Secrets abound in the rural country as Harley and Tameka struggle to find a way together. Second book I've read by this author and thoroughly enjoyed this story.


Ebook from Netgalley and publishers with thanks. Opinions are entirely my own.

Secrets at Wongan Creek by Juanita Kees

The Wongan Creek farming community is doing it tough. And their anger is focused in one direction.

Tameka Chalmers will do whatever it takes to keep her secrets. She saw something when she was younger but can’t believe it is real and actually happened. The latest incident has her convinced that perhaps what she saw was real. After Tameka was caught with the boy next door by her father, he locked Tameka in her room, forced her mother to leave and then gave Tameka an ultimatum. Tameka has stayed in case her mother returns. She has endured the bullying and harassment of her father for many years, and fear has also kept her on the farm.

Harley Baker is the boy next door. He is still hot for Tameka and believes she is his forever girl. He has not had face to face contact with Tameka since they were caught together by her father when they were both nineteen. Eight long years. When Tameka nearly dies in a fire it creates a connection he is desperate not to break again and wants her to admit that she wants to be with him.

Louis, Tameka’s father, goes missing and with the homestead being partially burned, she stays with Harley. One day she makes a gruesome discovery and the secrets are finally exposed. Tameka has some decisions to make.

I really liked the understanding that Harley brings to the story. He is committed to Tameka, after eight years, even though he struggles with how she deals with situations. And shuts him out. But when her secrets are finally exposed, he is still there insisting they can have the new beginning. It will take some time for Tameka to get through her issues but we, as readers, know that Harley has the love for them to get through.

I really loved this story. I like that the couples are from a small farming community and it deals with issues facing many communities. There are the additional aspects that each couple has to face so they can be together, and I really hope that there will be more about the Wongan Creek community. I am really looking forward to seeing how Harley and Tameka’s plans develop into the future.

Reviewed by Heather

I'm liking this series by author Juanita Kees, and Secrets At Wongan Creek continues the likeability factor in the series.

MS Kees really knows how to pull a reader into a story with her words that bring to life characters who have been to hell and back and this one is emotional, moving and suspenseful one that should not be missed. I was looking forward to revisiting Wongan Creek and I am glad I went.

Tameka Chalmers has lived in the township off Wongan Creek all of her life on a farm with her mother and father but when her mother leaves after what is known as the big bang and is never heard from again Tameka is left to live with her drunken cruel father and she has not only lost her Mum but her best friend as well neighbour Harley Baker. So when a spray drift goes wrong on her farm and there is a fire at her home, this starts a chain of events that will change a lot of lives.

Harley Baker and his family run the neighbouring farm to Tameka and along with Harley’s brother Ryan these three kids were inseparable till a tragedy takes Ryan away and then an act of love years later separates Tameka and Harley, but now with the loss of his crop and his dog Loki doing damage to Tameka’s crop they are bought back together. Harley is still just as much in love with her as he was when they were 19 but can he convince Tameka that they should be together?

This is a really good story so very well written the characters show their depth and the strength that people are capable of when tragedy happens and how love can help heal so many secrets revealed in this one. Oh there were tears and there was cheering when Tameka’s father got his just deserts, I highly recommend this book it is a fabulous story, oh and I want a Loki he is the best dog and Harley is a hero to die for along with his great parents and the community as a whole. Thank you MS Kees I loved it and I hope I have done it justice.

I sat down thinking I would just start reading Secrets at Wongan Creek by Juanita Kees. Usually I read for a while then come back to the book later but this book gripped me so that I forgot the time, reading it straight through. It has been a long time since I have done that. On my reader it was 168 pages so that’s quite a one-stop read but I was so involved in Tameka’s dire situation that all else around me fell by the wayside.

Part murder mystery, part childhood friends/ first and only love reunion, part family drama and all great story, this is one compelling read. The first book I have read by Janita Kees but certainly not the last. The characters in first book in the series play a minor role in Secrets at Wongan Creek. Finding their book, Whispers at Wongan Creek, on sale I snatched it up, eager now to read more by this author.

The farming difficulties suggested in the preview does not even begin to prepare me for the twists and turns I did not see coming. This is an upcoming author with an amazing ability to tell a story.

Secrets of Wongan Creek is a great book with an awesome plot. I truly enjoyed the characters, the Australian setting and the author's writing.

Life had been exceptionally hard for Tameka Chalmers ever since her mother had left the farmhouse eight years prior. Left with her drunken, aggressive father – a man she tried continually to please but never succeeded in doing so. Tameka managed their farm, Golden Acres, with little help from her father; trying to persuade him to change his chemical spraying of their crops to a more environmentally friendly one. But he just laughed at her, seeming to enjoy the spray drift that ruined their neighbours’ crops.

