This was an okay psychological thriller, but not one of my favorites. Through the medium of a police interrogation, Angela takes us through the history of her relationship with her high school boyfriend, HP, and his now wife, Saskia, who is currently missing. The police suspect Angela in Saskia's disappearance, and Angela insists on starting her story at the beginning, so we go through her life as she meets HP, falls in love with him, and how everything changes when he meets Saskia. I did relate to Angela in some uncomfortable ways, and found get an interesting character, but was not totally compelled by her story nor did I find this to be an especially thrilling thriller. But it's gotten some rave reviews from other people, so I'd suggest checking it out for yourself if it sounds interesting.

2.5 stars, rounded up

This book starts off very strangely. Angela is being interrogated by the police about a missing woman. But instead of answering the detective’s questions, she launches into a story about her days in high school with her best friend, HP.

The story of her life goes on with the detective only occasionally asking her questions about Saskia, the missing woman and the HP’s wife. I’m sorry, am I really supposed to believe this?

I never found I could connect with Angela. It’s not that she’s an unreliable narrator, she just felt flat.

The book takes a long time for it to gear up and pick up the pace. But once it does, I couldn’t believe the ending.

I see I’ve questioned the believability of this story twice now. Guess that pretty much sums it up.

My thanks to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advance copy of this novel.

At just less than 200 pages, I found Roz Nay's Our Little Secret too short. While you think you get to know Angela AKA Little John, in three pages at the very end, everything you thought you knew goes down the drain. While some may appreciate this way of ending a novel, I found it completely dissatisfying. It's difficult for me to give a full review, especially knowing that the Amazon version coming out on April 17th shows it has more than 72 additional pages than the copy I read. I realize this version is indeed an ARC, but it made me wonder what else Nay has added. She does a great job keeping you reading and interested in Angela, HP, and Saskia's lives, as well as secondary characters that only make brief appearances. It's definitely an quick, enjoyable read. At this point, I'm hopeful that she elaborates on the ending so readers get closure!

3.25 stars

Highly entertaining and compulsively readable, Our Little Secret is a psychological thriller about first love and obsession.

The story opens with 26-year-old Angela being questioned by the police over her role in the disappearance of the disappearance of Saskia, the wife of her best friend and former lover, HP. Angela denies any involvement, but her case is soon turned over to Detective Novak.

Angela shares her version of events with Detective Novak, going back in time to when she was 15 years old and had just moved from Boston a tiny town in Vermont. At the time, she felt like an outsider until taken under the wing of fellow student and swim team captain, HP. She finds solace in his friendship, and eventually, their friendship transforms into love. However, young love can only last so long.

Angela slowly reveals the story of their demise, coyly playing a cat and mouse game with Detective Novak. Did she play a role in Saskia’s disappearance? Is HP not the innocent man that Angela paints him to be?

Our Little Secret is a fast-paced, quick easy read that I couldn’t put down. However, the lure of Angela’s voice began to wane about halfway through. I love a masterful, manipulative narrator, but something was missing for me. I got sick of all of Angela's telling and wanted more showing--I think that would have taken things to the next level for me. I would still recommend Our Little Secret if you are looking for a quick, entertaining psychological thriller. I will definitely be reading more by Roz Nay in the future!

Many thanks to Ariana from St. Martins Press for sending me an ARC of Our Little Secret!

Thank you to both St. Martins Press #partner and BookSparks for the free copy of this book. Below is my honest opinion, and all opinions are my own.

I rate this book a 3.5 stars out of 5.

First, this book was a FAST read for me, I finished it within 12 hours, it was very addicting. I loved the writing style. I felt like Angela was telling me her story, and I really liked that aspect. It had me flying through the pages to see what happened between Angela and H.P. and what happened to Saskia. This was a very creative book. With a great premise.

I did feel certain parts were executed in a very immature manner, I couldn't picture adults acting and speaking like some of the characters in this book, and I have a personal dislike of abbreviated words like "totes" and the like, which is similar to how Saskia talks in this book. I do want to say also, that I took issue with the fact that Adult characters, acted and talked the same way as they did when they were teenagers, It made it harder to imagine them as adults due to that fact. But than I also realize 25 is still relatively young , so 20 somethings may still talk and behave this way. 

