This is a great, original and well-written book with good narration! Love! Grabbed me with the cover!

Thank you, Jessica Hamilton, Dreamscape, & Netgalley for my copy! All opinions are my own.

This title archived before I was able to download it on the Netgalley app. I borrowed it from the library, but never really got into it. Hopefully I'll get to it again in the future.

*Thank you @dreamscape_media for the audiobook in exchange for an honest review. Review not posted to Amazon/Goodreads because less than 4 stars or DNF.*

I must say I judged this one originally by its cover, and boy, did it live up to my expectations! Intriguing, well-written, great characters, a must read! I will definitely be looking forward to reading future books by Jessica Hamilton.

What You Never Knew is a story told from the perspective of two sisters. It switches up as the story unfolds. I didn’t enjoy the audiobook narration and think I would have liked reading a physical copy of this one so much better. Overall, it was a great read. It’s truly a wonderful debut novel and I can’t wait to see what this author does next!

What you never knew is a mysterious story that makes you try to guess what may be hidden in June’s memory and the events of her last summer on Avril Island. The story picks up with a brisk pace and switches views from May as a spirit and Junes present discoveries on the island. Both women have memories of what happened the last summer but both did not see the same events that night so you get glimpses from both views. The story mostly follows June as she digs into the past and talks to people from the mainland. It really pulls you in like a good mystery. I finished this one in a day because I was having such a hard time pausing it. Definitely not a slow story or a slow build and it’s hard to see what’s coming. One of my favorite mysteries so far this year.

Narration review


I received an audiobook version of What you never knew. It was definitely a good choice. The narrators really entranced me from the first second. It flows well and I don’t know if the print version could have topped it. There’s just something about how well this mystery was told that I highly recommend. Maybe because it’s harder to skip ahead when your on the edge of your seat. Either way I highly recommend this audibook version to mystery lovers.

I received a copy through netgalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review

What You Never Knew by Jessica Hamilton pulled me in from the very beginning. The dual perspective narrators (Sarah Mollo-Christensen and LauraJennings) were exceptional at performing the various characters. I really enjoyed how they brought the characters to life and it was easy to follow the jumps in time from present to past and back and forth. The author wrote some very unexpected twists that I did not see coming. Thank you #NetGalley and #DreamscapeMedia for letting me review this book. I fully enjoyed it

Unfortunately, I was not in love with this. While the author did an amazing job with building the scenery, and the voice actor was fantastic, I had a hard time staying engaged with the plot or even liking the characters. 2 stars.

WOW! I binged this one in audio and I could not stop once I started. May was deeded Avril island after her mother died and she is devastated. Her mother told her she sold it. Why? So many questions. Why is she so upset. After she is leaving the lawyer's office she is in an accident and dies. Then her sister June gets everything of May's. She is not upset over the discovery, more intrigued that the island is still owned by them. When she travels to the island so does the ghost of her sister, May. This story is told by June and May and unravels the secrets that probably should have been left in the past. This one was so good!

“What You Never Knew” could be called what you briefly knew but then promptly forgot. I read this a couple months ago but then forgot about it so thoroughly that I did not remember to review it. I seem to recall an implausible romantic union with an unlikeable neighbor and a bunch of really wild plot points the descriptions of the island and weather were very nice. Overall, a pleasant enough read but I wasn’t left with any grand takeaways.

"Idyllic Avril lsland, owned by the Bennett family, where their hundred-year-old cottage sat nestled in acres of forest. Forty-year-old June Bennett believed that the island had been sold after the summer of her father's disappearance when she was only twelve years old. It's months after the shocking death of her older sister May in a fatal car accident, that June finds out that the cottage was never sold. Avril Island is still owned by the Bennett family and now it's hers."

