69 pages • 2 hours read
Karen M. McManusTwo Can Keep a Secret
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
Ellery Corcoran
Ellery (and, to a lesser extent, her twin brother, Ezra) is a character driven by family trauma—namely, the high-school disappearance of her aunt Sarah. Sarah’s life and disappearance hang over the family like a lingering shadow, and Ellery longs to understand what happened and to connect with her mother and grandmother through this understanding. As a result, she’s obsessed with true crime as a genre, and when she finds herself in the middle of a mystery, her plucky nature and desire for justice lead her to investigate the town of Echo Ridge. It’s her hope that in doing this, she can provide a kind of symbolic healing for her family, even if she will never learn what happened to Sarah.
Ellery is, in many ways, a typical heroine for a young-adult thriller: She’s smart and attractive, but awkward, with a penchant for getting herself in trouble. She’s also naturally suspicious, and the majority of characters in the novel spend some time in her sights as potential murderers. She has a strained relationship with her mother, and most of her actions in the story can be read through this lens: She values the truth because she’s been denied it by her mother. She and Ezra share a close bond, both because they are twins and because they have often had to be the adults in their relationship with their mother.
Sadie Corcoran
Sadie is the mother of Ellery and Ezra, and during the events of the novel, she is in rehab after struggling with opiates, causing the twins’ relocation to Echo Ridge. Sadie is seen through the eyes of Ellery throughout the novel, primarily through video chat and phone calls, and a tragic picture emerges: a woman who is wracked with survivor’s guilt and has spent the majority of her adult life careening from one impulse to another. She keeps secrets from her children, most notably the identity of their father (it is revealed to be Officer Rodriguez’s father), and refuses to address the emotional problems that exist between herself and Ellery. She is a woman who is living in the aftermath.
The town of Echo Ridge sees her differently. To them, Sadie is a bright spot, a charming, magnetic woman who left for Hollywood and made it big (though in reality her acting career is minor, in Echo Ridge she’s a star). Her tragedy only deepens their admiration, and her reputation precedes the twins everywhere they go.
Malcolm Kelly
Malcolm has lived the last five years in his brother Declan’s shadow after the murder of Lacey Kilduff, Declan’s high school girlfriend. The murder was never solved, leaving Declan as the only suspect, and this trauma made the Kelly family into pariahs until Peter Nilsson, a rich and prominent member of society, married Malcolm’s mother.
As a result, Malcolm is a bit of an outcast at school, though his relationship to his stepsister Katrin and his family reputation keep him on everyone’s radar. He is seen as brooding and a bit mysterious, but in reality he’s a fairly normal teenager. He is very concerned about his relationship with his brother; the two haven’t been close since the murder, and Malcolm has the sense that he’s failed Declan in some way. Their struggle to reconcile comprises the larger part of Malcolm’s emotional arc. It’s his desire to stand up for his brother, alongside his attraction to Ellery, that draws him into the events of the novel.
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By Karen M. McManus
