Thank you to the publishers for letting me read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The writing felt extremely flat to me and too short. It felt like everything was just written for the sake of being written, without emotion or depth to keep the reader interested. Was a painful read but to summarize appropriately it was like reading: "I went to the park today. I saw clouds. The sun came out. Then it went away and it rained. Why was I outside? Then I went to sit down." Absolutely exhausting to invest more than a few chapters.

I started reading this a few days ago and I'm afraid I haven't made much progress. The book didn't capture my attention at all, the style of writing clunky and full of, what I feel, unnecessary information that left be feeling bored.
I didn't warm to the characters and just could not bring myself to finish this. I feel I must be honest in my reviews so unfortunately this book wasn't to my liking at all.

I received "The Secret She Kept" as an ARC, and because it was my first ARC ever I was so excited to dive in!

To be honest, I had a really hard time connecting to the characters. I felt no real emotional attachment to Anthony, Davian or to Lottie which made it difficult for me to get into the story. Fortunately, Ellis did a fabulous job at making Lottie unpredictable which helped form the ending. I found there were a lot of jumping around in scenes, so it took a bit for me to catch up in each scene change, especially where Anthony was concerns. First he was in his house, then he was this place or that place.

I'm having difficulty trying to figure out why Anthony was even the narrator in the first place. I feel like I would have enjoyed the story far more (because the premise of the story itself is really good) had there been a split between the detectives narrative and Lottie's personally!

This story just wasn't for me, sadly!

This was a very fast read but it was only ok and really fell short. It jumped straight in with not much background for storyline or characters. I’m a huge fan of a dual storyline so that was a plus.I found the writing didn’t flow well as all of a sudden the character is in a location and then moved to another without stating the movement if that makes sense. There was no great build up or the urge to keep turning the pages and the outcome was a huge let down. It was a bit of a let down for me as the description really caught me but that’s just my opinion as many others have loved it.

Thanks so much to Netgalley & Xpresso Book Tours for the chance to read this ARC and review before publication on the 23rd of June...

I found this one to be a different type of suspense story with a different kInd of twist. It was an excellent story with wonderful characterizations. It was a quick read and I truly enjoyed it.

The premise reminds me of Thirteen Reasons Why - which I didn’t love - but a little more thriller-y. I felt like the book just jumped in - we got very little background, and then very little character development overall. I can see people really loving it, but it wasn’t a great read for me.

Thankyou to #netgalley for the ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. Yet another captivating thriller from J.S Ellis. Days before your best friend dies she loans you her laptop. After her death you find yourself curious as to what is in her laptop. You find she has made these video files and with each one you watch you feel yourself getting closer to who may have murdered her and why. Will the last file reveal her killer's identity? The police think your childhood friend is the killer but you just don't think he is capable of murder. A great plot that makes you wonder just how well do we ever really know anyone even our closest of friends?! #tea_sipping_bookworm #bookstagram #goodreads #amazon#kindle #bookqueen #litsy #jsellis #netgalley

This one reminded me a lot of "Thirteen Reasons Why" but with a murder. Overall, it was an okay book. It is short so you can read it quickly; I finished it within a day of starting. And I did still enjoy the actual story. The concept of someone documenting their days/months before their death is one of my absolute favorites. Thrillers will always be my favorite genre because of plot lines like this one. I would still recommend this book to others. The style of this book is not one that I personally enjoy that much, but I'm sure other people who would love it!

I finished this book in one sitting because I couldn't put it down. It had me hooked from page one and the twist kept me going. I can say I didn't guess the ending like I have with other thrillers . J.S. Ellis kept me guessing which I loved very much. The writing was easy to follow and it flowed very well. I really be picking up Ellis other books now and going out to tell my friends they need to read this book.

This book captured my attention from the very first sentence. I love the style of writing this author has. I also love how the plot develops little by little and mainly, my favorite thing about this book is that it is a book I do not want to put down. As soon as I started reading this book, I had a suspect in mind, then I changed my mind as I continued reading and that kept me very interested at all times.

This was a really fast read, but fell a little short for me. I feel like it started and then it ended, with no real build-up of the story or the characters. The premise is that Anthony's best friend Lottie is murdered, and had happened to lend him her laptop a couple days before. Rather than mentioning to the police that he has the laptop, he takes matters into his own hands and takes a peek, finding a series of video clips that Lottie recorded over the past few months.

