My normal reading genre is romance, but I've been swaying more and more to psychological/suspense books & The Secrets She Keeps reminded me what a great idea this has been for me.

Although I figured out pretty early on what was transpiring with this story, I still really really enjoyed he writing and the twists that were thrown in. I enjoyed reading both women's point of view, I liked being in both of their heads throughout the story! Michael really makes you feel sorry for "the bad guy" in this book, but still makes you want to hate them as well. And that's what I want a book to make me feel!

Overall I give this book 4.5 stars, it was well written and I enjoyed Abby & Meg's story.

I was instantly captivated by this story that goes back and forth between Agatha and Meghan. I love getting more than one perspective when reading a book. There are numerous plot twists woven into this thriller and I could not put it down. I was desperate to get know the characters and find out what would happen next. The buildup was fantastic, however I ultimately gave it four stars because I was expecting a more shocking ending.

The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham is probably the best psychological thriller I have read this year. It is packed with twists which, of course, makes it tricky to describe as well as difficult to put down. On the surface, it is about two pregnant woman living in a London suburb. Agatha, who works in a grocery store, is fixated on Megan, an affluent mother who seemingly has it all. They are strangers, but not for long. This is a chilling novel about obsession, secrets and lies -- a great choice for fans of British author Harriet Lane.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this before the release date. Having read all the author's Joe O' Loughlin series which I love, this is a standalone thriller about two women on very different sides of society , Meghan seems to have it all with a husband and 2 kids and a very comfortable life and Agatha who seems to be struggling with a horrific childhood and a sense that she is all alone . Agatha and Meghan cross paths in the grocery store Agatha works in and strike up a conversation finding out they are both pregnant. As the story progresses the reader gets the sense that something is off about both women..
Standalone books from this author can be hit or miss for me, but this was definitely a hit, hard to put down and kept on reading to find out what would happen next

An avid Michael Robotham fan since his first book to his latest— and each one in between! The talented Australian crime fiction author returns following Close Your Eyes, landing on my Top Books of 2016, as well as Life or Death on my Top 10 Books of 2015 with his twelveth novel—yet another supercharged smashing hit THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS!

5 stars +++ Let me say, there are some juicy evil secrets here . . . KILLER! Top Books of 2017.

Set aside the time (unputdownable). Would make a fabulous movie! A story that will change the way you view other people’s lives. Fitting for today's world of social media.

Two women. Two lives. Two worlds. Two pregnancies. Two sets of very different secrets. The dangers of envy and lies.

Character-driven, skillfully-plotted —Robotham pulls you into the dark secret world of two different women in this riveting domestic suspense thriller.

Two pregnant women. Two women from different walks of life. How will their worlds connect?

The search for happiness. Survival. Managing expectations. Wishing for something someone else has.

Agatha watches Meghan from the window of the suburban London grocery store where she works part-time stocking shelves. She is pregnant. Her baby’s father is away. She leads a sad life. What an imagination!

She desires a perfect life. She wants to be a perfect mother and wife. She will have this world.

“We need the darkness to appreciate the light, and the bumps along the road to stop us falling asleep at the wheel.”

Meghan is chic, elegant, dazzling. Meghan has it all. Perfect children (Lucy and Lachlan), a handsome husband (sports reporter), Jack; stylish, nice friends, beautiful, plus she writes a mommy blog. She is pregnant. Meghan Shaughnessy is a former journalist but now a super-mom with tons of followers.

One follower is obsessed and carries it further.

Agatha is delighted to discover their two pregnancy dates are within the same month. She must figure out a way to get to know this woman. To get close to her.

What is Agatha's agenda? She is the more mysterious one.

Agatha is not so pretty. People do not notice shelf-stockers. She imagines herself friends with Meg. She soon learns Meg’s habits by the things she buys and shops for in the store. She wants to have a life like Meg. She waits for her man, Hayden to return from the Navy. He does not know she is pregnant.

