Dirty Little Secrets by Liliana HartMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
(Major spoilers.) This book suffers from lack of reason- the characters don’t behave in ways that make sense for who they are – they behave in ways that make sense to the plot (why bring someone along with you when you’re just going to ignore them? Why would anyone tell another person “your eyes undo me” within ten minutes of meeting?).
Likewise, there are some issues with basic logic: why show a dead body during an active investigation to a person without clearance? Why invite a strange man into your house even if he’s a famous author (she didn’t even check!)?
I also had an issue with the characters telling me how they are feeling but never thinking about it otherwise. For example, the main character tells me several times how much the death affected her, but when she’s telling the story, she doesn’t think about the person much at all.
Most important (and most frustrating) of all, the murderer is a complete surprise, but not in a good way. The clues laid out aren’t really clues at all because they lead nowhere. The killer was introduced once early in the book and mentioned a handful of times after, but never as a potential suspect. The concept of “you never would have guessed it was him!” doesn’t work when they’re war no possible way for the reader to guess given the clues. Overall, this book feels like it’s trying too hard and was a huge disappointment in terms of a mystery. I bumped it to 2 stars for engaging writing and an interesting main character.