I liked the overall style of the book, where it went back and forth between Lottie's video clips and Anthony's responses to what he was seeing, but the writing itself felt a little stilted. When her big secret comes out, I didn't think it was that big of a deal, and the outcome left me scratching my head a bit. I also just didn't feel that the characters,or really the overall plot-line, were that well-developed- Davian came off like a huge jerk and I couldn't fathom when/where/how he and Anthony became close friends, or why Lottie was so obsessed with him.

All in all, this just wasn't that memorable of a read for me, though it was a quick one. I would not recommend.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve not come across a book like The Secret She Kept before and found the concept of the story and what was on offer of the writing style really rather enjoyable. The main character, Anthony, stumbles across the vital clues of his best-friends murder on the laptop that she lent him; in the form of Lottie (The best friend) having recorded the events that led to her death, but rather than hand the laptop over too the police and letting the professionals do their job, Anthony keeps hold of the evidence and starts his own investigation – this in itself feels a little contrived but the plot has to come from somewhere, right?

The story takes place in dual parts. What Anthony discovers and what Lottie has recorded. The two elements work well and lead into one another nicely. What Lottie reveals in her videos is always met with some opinion or another of Anthonys and usually followed up by him in his investigations. The basic plot device is that Lottie has fallen for a very attractive co-worker; Davian. For some reason or another that I can’t quite fathom. Davian isn’t written as a decent character, he is dull, insulting, arrogant and obnoxious. But Lottie falls for him deep regardless of him being offered to the reader so blandly and then the tale starts to unravel itself.

I found the modern-day setting for the novel to be easily believable and the Artwork and Photographic agency in which Lottie, Davian and Anthony are connected to easy to imagine being a real place of work. With Davian being a star-photographer and held up on a high pedestal by the companies owner for his work contributions. I also found elements of the characters lives to be intriguing and also believable. Lottie's thoughts in the videos she has left behind about various characters are entertaining and I found these parts of The Secret She Kept a lot more enjoyable than the rest which I felt needed a bit more working on to make them shine, but that didn’t make me feel any more sympathetic towards her than other characters. In the end, I couldn’t really care less who was telling the truth and who was lying I just wanted to find out who ‘did it.’

I found a lot of The Secret She Kept to feel clipped. The dialogue felt very forced between Anthony and pretty much everyone else that he encounters and quite unrealistic. More often than not Anthony dives deep into questions about Lottie for his investigation before any scene-setting has been delivered and I felt as though a lot of the book was trying to rush to the conclusion without leaving much of a story to enjoy in its wake. The Secret She Kept feels like there is something deeper lacking between its pages and a lot of the potential in the plot is lost due to the head-long stampede to get to the conclusion. It is due to this lack of depth that all the characters, like Davian, felt incomplete and it was hard to really connect with any of them and at times they didn’t make sense. Anthony clearly had issues with Lottie's choices, so why is he so determined to solve the mystery of her death? Lottie was appalled by Davian so why the attraction? I feel with a little more scratching at the surface and a bit more explanation of the characters and their deeper motives, The Secret She Kept would be a lot more enjoyable.

Sadly, my criticism of the book's writing doesn’t end there – another feeling of being rushed came out in the rather abundant errors in writing; words being in the wrong order or sentences that don’t quite read correctly. I feel like The Secret She Kept needs a little more ‘spit and polish’ before it goes for its final print run. Another run through with a proofreader/editor would easily solve this and might be in the works as the copy I received was an Advance Reader Copy.

A little note on the ending, it is one that I didn’t quite see coming but it did feel a little flat and lacklustre. Like a climax that didn’t really happen. It left me feeling somewhat deflated and disappointed with the book as a whole, but The Secret She Kept is a short read and overs an evening or so of easy escapism. The language is simple to grasp and the pages turn quickly enough to make the story enjoyable even if the characters themselves do not.

This book had too many twists and turns for me to keep up with. I was confused most of the book, a little bored with the characters. Especially Lottie’s recorded videos and her tall tales. It took me a bit to get through this book... my big takeaway was that all of the characters were very messed up and had dysfunctional relationships with each other. A lot of jealousy, lies, and mistrust throughout this book. All in all not my favorite book as it left me confused and unsatisfied.

