Name: Colleen's review of Our Little Secret by Roz Nay
Item: Our Little Secret
Rating: 2
Author: Colleen

Roz Nay

THE TOP TEN INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE YOU CAN'T MISS... “A cracking read...Our Little Secret builds to a deliciously dark conclusion.” —Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10 Roz Nay's Our Little Secret is a twisted tale of love, pain, and revenge that will stay with the reader long after they turn the last page. They say you never forget your first love. What they don’t say though, is that sometimes your first love won’t forget you... A police interview room is the last place Angela expected to find herself today. It’s been hours, and they keep asking her the same inane questions over and over. “How do you know the victim?” “What’s your relationship with Mr. Parker?” Her ex’s wife has gone missing, and anyone who was close to the couple is a suspect. Angela is tired of the bottomless questions and tired of the cold room that stays the same while a rotating litany of interrogators changes shifts around her. But when criminologist Novak takes over, she can tell he’s not like the others. He’s ready to listen, and she knows he’ll understand. When she tells him that her story begins a decade before, long before Saskia was in the picture, he gives her the floor. A twenty-something young professional, Angela claims to have no involvement. How could she? It’s been years since she and H.P., Mr. Parker that is, were together. As her story unfolds, it deepens and darkens. There’s a lot to unpack... betrayal, jealousy, and a group of people who all have motives for retribution. If Angela is telling the truth, then who’s lying?

A Novel

Our Little Secret

Dany

Colleen

2 Stars

ARC provided by St. Martin’s Press via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

*This review contains some general spoilers.*
 

There was a lot of hype around Our Little Secret, especially for a debut author. My interest was piqued enough to check it out. Sadly, the story was nothing like what I expected and did not hold my interest at all.

At the start of the story, the reader knows nothing except that a woman is missing and the narrator, Angela, is being questioned regarding the disappearance. At first, nothing is told about this woman other than that her name is Saskia and she is missing. No further details will be given for a long time actually. Let’s see. If you were being questioned about a person’s disappearance, would you:

A: Confess everything out of nervousness, even if you didn’t do it. 
B: Demand a lawyer then shut the hell up.
C: Bore the officer to death with an extremely long, self-indulgent narrative of your entire life story including a protracted foray into how you lost your virginity.
Yeah, Angela went with Option C…

The story is essentially one long monologue from the narrator telling her entire life story to the detective who occasional interrupts to try to ask questions about the case. The first third of the story (literally one third!) is an extremely angsty look at Angela’s teenage years. And apparently those years were stuffed full of mindless drama. I hate drama and angst. I hated the nasty drama of high school and have no interest in reliving it in any way. That includes reading books about it. If I had known the story would focus on that so much, then I never would have picked up this book. Honestly, it was highly unlikely that anything in the latter two-thirds could have recaptured my interest after being dragged through all that bitchy high school drama. 

This is not a story about who or what. It’s a story about why. There is almost no action in the story. Everything is passively told after the fact while the reader is kept in the dark about all the interesting bits until the last possible second. Instead, you get to listen to every narcissistic, self-indulgent, self-delusional thought that the narrator can squeeze into a monologue. And I am tired of unreliable narrators. As short as this book is, for me it dragged on.

I usually try to be lenient on debut books, but honestly nothing about this story grabbed my attention. I was bored, disappointed, and frustrated by the narrator. But if you like agnsty, character-driven, semi-suspenseful stories with unreliable narrators and lots of drama then hopefully you will enjoy this book more than I did. I certainly can’t call it a bad book; it just has an abundance of things that I don’t enjoy in my stories and clearly was not the book for me.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 3 Stars
Writing Style: 2 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 2 Stars
Level of Captivation: 1 Star
Originality: 2 Stars

*4.5 stars

I'm sat here thinking, "Huh, damn. They really did that." And I feel like that's really the way that a psychological thriller should leave you. Or any book, for that matter. The narrator, and it goes without saying, is just unreliable. Like, she is so damn shady - Eminem is shaking. And okay, let me just get spoily. 

(view spoiler)[
This bitch. I swear to god. This. fucking. bitch. She fucking snapped! I mean I kinda expected it to be her like I mean who else? The Holy Spirit? Unlikely. But she just... okay, like I thought the twist was that the mom and Freddy killed Miss Saskia. My dumbass really THOUGHT. And, honestly, I was just like "Oh, okay." But then, the last chapter rolled out and just, what the fuck, THIS BITCH. I am so happy with how the actual ending was revealed. Like if the author handed it right away without the "twist" I would have the same "Oh, okay." reaction but no. No, Angela just had to be a lying ass bitch like she really handed my ass to me. And I loved it. 
 (hide spoiler)]

Anyways, read it. It's good as ;)

Melissa Railey

Ashley Lock

For fans of In a Dark, Dark Wood and All the Missing Girls comes Our Little Secret, a compulsive and thrilling debut about a missing woman, a tangled love triangle, the secrets we keep and the secrets we share. The detective wants to know what happened to Saskia, as if I could just skip to the ending and all would be well. But stories begin at the beginning and some secrets have to be earned. Angela is being held in a police interrogation room. Her ex’s wife has gone missing and Detective Novak is sure Angela knows something, despite her claim that she’s not involved. At Novak’s prodding, Angela tells a story going back ten years, explaining how she met and fell in love with her high school friend HP. But as her past unfolds, she reveals a disconcerting love triangle and a dark, tangled web of betrayals. Is Angela a scorned ex-lover with criminal intent? Or a pawn in someone else’s revenge scheme? Who is she protecting? And why? Twisty and suspenseful, Our Little Secret is an intense cat-and-mouse game and a riveting thriller about the lies we tell others—and ourselves.

Dany &
Our Little Secret by Roz Nay

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