At a Glance

Title: Little Secrets

Author: Jennifer Hiller

Expected Publication: April 21, 2020 by Minotaur Books

Page: 352

Genre: Mystery Thriller

Goodreads Rating: 4.36 out of 5

My Rating: ★★★★★

Synopsis

“From the author of Jar of Hearts, a mother driven to the edge by the disappearance of her son learns her husband is having an affair with the woman who might have kidnapped him. Four hundred and eighty seconds. That’s how long it took for someone to steal Marin Machado’s four-year-old son.

Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs his own company. They’re admired in their community and are a loving family. Up until the day Sebastian is taken.

A year later, Marin is a shadow of herself. The FBI search has gone cold. The publicity has faded. She and her husband rarely speak. The only thing keeping her going is the unlikely chance that one day Sebastian reappears. She hires a P.I. to pick up where the police left off, but instead of finding him, she discovers that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman.

Kenzie Li is an artist and grad student—Instagram famous—and up to her eyeballs in debt. She knows Derek is married. She also knows he’s rich, and dating him comes with perks: help with bills, trips away, expensive g

ifts. He isn’t her first rich boyfriend, but she finds herself hoping he’ll be the last. She’s falling for him—and that was never part of the plan.

Discovery of the affair sparks Marin back to life. She’s lost her son; she’s not about to lose her husband, too. Kenzie is an enemy with a face, which means this is a problem Marin can fix. But as she sets a plan in motion, another revelation surfaces. Derek’s lover might know what happened to their son. And so might Derek.”

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My Thoughts

Fair warning, you’ll need to dedicate a solid block of time to read this all at once. Little Secrets, is the very first Jennifer Hillier book that I have read, and it is not going to be my last. Holy Moly was this an amazing book! It tied for the position of my favorite book for March 2020 and honestly I haven’t been able to get into another since. I’ve had to switch up my reading genres to lean heavily on historical fiction and fantasy lately, because this one was such a good thriller.

Marin has the perfect life. The perfect husband, Derek. The perfect job, owning her own set of high end salons, and the perfect little boy. When her son goes missing while out Christmas shopping with Marin, her life has been totally wrecked. More than a year later and Marin is learning how to piece her life back together slowly until she releases her husband is cheating on her with a 24 year old. All of Marin’s rage and frustration comes out and she turns toward one of her oldest friends to help her get rid of this problem. This book really digs the message home, that you can never really know someone.

In the very first chapter Hillier gets your heart racing. I could feel the panic of Marin and Derek losing their son. As the story went on my anticipation kept growing, so much so that I actually HAD to binge this book in one sitting. I cannot remember the last thriller I read where I was completely blind sighted by the turn of events.

The characters themselves are brilliant and the fact that Hillier brought so many parts of what it’s like to have a missing child into the book was fabulous. She brings a lot of facts into the story as well about missing children and the statistics around the children being found. What I liked most about her portrayal though was the lack of uniformity between how parents grieve, how couples cope, the age, demographic, social economical, and have the children were abducted. While this story focuses mainly on Marin’s son disappearance, we meet a whole slew of personalities suffering the same traumatic experience in their own way. The added level of depth mixed in with the thriller aspect was the perfect balance.

I recommend this book for anyone who love a good book, and I think it’ll be one of my favorites for 2020!

This book is out now! If you think you’d like to read this book, get your copy HERE!

I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on Little Secrets.If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof_books. Huge thank you to Minotaur Books for my advanced copy!

About the Author

Jennifer Hillier writes about dark, twisted people who do dark, twisted things. Born and raised in Toronto and a proud Canadian, she spent eight years in the Seattle area, which is where all her books are set.

She loves her son, her husband, the Seahawks, and Stephen King. Not equally, but close. She’s the author of six novels, including JAR OF HEARTS, which won the Thriller Award, and was shortlisted for the Anthony and Macavity Awards.

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