Book Review: The Secrets She Keeps

At its heart, The Secrets She Keeps angles around two women Meghan and Agatha, whose lives couldn't be any more dissimilar. If Agatha is a struggling single to-be-mom, Meghan's is a snapshot of shallow upper-class normalcy. But Agatha becomes so consumed with the picture-perfect life Meghan leads, she constructs her own narrative, surreptitiously stalking her every move. Tables turn when they find their due dates both fall in December, and an unlikely bond is forged betwixt the two of them, leading Meg to welcome Agatha to her home, little realising she has invited trouble, and that this innocuous decision of hers will come back to haunt her and expose the fissures in her marriage. The Secrets... predictably employs several of the themes that characterise the so called grip-lit genre (trauma, marriage, infidelity, you name it), but the book is most fun, and most exciting, when it focuses on Agatha, the unreliable protagonist character that has become a staple presence in domestic psychological thrillers of this kind. An insightful suspenser worth a read!