Despite her dead-end job and the desperate ordinary life, Agatha has her imagination and her dreams.

However, is Meg’s life as glamorous as Agatha thinks?

Meg’s marriage is not so perfect. The happy go lucky easy-going Jack has turned into a brittle man whose emotions seem to be wrapped tightly in barbed wire that she cannot hope to unloop them.

Agatha watches Meg, Jack and the children for hours. She stalks. She has been inside their home. The house next to the train track. She may see more than she wanted to. (loved this part with Jack/Realtor/Agatha).

Megan had an affair with Simon. Secrets to take to the grave.

What is Agatha hiding? What does her Jehovah Witness childhood have to do with the present? The horrors and monsters. She is attracted to people. When it comes to her past, people get some of the truth, some of the time.

Told in alternating voices, Agatha has a haunting past she hides. Meghan’s perfect life begins to unravel. What unfolds is heart-pounding chilling suspense! They may have more in common than they know.

A top-notch thriller and a compulsive read. Dark, twisted, and emotionally charged!

Am always amazed at how a man writes such strong women characters. He gets inside their heads—flawed characters, full of emotion, sprinkled with wit, humor, book titles, movies and lots of heart and intensity.

The author mentions in the acknowledgments: . . . “The Secrets She Keeps, a novel whose structure, substance, and twin voices are the most ambitious I’ve ever tackled.”

Congrats! Just when I think the next book cannot possibly be better than the previous, the author manages to create another intelligent award-winning psychological masterpiece!

Not only is Robotham one of the most talented writers, he could be a standup comedian. Hilarious one-liners.

I love the Joe O’Loughlin series; however, the author’s stand-alone's are to be savored as well. One of the top crime thriller international authors today. As always, glued to the pages. (Your US fans adore you!)

Looks like we will get to see more of Joe O’Loughlin, with The Other Wife, coming July 2018 (can’t wait). A pre-order for sure!

Also purchased the audiobook (currently listening). Love narrator, Lucy Price-Lewis delivering a riveting performance.

For fans of Karin Slaughter, Paula Hawkins, Paul Cleave, and Liane Moriarty. Highly Recommend.

A special thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for an early reading copy.

JDCMustReadBooks

This book is extremely addicting. I never wanted to put it down! The subject matter is actually appalling at times, and I was getting emotional toward the end. It's fantastically written and will keep you guessing until the very last page.

Two pregnant women, due around the same time. Other than that uniting them, they couldn't be more different. Meghan stays home with her two lovely children, writes a mommy blog, and has a handsome and successful husband. Agatha currently has no children, works at a supermarket, lives in a crappy apartment, and her boyfriend won't return her calls. Agatha admires Meghan from afar, admiring her life. It seems like it must be perfect. She envies it. Why can't she have that?

As we get to know both Agatha and Meghan, we learn their secrets. We learn the realities of their life, the hurt and guilt they both carry for different reasons. I'm being very careful not to reveal much, because this book is best enjoyed going in fairly blind. There's a reason this book is rated so high on Good Reads. Give it a shot and prepare for an emotional roller coaster!

I received an ARC of this book from Net Galley and Scribner, thank you! My opinion is honest and unbiased.

The suspense began for me 25% into the book. That’s when I knew something was off about Agatha and my ‘creepy’ sensor kicked in. Chapters alternate viewpoints between Agatha and her new friend Meghan, pregnant supermom of two. Agatha is quite a memorable character - she charmed, she seduced, she worked all the angles and allowed nobody to stand in the way of her twisted focus. Being privy to her thoughts was oddly fascinating and she pulled me into her world. My one complaint is that I thought there were too many naive characters who brushed off the inconsistencies in Agatha’s behavior. But this minor issue didn’t detract from my enjoyment of this first-rate psychological thriller.

