by Liz (link)
Genre het, romance
Pairings Taylor/Natalie, Taylor/OFC, Zac/Kate, Zac/OFC
Length prologue and 65 chapters
Status Completed (with spinoff and unfinished sequel)
It’s perhaps not entirely accurate to label Best Kept Secret is being from the Shout It Out era. Liz began writing it quite a long time ago, but the version posted now has been edited a bit and completed recently. I’ll consider it new, then, but cut it a little slack in consideration of how young the author was when she began writing it.
Not surprisingly, then, the story has a fairly typical premise for early hanfic — the main character is something of a self insert who writes a letter to Taylor in hopes that he will write back. Instead, he calls the phone number she included in the letter. It’s not an especially promising beginning, but I know that a cliche premise doesn’t necessarily mean a bad story. If an author puts her own spin on it, any premise can be turned into something good.
Sure enough, Liz throws in an unexpected twist early on. Because Liz (the character) wants to keep a low profile as Taylor’s girlfriend, a decoy of sorts is hired. That decoy happens to be none other than Natalie… and you can guess what eventually happens. While this seems like it ought to be a cliche, I can’t say that I’ve ever read any other hanfic with a fake girlfriend, so I enjoyed that twist.
Some portions of the story move very quickly and cover a lot of ground, but overall the quick pace works well. There are a lot of twists and turns, although a big portion of the story’s drama centers around the same issue — namely, Liz’s insecurity — over and over again. That gets a little tiring, but overall I find the plot interesting. The story isn’t flawless, but for something than began with a teenybopper sort of premise, I think Liz definitely managed to turn it into a more unique story than I expected.
Review by Bethany (website)