Macmillan has kindly offered ten hardcovers of The Ashford Affair to give away – though I am limited to US and Canadian readers (my apologies). I'm offering five digital copies open to anyone worldwide – so if you'd like to read The Ashford Affair (and I hope you do!) come share… it's secret time!
To enter, tell us about a secret you've heard or kept — though feel free to change some details if the secret is STILL a secret.
Since The Ashford Affair is all about unraveling family secrets, I thought this was entirely appropriate! Please specify which you'd like – hardcover or digital.
Standard disclaimers apply: I'm not being compensated for this giveaway. Void where prohibited. Hardcover giveaway open to US and Canadian residents. Digital giveaway open to international residents to the extent permitted by applicable law. Must be over 18 and pretending to smoke with one of those badass cigarette holders to enter. Keep out of reach of children. Contact with moving or stationary objects can cause injury. Close cover before striking. Objects in mirror may be younger than they appear.
Comments will close 4pm ET Friday 26 April, and I'll determine the winners by random selection.
I'm still thinking about this book, and I would love to give you the opportunity to read it. Will you share a little secret with us? We won't tell!
Does it count as a secret if you found out about it on national television?
Turns out my brother-in-law has a son from a previous relationship that he did not know about, and it was revealed on a reality tv show on which the producers got his daughter to participate. So she found out while on tv that she has a brother and the rest of us found out about another nephew.
I’m still keeping it secret that one of my coworkers has a same-sex marriage, just to keep the other gossipy coworkers out of the loop. I’m sad that she doesn’t feel comfortable telling other people about her wife (the gossipy ones think she’s married to a man), but I sure don’t blame her.
I am terrible at keeping my own secrets (and all the other secrets I can think of right now are other people’s secrets that I really can’t talk about, even here)…so the most exciting secret I’ve ever kept (and the longest) was my pregnancy. Each time I’ve gotten pregnant (twice so far), I’ve managed to keep the secret from everyone but my husband for the first three months, but it felt like absolute TORTURE! I am so not a natural secret-keeper. I was SO relieved to get to spill about the pregnancies to everyone as soon as the three months were up!
(Oh, and I’m international! So I’m entering the digital-only giveaway.)
Secrets… I always feel like nobody tells me *anything*! But I’ve heard (and kept) secrets about pregnancies, impending breakups, job changes, illnesses. I haven’t heard anything juicy lately, though! (also, the captcha image below is “husband48”. Does this website know something I don’t know?)
I tend to keep my mouth shut about secrets—my dad was a doctor, I’ve worked in hospitals, and good friends are pastors, so confidentiality is ingrained in me. If I need to talk to someone, I’ll talk to my best friend from grad school who lives 5 hours away and knows no one in the area.
My coworker and good friend is dating our company’s CFO. No one else knows. He doesn’t even know I know. It’s funny too because I work with him more than anyone else at my level in the company because I handle the finances for my division whereas he handles the finances for all other divisions. I also share an office with my coworker so it’s amusing when he comes to ask me something and pretends like he barely knows her.
My childhood next-door neighbors were living in a ménage a trois situation, although they passed themselves off as a brother and sister living with a male cousin. This was a lifelong relationship and they were already pretty old when I was growing up. No one knew except the woman’s best friend, who did not tell anyone until all the parties had passed away. My grandfather was very good friends with both of the men, so I’ve always wondered if he knew but never said anything.
My great-grandmother left me a diamond ring after she passed away and my grandmother was very confused as to why she had left it to me and not to one of her children. Little did my grandmother know that one of the diamonds in the ring was her original engagement ring! Back before he was shipped off for the Korean war, my grandfather purchased an engagement ring for my grandmother, but before he could propose they got in a huge fight and broke up. He gave the ring to my great-grandmother with the instructions to “do whatever you want with this.” When he got back from war he reconciled with my grandmother, bought her a DIFFERENT engagement ring and never told her about the original. My great-grandmother had the diamond set in a different ring but always felt guilty about wearing it. She left it to me in her will because she thought I would have gotten it anyway. My grandmother still doesn’t know that the diamond is really hers! (Either digital or print is fine.)
I’m not one to keep secrets usually…I tend to have a big mouth. But I did keep one secret – that a close friend cheated on her BF multiple times. It was so long ago, but I still feel insanely guilty for knowing.
@Jewel – HOLY CRAP.