June decides to return to the island to see if she could find the answers to the questions of why her father left and why her mother had lied about selling the island. What she finds is more questions and strange occurrences. This book is a psychological thriller that wants to be part ghost story. I'm not sure I liked is the perspective that she chose to tell the story. Did it add anything to the story to have May taking the part of a guardian angel telling a portion of the story? Could that portion of the story have been presented in a different way? That said, I liked the story and the narration was very good. (3 stars)

Compelling, intriguing, mysterious are three words that describe this audiobook perfectly! The story is told from alternating POV’s – parts from June’s perspective and part’s from her older sister May’s perspective. Their mother has passed away and their father had disappeared years ago when the girls were younger, so when June’s older sister May loses her life in a fatal car accident, June finds herself in possession of their family cottage on Avril Island; much to June’s surprise, as she thought their mother sold the property years ago. June decides to return to Avril Island and tries to uncover clues and get answers to the many questions she has. Why did their mother lie and say the family cottage had been sold? Why did their father disappear all those years ago, never to return or try to get in touch with his daughters?

As June arrives on Avril Island she runs into an old childhood friend of hers and May’s when they were younger. They quickly becomes friends and then strange things begin happening, things that June cannot explain. Desperate to unlock the secrets of those many years ago, June searches for answers on Avril Island that have long since been kept secret and buried. What she discovers shocks her! I definitely didn’t see many of them coming and I LOVED IT!

It was interesting to hear May’s POV being told from beyond the grave – she has passed but is able to be “present” and see things that June does, which was quite interesting for sure. A great novel that I loved and cannot recommend enough! I also enjoyed the narrators for this audiobook, their voices and their tone of voice worked well with the novel.

Well done Jessica on your debut novel. I will definitely be on the lookout for more of your titles in future!

I read this book back in April and just realized I never posted a review. Unfortunately, not a lot stands out now.

June loses her sister, returns to the place where their family had summered when she was younger, and she begins to uncover that there were a lot of things happening back then that she never knew (hence the title).

I remember struggling to finish this book towards the end. It had it’s moments for sure, but they were inconsistent. Overall, this one was just okay for me.

I both listened to and read this book, I was enjoying listening to it but found many chapters to be very long and dragging (a few chapters were over and hour to listen to) so to speed things up I was also reading.

This story is filled with family secrets and what comes to pass when secrets are revealed and uncovered. There are many twists and turns, some that you see coming and some that you wont.

Overall a really good read/listen

Fun read - excellent debut by Jessica Hamilton. Told in the two voices of two sisters - one dead and one alive. The sisters find out about the death of their mother, April. Then the older sister, May, dies in a car accident on her way to be with June, the younger sister (in the first chapter). I love the name progression - April, May, June.
June learns that she inherits the island where the family used to spend all of their summers. One summer their father disappeared and was assumed dead. Mom and the girls leave and Mom tells the girls that she has sold the island so they never return. Let the mysteries begin. June goes back to check on the property and encounters gossip and troubling facts about her family. The novel does a good job immersing the reader into the atmospheric setting. It is full of domestic mystery and paranormal twists. There are plenty of 'edge of your seats' moments. Family secrets abound and quite a few surprising twists at the end. All makes for a satisfying and enjoyable read. Great summer reading. Jessica Hamilton is an author to follow. Can't wait for her next one!

Thank you @netgalley @crookedlanebooks @dreamscape_media for this #gifted book. This opinion is my own.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 3.5/5 Stars

What a unique twist on a slow burn family drama with a suspenseful twist, centered around a family’s lakeside cabin. This book does have a bit of a Lovely Bones feel with one of the POV being from June’s dead sister.

What I liked:
🛶 I enjoyed the alternating POV between May & June, with May being the dead “observer” of what’s unfolding
🛶 Long held family secrets exposed
🛶 Set in a small lake town, where everyone knows everyone
🛶 Unexplained things start happening at the cabin, which keeps you wondering what will happen next

What I didn’t love:
🛶 This is a slow burn suspense and at times it was a little too slow moving
🛶 I wanted a bit more to happen at the end after this long slow burn

𝙰𝚞𝚍𝚒𝚘𝚋𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚜: I appreciate that May & June had separate narrators, it really help to differentiate between them two POV.

