Sunday, June 5, 2022

REVIEW: Seven Dirty Secrets (book) by Natalie D. Richards

Seven Dirty Secrets is a YA thriller. I bought my copy brand new.

Review:

Content warning for this book: domestic abuse.

On her eighteenth birthday, Cleo discovers that someone has left an invitation to a scavenger hunt on her sink while she was showering. Which is super creepy, but initially she thinks her best friend Hope or her brother Connor left it. No such luck. As she works her way through the scavenger hunt to find the next clues, it becomes increasingly clear that whoever set this game up knew a lot about Cleo's relationship with her boyfriend, Declan, who drowned during a trip he, Cleo, and their friends took a year ago. And whoever it is doesn't plan to stop this game until all the secrets from that trip are out in the open.

I see a YA thriller and I want to read it. Thankfully, they seem to be big right now, and I keep finding cheap ones I haven't read at Walmart. This one reminded me strongly of one the less supernatural Christopher Pike books I used to devour as a teen, although those tended to be even more messed up and soapy.

I got a kick out of the way the book unraveled some of the characters' lies, although I really wish certain moments had been drawn out better. Unfortunately, the initial setup wasn't that great - I kept wondering why the rafting trip was treated like such a dirty secret when it was pretty obvious that the stuff that went down during it was all self-defense. I could believe Cleo convincing herself that she'd done something horrible, but the way everyone else treated that trip like some big secret they couldn't talk about didn't ring true to me, especially considering what was eventually revealed about how much everyone knew.

Too much of this story's big reveal depended upon a bunch of the characters basically not talking to each other for a year, even when it didn't make sense. I wasn't impressed with the way things worked out. That said, it was a quick read with occasional suspenseful moments, so I got what I wanted out of it.

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