Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press for an arc copy!

Secrets Never Die follows our heroine Sam and his group of friends as they complete their yearly ritual on Halloween at the Dark Place. There, they whisper their secrets into the dark of the woods, and leave feeling a bit light.

But this year, something sinister comes of their routine. Sasha Craven emerges, threatening and increasingly more violent as she stalks the group. It’s up to Sam to figure out what exactly is going, before his big secret goes up in flames much like his childhood acting career.

This book was a fun, easy read! The characters were a bit two dimensional, but it worked well enough with the story that it didn’t drag it down too much. The plot was fast and easy to follow. A bit convoluted at times, maybe, but all in all, entertaining. I loved the emotion and the rawness the author captured in his characters.

This story is both chilling and thrilling like a cross between a horror movie and a crime mystery. It is extremely compelling and hooks you in immediately and doesn't let go. The characters are interesting and the story is unique and satisfyingly unpredictable. It is quite an exciting ride that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

This listen was a wild ride. I picked this one up because I saw a lot of people hyping it up, and the cover is really cool. I went into this one blind, and I am glad I did. This book was a lot darker than I thought it was going to be, I thought it was going to be a YA thriller type, but it was a lot darker and it had so many scenes that had me on the edge of my seat. I listened to this book in 2 days because I was so hooked on finding out who was behind the blackmail and messages to this group of friends. There was a lot of sub plot in the beginning, and it was very interesting how it all came together at the end. I enjoyed the twists and turns, I did suspect a few things that were revealed at the very end, but the major person and mystery was a shock to me. A fun read and great for thriller lovers! Highly recommend if you're looking for a new fast paced thriller!

This is a great read for those who love the likes of One of Us Is Lying and Pretty Little Liars. Everyone has secrets and wishes they feel guilty about. In Secrets Never Die, a group of friends share their secrets in The Dark Place once a year. This year, someone else has heard their secrets and threatens to reveal them all.

Most of the book itself is pretty easy to guess. It's not hard to figure out what the secrets are, although I wish it was written in the third person and we saw other characters' POVs instead of just the main character, