She Treads Softly: Everyone Has Secrets

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Everyone Has Secrets

Everyone Has Secrets by A J McDine
10/21/24; 361 pages
Bookouture

Everyone Has Secrets by A J McDine is a highly recommended domestic mystery.

Noah and Eve Griffiths live with their sixteen-year-old son Joe in the village of South Langley. For his birthday, Joe is having a few friends over to play video games. Noah and Eve are going across the street to her best friend Lisa's house while Lisa's teenage daughter Annie heads across the street to the party at the Griffiths house. All is fine until Joe calls his mom to say Annie is unconscious on the kitchen floor and struggling to breath. Annie is rushed to the hospital and now the police and Eve want to figure out what happened.

Reasons to recommend the novel include a fast-paced, an intriguing plot, an ongoing sense of apprehension, plenty of people with secrets, some interesting twists, and the focus on a drug overdose from MDMA (Ecstasy or Molly). It really isn't a gripping psychological thriller. It is more a domestic mystery or drama with a very engaging plot.

The main problem with the novel for me was Eve. She was a very annoying character and became more unlikable with every page. In fact, the only truly likable character in the whole novel is a child, Bobbi Jo. This is a novel best appreciated for the plot development rather than the characters. Thanks to Bookouture for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.