This is going to be a seriously awesome thread.
I’m not a secret sort of person, since I tend to forget it’s a secret, and blurt out whatever it is! I guess the biggest secret I ever kept was about my son. Not my secret to tell, so I won’t share it here, but I’m still keeping it, so I guess I’m not as bad about secrets as I thought I was!
Someone I am friends with got married the first time to a friend of a friend he had just met once right before he went overseas in the military. But it wasn’t love at first sight. It was a business arrangement so he could get a higher salary and she could get $300 a month while he was overseas plus shopping and buying gas on base. They have both remarried for love and a huge chunk of his family (including his parents) had no idea they were attending his second wedding and still don’t know!
my biggest secret is that I was dating my now fiance for about a year earlier than people know about. Hey, it worked out right? We’re getting married.
I’m a wonderful secret keeper! Growing up my parents always told us my dad’s father had a heart attack and died when my dad was a boy. After the age of 18 they told each of us that my grandfather had in fact been in a fight and was sent to prison for killing a man. It was a big taboo secret! Though the details are still unknown he also died in prison and it is suspected he was murdered by another inmate. This would have occurred in the mid 1930’s.
I’d love to win either copy, hard cover would be 1st choice. Thanks.
I really hate family secrets. One of my best friends comes from a very religious Presbyterian family, and there are many many secrets that she told me, most of which should never have been secret, in my opinion. Secrets cause shame, and I really believe that if people were willing to put more trust in others, they would stand to gain so much support and sympathy. Instead, if you tell no one why you are distressed or snappish, you close others out. I feel as though there are far too many unnecessary secrets in the world, especially within families.
I had a reputation for being a bit of a blabbermouth growing up, but a friend still trusted me with a secret in fifth grade. I kept it (didn’t even write it down in my journal). Now? No idea what it was.
Honestly, I can’t think of any secrets I’m keeping right now. When my one friend was pregnant I was one of the few people that knew so keeping it a secret from the rest of our friends was interesting…..
Word is the reason one of my relatives didn’t get along with her father was because her father killed her fiance’. (This relative died in her early 90’s as an “old maid”.)
No current secrets, but I have kept secrets for friends at times. I also keep gifts a secrets—when the surprise is better than telling. The best one was a shotgun for my husband for his birthday one year. I enlisted his dad to help pick it out and was able to completely surprise him the morning of his birthday.
When my grandfather was on his deathbed, he announced to my mother that she has a black brother. He was old school Italian and incredibly racist so it was quite a shock. He died immediately after the announcement and we will forever wonder if it was the truth or repentence for his closed minded life.
Before he died, my dad told me about an affair two family friends had. Changed my view of them completely, and I haven’t told anyone else in my family because I didn’t want to burden them with it. (either format works for me)
Until high school I wasn’t very good at keeping secrets. Then one of my best friends became the girlfriend of one of my brothers and she basically stopped talking to me. She explained that she didn’t want things me to share with every one else things she told me as a friend, not as the sister of her boyfriend, because I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
That pretty much stopped me in my tracks—because she was absolutely right.
Now I’m very good at keeping secrets, and there must be something in my demeanor that says so, because all sorts of people (many of whom I know only superficially) tell me personal things. It can be a bit disconcerting, frankly.
Oh and print edition, please (sorry about the double comment)
I hate keeping secrets …especially if I find stuff out without meaning to….I think I have kept quite a few over the years. Right now, I think it’s about one of my best friends having an affair with a married man 🙁
Whoops – I would prefer the digital format please.
I don’t have too many secrets.
A guy I used to be friends with confided in my that he once broke into a local historical park, I guess that counts as a secret.
I’m terrible at keeping secrets, but also great at keeping secrets, because I keep forgetting the secrets! This memory is good for nothing, I tell you. (Print edition, please.)
My exposed secret is that I got a small but in a visible location tattoo when I was 14 and hid it from my parents for years. When my mom found out she thought it was something that I drew on.
Print or digital copy works for me.
Not super exciting (I’m another “very bad at keeping secrets” person) but I knew a friend of mine was going to leave her job to move to another city with her boyfriend a good 10 months before she told most other people at work. Either edition is fine (print preferred!).
I think of myself as good at keeping secrets but I have slipped up over the years at times. Most recently, when a family member’s SO was in treatment for depression.
I would like the digital format please!
