Today, we look at a book that begins with a tragedy and ends in secrets layered in secrets layered in secrets. Today, we look at Her Secret Son by Hannah Mary McKinnon.
As I note in the Goodreads review below, I had a bit of difficulty with this book – at first. It seems that my brain needed a break from reading for a bit (it happens) *and* the opening 10% or so of this book is just *so* depressing – McKinnon does an amazing job of showing a man and a boy’s emotional turmoil when their lover and mother (respectively, obviously) suddenly dies. But that is somewhat similar to my experience reading The Great Gatsby so many years ago. And like that book, once you get beyond the opening, it becomes a truly stupendous tale. In this case, Once the secrets start coming unravelled, they unravell into… other secrets. That unravel into other secrets. All the way to literally the last page of the book. Along the way, we do in fact get the answers we seek as readers, and McKinnon does a stellar job of showing a practical investigation by a person untrained in any investigative techniques. Very highly recommended book.
As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
The Secrets Don’t Stop. I’ll be honest. The opening of this book is *sad*. The entire premise is that a man’s partner and mother of his son dies, and we get that in the first 10% of the book with McKinnon doing possibly *too* good a job of conveying the emotions of both guys. So it is difficult to get through (not helped by the apparent fact that my brain needed a bit of a break from reading for a bit, honestly). But once I got through that… I read the remaining 88% of the book within 12 hrs. Yes, after that sequence the rest of the plot shapes up, and as good as McKinnon was at conveying the devastation initially, she is equally adept at keeping the plot moving along with secrets unravelling into more secrets that unravel into more secrets. Everything is eventually revealed… but there are still secrets being kept through the very last page… Excellent work from a new-t0-me author, one I’m very much looking forward to future work from.