I’ve been struggling with audiobooks lately, and have been DNFing them around 20% or so. If they don’t grab my attention by that point, I move on. This was NOT the case with What You Never Knew by Jessica Hamilton. Within just a few minutes, I knew this one was going to be a winner. The narration was impeccable, the characters were intriguing, and the setting was right up my alley. Look at that cover! An ancient cottage in the middle of the forest? Yes, please! I was in the mood for a dark, atmospheric, slow-burning mystery, and that is exactly what I got from this debut. I loved the ghostly vibes mixed with some deep, dark family secrets on the verge of being unburied. It definitely got me out of my audiobook slump, that’s for sure. Oh, and my prediction about the ending was completely wrong, so that was an added bonus. If the author can fool me, they immediately get a gold star. I highly recommend this book for fans of The Lovely Bones and The Drowning Kind. If you’re a fan of the supernatural, read this book!

I needed a good thriller and picked this one up. I’m very happy I did. It had me on the edge of my seat for most of the book. A little slow at first but I really enjoyed this one

This is a twisted and creepy mystery surrounding a family. When June’s sister dies, she inherits Avril Island and decides to spend some time there.

Secrets surrounding her father’s disappearance and her mother’s social life begin to emerge.

I could not wait to get to the end but I was also scared of getting to the end. The story is told from the sisters’ perspective.. June is alive while May is dead. Creepy

After her older sister May dies in an accident, 40 year-old June Bennett discovers she is now the owner of Avril Island, the family's Vermont vacation home their recently deceased mother had told them she'd sold thirty years earlier after their father left them. But when she goes to visit the cottage, June discovers that wasn't the only secret their mother had kept from them--and, worse, she realizes May knew about some of them and had never told June. Told in alternating POV between June and the ghost of May, the book slowly burns along, feeding out secret after secret.

The first chapter immediately drew me in, told from May's POV, revealing right off the bat that there were secrets to be revealed. Since I hadn't read the blurb first, I was shocked by the ending of the first chapter. What makes this book strong is the compelling characterization of June, who drinks too much and has made mistakes of her own, reacting in a very human way as she uncovers secret after secret about her family. I saw what was supposed to be the biggest twist coming around halfway through the book, but there was another twist that caught me by surprise so kudos for that.

I'm giving it four stars because the POV of May as a ghost didn't really work for me. There was too much redundancy as May rehashes what June discovered and vice versa, and most of May's scenes appear to be simply a way to view what June is doing from a 3rd party perspective, which disconnected me from June. And it's only at the end that May's POV provides new information, the full details of which June never obtains. Although the intention was to show June's connection to May and how she continued to think of May as still with her, it requires too much acceptance on the reader's part of the supernatural than is needed for a mystery/thriller. If June or her family had somehow been tied to spiritualism or the afterlife earlier, it might have made sense. It would've worked better to show May's POV in a past timeline, instead of showing her ghostly flashbacks. There were a few other spots where it took June far too long to put the pieces together, and the lengthy monologues by June and May at the end of the book made me want to stop before finishing.

Overall, though, a suspenseful thriller, and the audiobook was expertly narrated. Many thanks to Crooked Lane and Netgalley for making this audiobook available to preview and review.

RATING: 3.5 STARS
2021; Crooked Lane Books/Dreamscape Media
Narrated by Sarah Mollo-Christensen and Laura Jennings

I love the gorgeous cover of this book, and I have to say it works perfectly for the story. What You Never Know is a difficult book to describe genre-wise. It has a bit of mystery and domestic suspense elements but also dips into supernatural and even a bit of dark humour. The novel starts with May's death, which sucked as I was already getting attached. Trying to come to terms with her sister's death, and their mother's passing before that, June goes back to Averil Island, a place of haunting memories. I didn't click with June right away, and often found her exasperating, but I was also invested in the story. By the end, I was not sure I bought some of the storylines, but I am so glad I read it. As I read this one, it reminded me of Charlie Donalea's Summit Lake. This is Jessica Hamilton's first novel, and I think she did a grand job in giving this book a more gothic tone as it is haunted with grief and secrets. I am looking forward to more.

***I received a complimentary copy of this ebook and audiobook from the publishers through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.***