Overall I did enjoy the book, I liked a lot more about it, than I disliked. It wasn't by any means terrible, and I would definitely recommend it to other readers, especially for new readers to the thriller/suspense genre. This is a good book to start out with.  I felt like it progressed well, it wasn't loaded with back story and unnecessary words, and information. It was short, sweet, and to the point. Which as a reader, I appreciate it. There is nothing worse than being bogged down by a pointless pages.

This is a very interesting book! It starts out in an interrogation room of a police station where Angela (LJ as she is known to her friends) has been brought to be questioned about the disappearance of her former boyfriend's wife, Saskia. Angela met her former boyfriend, HP, when she moved to Vermont as a freshman in high school. Angela insists on telling the story describing the dynamics of the relationship between her, HP, his best friend Ezra and Saskia from the beginning. What a story it is with a lot of twists, turns and surprises. I thought I had the ending of this book figured out several times but I was wrong. If you like a really good thriller, I highly recommend this book.

The characters of this novel were, for the most part, well developed. Angela, though, was assumed to have unraveled at some point yet we aren't really given any indication as to this. Overall, I felt the story line wasn't plausible. It is unlikely that childhood sweethearts would break up and then, while one still heartbroken, remain in each other's lives, even living in a communal setting. It was also unlikely that at 19, HP would have a fight with Angela that would result in not just a random hookup, but a marriage. And for Saskia, who was presented as a world traveler, to be content to be married at 19 and living in Vermont...well, I didn't buy it.

This thriller opens at a police station with a woman being questioned about a missing woman in her town. The book unfolds with her telling the detective the story of how she knows this woman. It is creepy, twisted, and dark.

I was rapt the entire time, trying to figure out what was happening and how her story could be connected to that of the missing woman. Very interesting plot involving love triangles and past history. It kept me guessing until the very end.

Fast paced psychological thriller. But a little formulaic and weak character development.
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Yes, Yes, Yes! I LOVED this book. It was a quick read, but the story was a great thriller! I was immediately hooked. This book begins with the main character and narrator Angela, sitting in an interogation room with Detective Novak, as she tells her story. The drama, the love story, the love triangle, it's all so good. I felt for the main character and the book is so well written, you feel like you know these characters personally. I don't want to spoil the plot, just be assurred this is a must read. The book will be published April 17th, 2018, go get it!

** Special thanks to Roz Nay, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review**

I could not put this book down once I got into it. Suspenseful and crazy and CLEVER--a psychological thriller that held me until the very last page. Angela is being questioned by the police in the disappearance of her ex-boyfriend/best-friend, HP whose wife who has been missing for two weeks. The story is told from her point of view, from the time she met HP in high school up to the present where she is in police custody. Not a long book but the story told by Angela is sincere and from her heart, but she is so manipulative and um, a little crazy, that it is also really twisted and kept me wanting more. I already love this author and can't wait for another book from her! Well well worth your time. A totally awesome psychological thriller! A big thank you to NetGalley AND St. Martin's Press for the ARC!!

I was given an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. I loved this book. I didn't expect the ending, and I really felt like I got inside the characters' heads. It works both as an actual novel as well as afternoon escapism. None of the characters felt superfluous, and the action was able to drive the mystery without feeling unrealistic. The timing was well done. None of the usual tropes that weigh down this kind of genre fiction. I look forward to reading more by this author

Our Little Secret is a dark love story, a fairy tale, but less Disney and more Grimm. Well-written, slippery, and engrossing. I did not "like" it, yet pretty much read it in one sitting. As I sat with Angela Pettijean whose nick name is LJ or Little John (from her last name) in the interview room, I was uneasy from the beginning.

Angela is surprised to find herself being questioned by Detective Novak when Saskia, the wife of Angela's former boyfriend goes missing. In order to respond to Novak's questions, Angela insists on telling her story her way, beginning ten years previously.

