Thank you to the publisher for my eARC copy of this book. Unfortunately I didn’t love this book and therefore didn’t finish, I just didn’t connect with this one. Not for me, sorry.

The main problem I had with this book is that there is too much going on. The complete explanation of what happened to the main character is never fully revealed. Neither do we learn who Mia is and what she is doing. There were many entities referred to by initials. It was impossible to understand what they represented. While the plot was overly intricate, it was intriguing. However, the ending was disappointing. I received a free of this book and am leaving my honest opinion. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0852P1RLN?ref

This is a tough book to review. I had different reactions at different times of the book and am unsure about how I should phrase my thoughts. To begin with, I must say that I would have loved the book a whole lot more if the timelines were a little more steady. We have Elise, our leading lady who has two parts of flashbacks. One as an undercover Federal agent in the US and another as growing up in families not completely hers (for one reason or the other). Then we have the present narrative, which is complicated in its own right. If it seems like these put me off, that would not be completely true. I liked the stories, the emotional content but I felt like I was being buffeted by the wind from one point to another, this unmoored effect did not help make sense of the trouble Elise found herself in.

The current timeline involves a con of sorts with Elise not sure of her role in it all. She is tasked with reporting on a woman named Maria Garcia, who is an enigmatic character. Her charm has people doing her bidding like hypnotised people. I have met a few people who can turn their charm on like that, so if they were in this line of 'business', I am sure they would have been equally successful. What I tired of were the repetitive mistaken lesbian relationships. The idea of someone misconstruing the relationship between any two of the women mentioned happened multiple times and with different characters, and it got a little weird. Following Mia has Elise travelling the world and making her own friends on the way. I loved her relationship with her sisters, especially the younger. There is, of course, the main validation that Elise craves from a mother figure and this defines her in many ways. Even the swearing, not being in English, was easy for me to ignore.  

As mentioned earlier, I liked the writing and was pretty hooked to the story. If the two different flashbacks and the current timeline did not overlap so much, I could have read it in one sitting. 

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is solely based on my own reading experience.

I really wanted to like this book. The synopsis sounded promising, the cover was attention-getting, and I was excited to read. Unfortunately, my excitement was short-lived and I struggled from the very beginning of this book. There were random characters and names being thrown at the reader from the very beginning. It was difficult to discern who was who and in what time frame the events were taking place. It just all seemed very jumbled, disconnected, and rushed. That may work for some readers, but it's an absolute turn off for me. Additionally, I felt that the author, a Caucasian male, took a chance writing from the perspective of a biracial woman and it did not pay off. Unfortunately, this book did not do it for me.

I appreciate the opportunity to read and review Don't Tell Mom About This.

This is the kind of book that dives head first into the action and story. I spent the first part of the book confused about what was going on and trying to figure out who was who. I wanted to connect to the main character, Elise, but she was hard to follow at times. She has been through a lot in her life, but it was hard to see the character development. Maybe because the author is male and there were female complexities that seemed unreachable and misunderstood? I’m not sure what it was, but there seemed to be a disconnect between the main character and the reader perspective.

While this wasn’t the book for me, I appreciate the author touching on some hard topics- trauma, rape, prison, violence, etc. Thank you NetGalley & Eric Serrell for allowing me to preview your book!

I found this book quite difficult to connect with and to read. It kind of jumped straight into it and there was a lack of direction whilst reading it. I thought Elise had some really difficult things to talk about and explore but I found that she was lacking somewhat... I don't know if this is because the author is male and so didn't quite hit the mark with creating this difficult, traumatised character, or if it was something else... either way, I didn't particularly warm to her which then made it tricky to actually engage with the story and want to keep reading - if you don't care/believe in the main character then why keep reading?

The content of the book is complex and may be hard for some to read about - rape, abuse, prison... perhaps I was just the wrong kind of audience for the book and others would enjoy it more.

It's a shame as I think it could have been better if there was just a bit more direction within it rather than it mainly being about the character alone.

Don't Tell Mom About This is one of those books that jumps right in - no back story, no neat explanations. At first, you're not sure who these characters are, or what's going on. It's an intricately woven story that slowly drops little morsels of the full picture in a way that simultaneously fills in the next piece and leaves you anxious to discover what you've already figured out.
Elsie is an interesting character, both stoic and emotional, working her way through trauma to discover who she is and how she fits in the world. Some of the depictions of her emotions fall a little flat of the complexity most women experience, but that can be excused as the result of the trauma she faces throughout her life.
If you can deal with mentioned of rape and depictions of violence, Don't Tell Mom About This is a good read that mixes trauma, healing, adventure, mystery, and intrigue together in surprisingly down to earth way.

Thank you NetGalley as well as the author, Erick Serrell and your publisher for allowing to read this e-arc of your book.

This book was not the read for me. It did not seem to be going anywhere for me. The book was going many places with Elise. She has a lot going on but the book just did not seem to pick up and go anywhere specific. I thank the author for trying to see the female side of things through a males' eye but it did not seem to work for me.

Thank you once again.

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. There was a lot going on and it reminded me of a spy novel...but not, if that makes sense.

Poor Elise has had a lot happened in her life. She's done a lot and seen a lot , but she didn't seem all that developed and she fell sort of flat for me. The female relationships in this story seemed a bit , forced and not as geniune as I would have liked it to be. It was obvious it was written from a male perspective which sort of overshadowed the story for me.

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Although seemingly each and every component necessary for an empowered female-centric spy novel; there was intrigue, friendships, vanishings, intrigue, international travel, and secrets, and murder, and jail time, and family weirdness; somehow to combination seemed arbitrary and disjointed. The completion of the story lines
remain unfulfilling, leaving the reader not with a cliffhanger of wanting to know more, but feeling rushed and unsatisfied.

Although I commend the male author for tackling a project centered on women and their friendships and understandings of heartbreak, strength and familial bonds, the text still read very masculine, the female perscpective came across as inauthentic and thus, as a female reader, I was left baffled at times by the charecters reactions or rationale that seemed a much more male response. For instance, the main charecter, despite overcoming various hardships throughout her life, including working deep undercover and years in jail, was limited throughout the text to the sole emotional response of tears. Happy? She cried. Upset? She cried. Scared? Confused? Thrilled? Celebratory? She cried. This lack of emotional range left the main charecter feelings like a caricature of a 'hysterical female' rather than an international operative.

Don't Tell Mom About This suffered from "so close but yet so far", it strove to be a piece focused on female relationships while they dive into the international underworld; and sadly, fell shy of it's mark.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for allowing me the chance to read an advanced copy of 'Don't Tell Mom About This', in return for my honest review.

The writing is extremely hard to follow. Different characters are called by different names and the story and timeline jumped around so much in the first chapter, I had no idea what was going on. It got a bit more streamlined further on, but it was still very confusing.