Any one who knows me very well knows that I’m trying to broaden my horizons. I’m trying to branch out beyond my preferred genre. Up until the last year, I exclusively read romance of all subgenres. I didn’t even glance at anything else. Upon life giving me a rough time, I fell into quite the reading slump. I didn’t want to read … anything. I started to miss it though, getting lost in the pages of someone else’s story. Living in another world for just a little while. So when I came back to reading, I obviously started with a romance. It didn’t go well. In fact, it didn’t go anywhere. I tried and tried to get into something and just couldn’t. Thrillers to the rescue! I’ve been tentatively dipping my toe into the thriller genre and Little Deadly Secrets was a perfect example of just how wonderful this genre can be!

I was skeptical. It had been a couple of weeks since I had really tried to read anything. The pinks of the cover are what initially drew me in. It really stood out on my shelf and it seemed like my hand went right to it. The tagline also caught my eye and made it a candidate for my next best read. “Three best friends. Two unforgivable sins. One dead body …” I mean COME ON. Who wouldn’t be a little curious about that.

So there was this dead body … I’m just kidding. Well, I’m not kidding. The story starts out with a murder scene. I’m usually not a fan of prologues, BUT this one stuck in my mind throughout the entire three days that I was reading this book. I spent over 300 pages trying to figure out who that was in the prologue. I had a pretty good idea but about halfway through, I wasn’t so sure anymore. Let’s talk about the things that I didn’t like, or rather things that I USUALLY don’t like. There were so many different POVs. I am a fan of dual POV but every character in this story had a POV it seemed like and that usually drives me nuts. There were also alternating timelines. This usually takes me out of a story simply because I don’t want to have to try that hard to follow a plot. Lastly, there was some alternating between third and first person. I didn’t like that at all and I don’t think it was necessary for the storyline.

The characters in this story were so ridiculously relatable that I almost found myself being triggered by them. Not in a bad way mind you, I just felt so connected them. I wouldn’t say that they developed a whole lot throughout the story, the character ARC was a little bit lack luster for me but not really an issue in the end. Things worked out exactly the way they needed to. The conflict, however, almost felt a little too “swept under the rug” for me. Somehow… somehow it worked though.

This book was absolutely awful. And you should absolutely read it. The plot was frustrating and I just couldn’t put it down until I knew what was going on. It was a perfect example of all the less desirable elements being used to craft a story that you just can’t put down. I feel like I hated every second of it but would recommend it to anyone who asked. Needless to say, this book left me with some mixed feelings and a four star review. Pamela Crane, ma’am, how dare you… what else do you have on your backlist?