True to its title, this riveting novel of suspense is full of people keeping secrets.
Two women. Two points of view.
Meghan seems to have it all: 2 beautiful children, a handsome and successful husband, a lovely home in London, a close circle of friends, and now a third pregnancy.
Agatha is on the other end of the spectrum and is desperate to build a life as "perfect" as Meghan's. Agatha works in Meghan's local supermarket and the two women start to bond as their due dates are not far apart.
Loved the entire book, but Agatha's point of view, in particular, was outstanding. Eerie and tense, this was such a twisted tale, a true page turner! I really enjoyed the way Robotham gradually unfolded the plot and revealed more of his characters' layers. The two alternating perspectives worked exceptionally well, and I found I cared about both characters.
This is a standalone novel and was my first book by Michael Robotham. I'm glad I have his Joseph O'Loughlin series lined up on my Kindle to read soon. Fantastic writing! Pretty sure this will make my favorites shelf for this year.

I am most familiar with Australian author Michael Robotham’s series of novels featuring protagonist Joe O’Loughlin, and I have recommended him to many people without hesitation. When I received a copy of his latest, The Secrets She Keeps, from Scribner and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review, I had no idea what the premise was, whether it was an O’Loughlin book, or something new and different. And it WAS different – for sure. This is the story of two women who are apparently pregnant at the same time. One of them, Agatha, works at a supermarket, isn’t married, and spends a lot of time and energy dreaming of the life she doesn’t have (especially the roles of wife and mother). She watches (and seriously at first her stalking really creeped me out) Meghan, a beautiful mother of two seemingly perfect children, wife to a good-looking television personality, whose pregnancy seems about as far along as Agatha’s own.

We learn that although everything LOOKS perfect. Meghan is restless in her marriage: “…sometimes I rake my memory to find moments that make me truly happy.” Told in the alternating points of view of these two women, a recurring theme of honesty and trust is voiced by Meghan early on: “Anyone who says that honesty is the best policy is living in la-la land. Either that or they have never been married or had children. Parents lie to their kids all the time—about sex, drugs, death, and a hundred other things. We lie to those we love to protect their feelings. We lie because that’s what love means, whereas unfettered honesty is cruel and the height of self-indulgence.”

Agatha is no less unsettled: “How can she ever understand my life? What it’s like to live in a cramped, claustrophobic tunnel that gets smaller and darker as each year passes.” Much of her viewpoint is revealed when she says to Meghan “I am an outlier. I am the incredible disappearing woman. I am childless. Less of a person. Not in the club. You take those things for granted.”

Agatha wants the life she thinks Meghan has. Meghan sees Agatha as a familiar face from her shopping trips and yoga class, but little does Meghan know that the ho-hum exchange she has with a store employee during her hurried afternoon shopping trip is about to change the course of her not-so-perfect life!

It’s quite the page-turner, as the characters of the women and their families are revealed in alternating chapters. I was somewhat skeptical about Mr. Robotham’s ability to write from the perspective of two different pregnant women, but he did it with his usual outstanding plot development and attention to details of the characters’ personalities. Never having been pregnant myself, lots of the feelings about pregnancy were unfamiliar – but the lines about childlessness really resonated. I take off one star just because I wasn’t wild about the ending, but I really did enjoy reading it (in pretty much one sitting – I was riveted). Four stars.

Scrappymags 3-word review: Soft and psycho

Genre: Mystery/Contemporary Fiction, out 7/11/17

Shortest summary ever: Aww...everyone loves a nice baby story right? Agatha and Meghan are both pregnant at the same time and due around the same date, yet that's where similarities end. Agatha ekes by on a single person's stock-girl wage, single and knocked-up with no baby daddy in sight. Her foil Meghan is married and lives the posh life in a posh house with her posh hubby (the setting is England and I'm going to say posh a lot. And maybe bollocks.) But as the story evolves, we discover one of these women isn't exactly what she seems..(muhuwaha) and stuff is about to go down in a BIG way…

What’s good under the hood: First off, publishers (I love you) HAVE to stop comparing everything to The Girl on the Train. Yes, that was a great book, but it often spoils other wonderful books with that comparison. Bollocks! (ha!) With that stated, I wasn't hooked when I started to read, but page after page I sunk deeper and deeper into its welcoming psycho abyss. It was cozy. Until it wasn't. I'm a firm advocate of no spoilers so don't read ANY reviews (except mine, duh) because they will ruin this book. The characters are developed well and you’ll have all the turmoil of emotions between I hate this person/I feel for this person/no I hate this person/maybe I feel for this person. All the WTFs you can handle.