The story is convoluted. Love and loss. Jealousy and betrayal. Poor decisions. Anyone who reads the news knows that while they may not understand the labyrinthine twists of human behavior, people do strange, impractical, personally destructive things.

Angela is certain that when Novak understands the way events have unfolded during the past ten years, he will understand and believe her. But will he? He allows Angela to tell her story, but obviously doesn't trust her. Angela's version is the only one we hear, and even as she presents her story, the jealousy is evident. Saskia interfered with her life, and Angela frankly acknowledges it. So...to trust Angela or not? And if Angela is not responsible for Saskia's disappearance, who is?

Roz Nay doesn't waste anything; she wraps up this gripping novel in fewer than 300 pages and still tells a complex tale in which none of the characters come off particularly well. A promising debut from a talented writer.

Read in February. Review scheduled for April.

NetGalley/St. Martin's Press

Psychological Suspense. April 17, 2018. Print length: 272 pages.

“Oh, I don’t want to talk about Saskia the whole time.”

Novak’s teeth are flat at the front, four of them in a row. “She’s kind of the main event.”

We meet Angela at the start of the novel in an interrogation room. HP’s (an ex-boyfriend from her youth) wife is missing, and we wait to find out just what she might know, or be hiding about this ‘main event.’ Angela’s parents ‘moved a lot’, when she was growing up and a childhood spent on unsteady ground, never knowing when she would be yanked up by her roots and planted elsewhere, forced to start all over again was not, she assures us, such an adventure in your teens where loyalties, cliques and relationships already seem cemented, no room for outsiders. Her tenth grade year they move to the town of Cove, Vermont and that is where the story of her first love begins. She is met by the ugly cruelty of pretty girls, until HP steps in. This is where the popular, beloved, golden boy entered her life and the stage is set for eleven years into the future, where a crime has occurred.

But first we are led into the past, a tale of friendship and love. We listen as the intimate tale of her friendship with HP unfolds. The two are moving towards something intense, deep, and strong. Angela’s parents expect nothing but the best from their daughter, an educated life and her ticket out of the small New England town will take her far away to Oxford University in England and threatens distance between she and HP. There is no choice, you don’t pass up Oxford. They demand she goes, it’s a chance of a lifetime, she may not know she wants this golden opportunity but they know she will regret it with her every breath if she doesn’t take it! He will visit her, he will wait, everything will be beautiful but another woman enters the scene and everything goes awry. Angela is rooted to the past, her love is a black winged creature, and Saskia is a cage. She cannot let go of the past, and she knows HP feels the same, she knows that the only obstacle is Saskia.

Flashbacks between her high school days getting up to trouble and love with HP and friends clash with her university years and now the present. Where does HP fit in the puzzle of her adult life? In this room, the detective reveals poisonous little tidbits, facts he has unearthed, overturning rocks in her life beneath which dark pale bellied creatures live. Then there is Freddy, a soft shoulder, a dear friend to help lift her out of the gaps of time when HP is being pulled away in the rip tide of Saskia. He is her anchor, he longs to heal her, fix her and Angela is blind to the possibilities because all she can see, feel and taste is her first love. Fate could never divide two people who are meant to be, nor could new people, be they lovers or children. Right? If it’s destined, no man can divide such affection, nor can time. What is the passing of years compared to the measure of such love?

I felt passing moments of likability and pity for Angela but more often than not she is selfish or confusing. Is she shy and weak, or an outcast smoldering with rage? Is she an ungrateful child or suffocated by the whims and big dreams her parents have for her? I wish her personality had a little more time to come to a boil, as I wasn’t really sure how to take her. She’s bitter as an adult, greedy to meet her own needs, blind but where is her intelligence? This is a woman who went to Oxford! I get it, she is consumed by love (obsession) but something is amiss. That aside, I was engaged. The ending was good, well… well then. So that’s how it ends!

