The Truth-Teller's Tale (Safe Keepers Series #2) Book

Talk is cheap. Especially when it comes to telling someone what is what. People lie. I've come to feel as I've gotten older that it's not good for all that much. Is it more important to be honest with everyone, or just honest with yourself (you'll learn more doing the latter)? I think honesty is overrated. There are too many layers, too many almosts to say for certain. The certainty is lying, to me. The intent behind the lie is what matters and the intent behind the truth, right? Because either one can hurt.

What is the price to pay for bearing the burden of someone else's secrets? Words are for relating and if there's the chance to connect out of that, then it is worth it. I just don't trust it farther than I can throw it (and I throw like a girl).

Sisters Adele and Eleda are mirror twins (I'd thought this was made up until meeting a pair earlier this year). Like their appearance traits, the nature of their gifts of truth-telling and secret-keeping are reflections of the other in the other direction. Eleda cannot tell a lie, or be in the prescence of one without naming it. Their names are palindromes, the lies and truths are fake palindromes. Adele is silent, holding in the secrets that people lay on her doorstep for their own peace of mind, regardless of the added weight on her shoulders. It is considered to be their birthrights in the kingdom that they live in. Dream-makers (whom have the power to make wishes come true, yet tragedy strikes those closest to them), truth-tellers and safe-keepers are in every town, keeping up the burdens for "the greater good", at great personal cost. Shinn's deceptively simple fantasy world is gradient and realized as a real one.

Unlike the secret-keepers known from the previous book (Safe-Keeper's Secret, an absolute gem), Adele plays with her position. She'll pretend to be her sister when someone looks for a Truth-teller. It's an issue of communication. I felt it sick beyond words that Adele and their friend had to poison Eleda to keep her from acting on the trust for the wrong person. Why not break out of what you always do when you need to? Words can be important, sometimes. Eleda can overlook nuances in her essentials, though. (Sharon Shinn is amazing.) It is important to try. I loved Eleda for wearing her heart on her sleeve. Truth-keeping nature aside, it was her own nature to keep that open.

It's opposite day and Adele will tell the truth and Eleda will lie.
I related to Adele in the ways that other readers have found to be her unreadably "bad" traits. It's been one of the fears in my life that I'll end up forever the wooden post to be just there to hear other's problems, with no care for me and who that me is that's listening (not always caring, I'll be honest). It's something I'm torn about, like Adele. I wanna be able to listen, but it does eat away at you (especially when the chance to do the same is nil). It isn't the nature of being a safe-keeper solely, the safe-keeper of Safe-keeper's Secret would confess secrets to another of her kind. I think it had to do with the habits of inner honesty and dishonesty, and keeping things to oneself. It's a hard cycle to break. There's a heart that should be kept only for oneself and that's Adele's core.

(Can't believe it took me this long to get to this) Their twin relationship was another feeling I could relate to and eyed with keen interest for its development. It's tricky when you can relate to someone a lot already and then the differences seep in (or slam in, as the case can be). Like experiencing the same thing and coming out of it differently. Beginning a life very much the same; looks to present to the world the same; same influential family background; culture. Yet there are still differences. It fascinates me how a person is different all the same. (Not just because I'm a twin and endlessly interested in everything to do with me. Although that is true, too.) The lies and truths are like that twin relationship too. They stem from the same place and then twist...

The third book in the series, The Dream-Maker's Magic is a fairy tale about the paranoid superstition that something good always brings on something bad. Like if you're afraid to hope for anything good and staying pessimistic keeps open the options for a turn of luck.
Safe-keeper's Secret is easily one of the warmest books I've ever read. It's about trying on everything, pushing your round self into square pegs, until learning what fits. I love Sharon Shinn because she knows how to tell a damned good story in an unpretending way.
(When youngers I gave my twin the sarcastic nickname of "Honest Lauren". She then made it a point to be annoyingly honest [about bad things I'd done, too!]. Ugh.)