What’s bad or made me mad: oh a lot made me mad, but in a I'm-going-to-die-if-I-don't- read-another-chapter way.

Recommend to: Mystery/contemporary fiction/best-seller type lovers. You’ll get into this.

Avoid if you: Are pregnant and easily scare.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner and the author for ensuring I will never have a child, oh and an advanced copy in exchange for this honest (and awesome) review.

Agatha is a supermarket shelf-stocker who fancies the life Meghan appears to have. Meghan is a blogger and stay-at-home mom who's feeling pressured by her husband to return to the corporate world.

This book is divided into two parts. Nothing much happens in part one because it's deathly repetitive and I fought off a heavy dose of boredom by the time part two started. The suspense level perked up halfway through part two and led to a sensible ending.

▣ Overall? Lengthy read, fairly predictable, slow burn. Long inner monologues with a low creepy factor. Not very thrilling.

This book is genius.

Agatha is a hopeless romantic who is in love with the idea of a perfect family. When she decides to tell a past boyfriend who has been at sea for eight months in the Navy, Hayden, that she is pregnant with his baby he soon starts to question her allegations.
While all this is taking place Agatha has been stalking Meghan. Meghan is a mother of two already and married to her handsome husband Jack. She has the perfect 'stay at home' mom life while also running her own 'mommy' blog about her family. Meghan once again is blessed to fall pregnant. Agatha dreams she could have a life such as perfect as Meghan's but has had an unlucky past filled with divorce, miscarriages, and other well kept secrets. Conveniently Agatha and Meghan are both due in December...

Romance, murders, blackmail, and everything else you love in a thriller.

This book surprised me. Very well written. The book started out a little slow but it became very hard to put down. Thank you Netgalley for approving me. I am definitely going to check out more books from this author..

We meet two women, Meghan and Agatha. Meghan s a blogger, marries, 2 children. Agatha is single, pretty much a loner and works in a store. These 2 women cross paths. How? They are both pregnant or are they? Both have secrets and as these secrets unfold, you are pulled into this book and it will not let go until you finish it. This book has it all, relationship issues, mental illness and the largest question, how far will go to get what they need and/or want. This book is a brilliant answer to that question. I highly recommend this read. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book in return for my honest review.

It’s difficult to summarize the plot without getting into spoiler territory; there are some big surprises in this book, though anyone who’s read enough domestic suspense will probably be able to guess at least some of what’s coming. The book is told from the alternating points of view of two pregnant London women: Agatha, who’s single (her ex-lover serves in the Royal Navy, and broke up with her before his current deployment), and Meg, a mommy blogger with a seemingly perfect marriage, home and family. Meg’s third child is an “oops baby,” and her TV sportscaster husband is pretty grumpy about the fact that she’s pregnant. Two kids were enough for him, thanks.

Meg patronizes the grocery store where Agatha works, and in Agatha’s mind, Meg has everything she’s ever wanted: a loving husband, a big family, a beautiful house (Agatha has discovered a vantage point where she can spy on the home). Not wanting to be a cash-strapped single mum, Agatha decides she needs to try to get her ex back. Eventually, the two protagonists’ lives become entwined, and Agatha discovers a shocking secret about Meg’s husband.

Prior to this book, the only Robotham novels I’d read were Bleed For Me and Watching You, which were part of his series featuring psychiatrist Joe O’Loughlin. Both of those books showed that Robotham was a master at writing strong and believable female characters, and the stand-alone Secrets takes that even farther, as the author writes about topics like pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood from a first-person perspective. I was pretty impressed, but the author bio at the end of the novel mentions that Robotham is married and the father of three daughters. My guess is that he has some help in making sure that there are no false notes in his depictions of women’s intimate lives.

