that she's scrubbing down shower tiles until he's about to step into the stall. A slapstick tumble occurs. An eccentric friendship blossoms between Betsy, Dolores, and Murdoch...and something more than that happens between Betsy and Murdoch. However, if Betsy's secret is that she snoops (and also, for a time, stalks Nick--observing his fitness routine in a park from a vantage point behind bushes), Dolores has an even bigger one than that, and it impacts on Betsy. How Betsy handles the scrape that Dolores lands her in forms the conclusion of this book.

Betsy Wickwire's Dirty Secret is a fast, light, entertaining read. It has some of the same elements and preoccupations as Vicki Grant's earlier success Not Suitable for Family Viewing: depressed protagonist who, by the end, finds herself and her confidence; secrets; slapstick comedic/romantic situations, and snappy, sometimes laugh-out-loud dialogue. However, the novel's resolution is not fully satisfying, given that Dolores's problem is a fairly serious one, and not really adequately accounted for in the simplistic and rather predictable confession that Dolores provides Betsy near the end. Dolores, who has been an engagingly eccentric character, is diminished and so is the book. It is this that brought my rating of the book down from a 4 or 4.5 stars to 3.5. Grant wraps things up just a bit too quickly in this light playful, comedy/romance for teens.

Recommended for girls 13 and up. ( )