I can’t think off any recent secrets, but I did keep secret several friends sexual orientation back in college.
No one ever asked me if I knew, so there was never any temptation to blab.
Hardcover please.
Captcha: tell24 How appropriate.
I’m not sure if this is a secret or just a mystery, but last year my aunt was doing some genealogical research, using the 1930 census. Once she found my grandfather’s family, she noticed a name that she didn’t recognize listed as my Great Uncle’s wife. As soon as she saw this unfamiliar name (Nettie—such an old school name!), she called my Great Aunts to see if they knew who she was, neither of whom claim any knowledge of this woman. (Their brother was a bit older than them, so it is possible that they did not know—big Italian-Catholic family=huge age range between siblings.) In the time since finding this woman’s name, we’ve been thinking about other family questions about this same Great Uncle. The reason we were so surprised to see this woman’s name listed as his wife was because he was involved in a long term relationship with a woman, who for my entire life I thought was my aunt, never knowing that she and my uncle never married (what business was it of mine?). We’ve been thinking that the reason this strict Catholic “lived in sin” with his girlfriend and had a child with her was because he was already married. Things make so much more sense now—the only thing is we wonder what happened to this woman—by the 1940 census she was no longer listed (neither was my uncle, but he was in prison for armed robbery (I guess he wasn’t so strictly Catholic that the pesky 7th Commandment stopped him from doing what he wanted), so we know where he was.) Our best guess is that when he went to prison, she left him.
If that doesn’t count as a secret, here’s another one: My dad’s girlfriend thinks that he and my mom are divorced, but they aren’t. They’ve been separated since I was 14, but they’ve never gotten the divorce (the excuse is that it would have been too expensive). Apparently, this is the thing to do in my dad’s family because his younger sister is secretly separated (I only know because my cousin needed to tell someone) from her husband and is dating a man 18 years older than her.
I would prefer the hard cover, but either is fine.
I kept the secret of a friends secret relationship (co-workers and all that). It came out soon after but it was probably because it was really obvious.
Digital please.
One time my older sister told me the strictest confidence that she wants to be a broadway star. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal to share with the rest of the family but for some reason it’s the only secret I’ve managed to keep all these years. Until now, of course.
Print for me please!
I dated my boyfriend for 2 years in secret because we were both in ROTC at the time and our relationship was considered fraternization. We could have both lost our full ride scholarships to college. It worked out ok though, because we’ve been together for 15 years and married for 9 🙂
Print or digital would be awesome, but I do love print books best. My large library is the only ongoing disagreement we’ve had for 15 years. You would think he would have just capitulated by now!!
As a physician, I keep many secrets, none of which I will reveal here. However, my younger brother is married to a lovely woman whose family we knew when she was born. Our families moved to different areas a couple months after her birth and didn’t see each other for decades so when the two of them met, it was a new meeting. When they started dating, my mom called me and said “I know you are old enough to remember that she was adopted but she doesn’t know so don’t tell her.” Of course, the next few times I saw her, it was all I could think of, especially since she is dark haired and thin (like her birth mom who I met once), not blond and rosy like the rest of her family.
I would love to win either digital or hard copy. Keeping my fingers crossed.
I hate secrets, from having to keep them as a kid, about things like family alcoholism and financial situations (like bankruptcy) from other family members. But reading about them is fun.
My older sister has a secret tatoo and I’ve never told her that I know about it! I would love to win a digital copy.
Well, the secret’s out now, but once upon a time, my friend cheated (quite publicly) on her long distance boyfriend. Then she invited me over to have dinner with them when he was next in town. I had to sit there and talk with both of them, knowing the whole time that she had cheated on him. One of the most uncomfortable nights of my life to date! She told him about having cheated the next day, and they eventually broke up, but that was a hell of a test on my secret keeping abilities! Print or digital is fine with me. 🙂
Haha, captcha is decision46!
The best seekrit I can think of is either my pregnancy (my first, and people have only known about it for about a month) or my best friend’s pregnancy! I always joked that we would have kids at the same time and they would grow up to be either best friends or mates. Neither one of us were really trying but it actually ended up that way (she’s about 10 weeks behind me). Only a handful of people know about her but I AM DYING trying to keep this news!
(If a winner, I would love a hardcopy. Since there’s only five digital copies, I’d like to leave those for winners outside of America)
Great contest and good luck to everyone!!