It's been awhile now since I've been so wrapped up in a novel that I have to take a peek at the ending. If I don't, I can't just relax and read the book - I'm just racing to the ending, needing to know how it all works out. "The Secrets She Keeps" made me peek.

I don't want to say too much about the plot because it all unfolds beautifully as you get further into the novel. But, generally, the book alternates between two women's point of view: Agatha and Meghan, both of whom are expecting babies. Meghan is a mommy blogger who leads a life that looks perfect from the outside, but is fractured from within. Agatha works at a supermarket and from the beginning, you can tell something about her is....off. Her story unfolds as the novel goes on.

This novel isn't about suspense, since most people can guess what's going on early on, but it's more about the thrill - how the heck is this going to work out?! I was absolutely glued to the pages. Both stories are fascinating and it's hard to say which woman I enjoyed reading about more. In different ways, both were fascinating and captivated me.

The ending was as satisfying as it could be, and left me with both sadness and hope. It really shows how good a book this was in that it made me feel so many emotions; from happiness to extreme sadness.

Highly recommended.

The best way I can describe feeling during this book is a sense of urgency.

Meg and Agatha are both expectant mothers. Meg is a blogger and seems to have the perfect little family whereas Aggy has a different situation. The father of Aggy's baby is in the Navy and we find out early on that he doesn't know about the child making a stark contrast between the two "families." Aggy envies Meg's life and is dying for a way to become friends with her, and finally strikes up a conversation with her. As the blurb says, little does Meg know that conversation will change her life. Without spoiling anything, this book made me want to scream internally, gasp and read as fast as I could. Some of the story is not a total shock, but still so terrifying that all you can do is devour this book.

Robotham does an amazing job narrating two women's perspectives of pregnancy and their mother-like instincts. What will a mother do for her children? What will she do to create the perfect family?

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for this ARC in exchange for an honest review! This was my first Robotham novel and will not be my last!

Wow! What a fantastic book! This is definitely one of my favourite books of this year so far. It was my first Michael Robotham book but certainly won't be my last. Thank you to the author, Net Galley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book. The story of 2 very different pregnant women living in London and the lengths that they will go to keep their secrets. The way the characters past is drawn out over the chapters make you want to keep reading.

Told alternately from the viewpoint of Meg and Agatha, this brilliant thriller had me gripped tightly in its clutches from the very first chapter. Meg is one of those women, who on the surface, seems to have an utterly perfect life. She’s married to a handsome man named Jack and has two lovely children and a third on the way. Agatha is also pregnant, but her life isn’t quite as charmed as Meg’s. As the details of their lives and the secrets they’re both keeping are slowly and methodically revealed, it’s very clear that danger is lurking and dark secrets and betrayals are underfoot.

This book is aptly titled as the secrets these women are keeping are powerful and shocking. It was a constant barrage of revelations and gasp worthy moments and the author masterfully and carefully shared them, at just the right time. It’s divided into two parts and the first half really sets the stage for what’s ahead. There is a lot of character development and buildup, then when part two begins, things get super tense. You couldn’t have pried my Kindle from my hands for all the money in the world, I was that gripped.

I’m keeping this on the shorter side because the plot is so intricate and beautifully crafted that me speaking to it anymore wouldn’t do it any justice. If you are a fan of this genre this a definite must read. It was a highly addictive, perfectly paced, compelling read that I absolutely loved! And now I’ll be busy buying all the books in Robotham’s back catalogue…

This book kept me hooked! I was invested in the characters- flaws and all and liked their not so perfect lives. The plot kept me flipping page after page until the conclusion. I Ike's the aspect of the mother side from both characters and felt I could not only relate but also sympathize. Great book! Thoroughly enjoyed it.