Lottie is murdered and her friend Anthony, has borrowed her laptop. He doesn’t understand who could possibly have killed her. Anthony starts exploring the laptop and finds videos recorded in the year before Lottie died. It seems she has treated the videos as an online diary of sorts. She reveals secrets that Anthony now must figure out if they were worth killing for. It sounds like a good thriller but something was just off for me-perhaps the writing style. I wasn’t invested in the characters and just didn’t feel the need to read quickly to find out the truth. Not bad but not great. Thanks to Netgalley and Black Cat Ink Press for the arc.

Anthony’s friend Lottie lends him her laptop to borrow, shockingly she is murdered five days later. Curious, Anthony starts exploring the laptop and stumbles upon videos recording in the year before his friends death. In those videos, Lottie reveals a dark secret about Anthony’s oldest friend. What is that secret and is it worth killing for?

Overall, I enjoyed this book and read it in one sitting. I really liked the author’s writing style and use of different literacy devices to tell the story. I think Anthony’s character could have been developed a bit more in the beginning so that we understood his motivation and relationship with Lottie.

Thank you to Netgalley for gifting me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I read this book very quickly; it was an easy read. That being said, it wasn't read voraciously like I have done with other thrillers. The premise of the book intrigued me and initially made me think of 'Thirteen Reasons', which I was enthralled by. I was excited to dive into it and hoped it would be one of my favourite summer readers. However, I was really disappointed by it and it didn't live up to the teaser.

Overall, I found the writing to be bland or repetitive in structure in places, which made it a little boring to read. Every now and again there would be a random simple descriptive phrase that seemed unnecessary to the story. I often told my students to show, not tell and consider whether it's necessary. Why do I need to know that? They seemed to be have been included to give me more details about the characters, but unimportant ones. I found the characters, and their relationships, to not be fully developed. They didn't feel real to me and I found it hard to gravitate towards one of them and care about their journey.

This book might serve well with those wanting to have an easy light summer read, a bit of a chance to escape for a while. Unfortunately, it did not do that for me.

This was my first book by the author J.S. Ellis and it was a good one! I loved the premise of this book and the twists and turns. We start out by finding Lottie dead from a gunshot wound and no clue to who the killer is. Her friends are devastated and can't figure out who would want to kill their sweet loving friend. But how well do you really know your friends? Do they have secrets that they keep from you? Do you really know their lives? These are all questions that will come up for you during this roller coaster ride plus many more. There will be characters you hate right off the bat and characters you can relate to and feel compassion for. But don't believe everything you think you know. Just when you think you have it figured out, it will turn on you. It was a suspenseful ride that kept my attention to the end. Some jumping around that made things hard to follow sometimes but not bad. Overall, an engaging page turner that kept me guessing until the very end.

Thank you to the author and Netgalley for a digital advanced copy. The opinions expressed here are my own.

This is a very well thought-out, suspenseful psychological mystery that you will not want to stop reading.. The author does a fabulous job of conveying the fears and emotions of the characters to the reader. I highly recommend this book to mystery readers. I would give it a 6 or 7 rating..

The best way to describe this book is that it is essentially a aged up version of Thirteen Reasons Why. None of the characters are exactly likable and I found myself disliking Anthony for the same reason I disliked Clay from thirteen reasons why. The mystery itself was interesting and I liked the format of the storytelling switching from Anthony’s perspective and Lottie’s videos. Overall it was a good read and I liked it well enough.

Thank You to NetGalley and Black Cat Ink Press for this free ebook!!

Days before her murder, Anthony’s friend, Lottie, lent him her laptop. Curiosity getting the best of him, he clicks on a file and finds videos recorded by her in the year leading up to her death. Within those recordings, she exposes dark secrets someone will kill to keep hidden.

When Anthony’s childhood friend, Davian is placed under arrest for the murder and evidence piles up, Anthony wonders if he even knew both his friends.

Now, Anthony faces an impossible choice; turn the laptop over to the police and risk being accused of hindering the investigation, or try to solve the case himself.

What attracted me to this book was it's premise but unfortunately it wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be.

What's good about this book is that the secrets, lies and truth are gradually revealed and so the readers can try guessing who is telling lies and who isn't.

But since the book is written in very simple language its a quick read.