Little Secrets

Little Secrets - Megan Hart

I wasn't sure where this was going, but in the end I really loved it.

 

This is not really a light and fluffy kind of horror story, but it's not the kind of extremely dark dreary stuff you get sometimes, either. It's a modern gothic, feeling in several ways like a significantly updated Barbara Michaels book.

 

There are plenty of mysteries to be solved, and a question of a ghost. Is it a ghost? Is it someone trying to make her think it is a ghost? Is Ginny going crazy? What on earth happened in this house in the past, and what can be trusted regarding the stories told? I see-sawed back and forth on all of these things several times throughout, which I love quite a bit. I didn't realize what the solution was, although it was certainly not the sort of blind-siding thing you occasionally see. It made sense, but I got so distracted by all of the options while reading that I was probably 85% of the way through before I got an inkling of the answer, and even then I didn't see the whole thing.

 

I liked Ginny, for all that she was cranky at times. She was rather rightfully cranky; she was an independent woman and she did not like to be babied, and the fact that she starts the book both pregnant and being babied gave a good reason for everyone to be continually dismissing the odd things happening as just her not having everything quite together because of her history and her hormones. Gothic horror requires either the main character either afraid to speak or not ever believed, but there is rarely a real reasoning behind it.

 

Her husband drove me nuts occasionally, though how much of that is because of certain past events that come up in the story and how much of it is just that I was seeing him through Ginny's eyes is a tricky thing.

 

The dialogue and general writing was quite good, I thought. It felt very modern without feeling extremely dated (though I suppose in thirty years I can't promise it won't); it's a hard balance to strike and one that a lot of authors don't manage. Ginny was clever and thoughtful, her sister and husband felt fully fleshed-out (complete with flaws!), and they spoke to each other like they actually knew each other and shared a history, not as though they had just been thrown together and now had to make nice.

 

I will certainly be picking up any more books like this Megan Hart has written, and I kind of regret this being over. I will probably be re-reading this at some point just to see how well everything was telegraphed throughout, and I am looking forward to it already.

 

This book was provided to me for free via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.