Chapter after chapter of the story creeps closer to what happened to Saskia. Dark is the heart of obsessive love, but did Angela come unhinged? Could she really have blood on her hands? Could she have killed for love? Just what would Angela do for her soul mate, what wouldn’t she do? Is she misunderstood, are they way off? Is Saskia just pulling some silly stunt for attention? You have to read to find out.

Publication Date: April 17, 2018

St. Martin’s Press

This is a perfect beach or plane read as you can devour it in a few hours. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.

This is a story on first love, first betrayal, and first revenge. I loved the two main characters in the beginning, hated one and loved one in the middle, then had to rethink who I loved and who I hated at the end.

Definitely a four star book. Roz Nay knows how to bring characters and stories to light.

This book begins with Angela being interrogated at the police station in the disappearance of Saskia who happens to be her ex-boyfriends wife. From here she tells Detective Novak a tale of love, obsession, and ultimately revenge. This is Angela's spotlight and it's time to set the record straight.

Angela had all the characteristics of an unreliable narrator that I look for and reading her story had me absolutely glued to the pages. I loved the way she was toying with the detective only giving bits and pieces of the puzzle. I, as a reader, was constantly trying to put the pieces together. My mind was a constant buzz.

I love it when I pick up a book that I hate to put down and that was this book for me. I will gladly seek out Roz Nays work in the future. Highly recommended!

Thank you to NetGalley & St. Martin's Press for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review. Will post Amazon review on publication day!

Where to begin... It's a rarity when a story sucks you in from the very first page. This one did just that.

The story follows Angela, a woman who appears to be a suspect in the disappearance of her friend, Saskia. The story has quite a few twists and turns which had me scratching my head. Angela falls in love with HP, a neighbor and classmate who befriends Angela when she moves into town. With very few friends and parents who want her to get the best education, Angela is forced to make decisions which she isn't at all sure about.

While being interrogated for the disappearance of her friend, Angela tells her story of love, betrayal, loneliness and desire.

I read this in just a few hours because I wanted to know the truth! Very much recommend this.

If I'm being nitpicky (which I'm good at), I would say the ending makes this book more of a 3.5 or 3.75 star rating. However, I voraciously read this book in about 1 day from start to finish, so looking at holistically, I feel comfortable giving it 4 stars. I loved how the author unfolded the story of Angela, HP, and Saskia. Angela and HP's relationship rang true for me a first love experience. Once Saskia was introduced, I was already invested in Angela and HP and I could feel and relate to Angela's pain and jealousy. It's been a while since I could feel the emotions so strongly on a character's behalf, so this is a huge accomplishment by Roz Nay as a writer and author.

I also enjoyed the suspenseful aspect of trying to figure out whether Angela was a reliable narrator or not. The story develops backwards as Angela is talking to a police officer, so the reader starts in the present and goes back to Angela and HP's teenage years and then forward chronologically to circle back to present day. Usually spanning a decade or more would be hard to accomplish while still connecting with the reader, but for this particular book I was SO curious to see where the characters ended up over the years.

Why did I not like the ending? It felt a little bit loose and rushed based on the entire rest of the book's build-up. Without giving anything away, it didn't ring true or feel authentic the way the rest of the book did. It seemed like a couple twists just for the sake of twists, and I want my twists to be believable.

That critique aside, I would gladly read any of Nay's books again - in a heartbeat!

Sincere thank you to the author, Netgalley, and publisher for an ARC!

“Our Little Secret” by Roz Nay begins in a police station where the narrator is being questioned about the disappearance of her romantic rival. I enjoyed the story and found it suspenseful, but sadly, I found most of the characters unlikeable.

I love when a mystery/thriller can shock me and Roz Nay definitely achieved that, I was truly on the edge of my seat the entire way through her debut novel, Our Little Secret! Literally until the very last page, I had thought I had it all figured out, but I was wrong- love that! The characters were well developed and the storyline had fantastic flow. I connected with Roz Nay’s writing style immediately and I am absolutely going to be reading anything and everything this talented writer comes out with in the future. Our Little Secret is a 4.5 star read that I highly recommend! A must read!!!!!