Harley Baker of Baker’s Hill near Wongan Creek was one of those neighbours who was losing crops – he was also the man Tameka had loved since she was young. But their association had been brought to an abrupt halt by her father – now all she had was a hardened heart and a surety that she would never be able to have what she really wanted.

But when Tameka was caught in a fire, barely escaping with her life, the secrets that had been hidden for so long began to fracture. What would the future bring for Tameka and Harley? Would Tameka have to leave Wongan Creek to find the peace she so desperately craved?

Secrets at Wongan Creek (#2 in the Wongan Creek series) by Aussie author Juanita Kees is set in the rural landscape of Western Australia, in the drought and hardship of growing crops and keeping farms viable. But it’s also filled with suspense and mystery, of heartache and sorrow, and of hope and forgiveness. An intriguing romantic suspense, Secrets at Wongan Creek is one I highly recommend.

With thanks to NetGalley and Escape Publishing for my digital copy to read and review.

My first read by this author and I'll say I was a bit taken aback by the storyline and turn of events in the book. I was reeled in by the rural setting and what seemed to be a very typical fight among farmers, spraying heavy chemicals vs resorting to less harmful and more eco minded treatments that are better for growing and less harmful to both food and soil.

That said, this book took an incredible twist with the abuse that Tikki put up from her father for years and said not a word to anyone. Who continued to spray harmful chemicals, killing neighbors crops from the drift making her and her father even more a pariah then he already was. Tikki had given up hope that the town would ever accept her, even her mother left her, disappearing one day when she and her boyfriend Harley who lived on the neighboring property were caught in a compromising position. Her father did nothing but drink and order Tikki around.

It isn't until their is a fire in which Harley gets seriously injured that things start coming to light and not everything is as it seems in their home, or what's now left of it. The father disappeared the night of the fire and hasn't returned. The house is a total loss, there is no insurance, bills past due and the safe is empty. During Tikki's moments on the kitchen floor during the fire she has a flashback to when they were kids and when Harley lost his younger brother in a fire. It was ruled an accident but Tikki's memories say otherwise.

As her life starts to unravel, more truth surfaces and when her father returns holding her at gunpoint with Harley the story takes yet another turn. Truths long buried surface and the story is horrendous.
Her father is a sociopath to the max.

Now a few words about the story, this book was labeled Romance. It's not. Perhaps best just labeled as fiction. A brief warning may be beneficial for those who are adverse to domestic violence.
I fully understand batter spouse/child syndrome, yet I find it hard to believe that at any point here in this story which takes places over some years that she didn't say a word. Even after the fire and staying with Harley who was her first love and the only redemptive piece of the book. His dog Loki as well. There are many implications in this story that I don't find suitable for all readers. It's not a happy book, and lastly it's not even entertaining. Enough to say that the blurb is quite misleading and hopefully those considering the book will read reviews prior to making the choice to read.
Having said all that, the author writes well. She's a good story teller.


**arc from NetGalley and Publisher in exchange for a fair review**

a good read, I liked.

It’s easy to get lost in Juanita Kees’s take on the Australian rural communities. Essentially Kees does a wonderful job of setting up the Wongan Creek the way of life, how farms are run and the challenges they face especially when the secrets each family has come to light in the worst way possible. There’s as always, a touch of suspense and a whole lot of mystery when it comes to Harley and Tameka’s families whose lives are so intertwined that these bonds have the power to heal as well as to burn.

Unfortunately, I found myself liking this book less than its predecessor, even if Kees does try to write about an abused, downtrodden woman stuck in the middle her warring loyalties. Nonetheless, it was difficult to sympathise with someone who could not to speak out against what she knew was wrong that had her languishing in the doldrums for years. Although I understood Tameka's need to defend her family ties, I didn’t like her way of burying her head in the sand and carrying on with the reasoning that it was best to go on that way because everything was already so badly screwed up, while being ridiculously hurtful to people around her who just didn’t deserve her appalling behaviour.

It only had to come to a head for Tameka to see the error of her ways and it had to take the entire community—or at least the family that she believed she’d wronged badly—to extend that forgiveness first before she decided not to run and push. While I liked that Hayley didn’t give up on her, I honestly thought he deserved better than Tameka who’d built so much concrete around her heart that she was nothing but rude, self-pitying and stubborn to do any better, lashing out first to prevent others from seeing all the things she’d not made right. Throw in a completely evil man made only of cruelty, and well, the villain of the hour couldn’t get any clearer.

I’m rather mixed about this story overall; the rural setup is what appealed to me most here, though I couldn’t say the same of the characters. Yet Kees’s Wongan Creek is a series is something I’d love to see developed and I’m sort of eager to see what else is in store here.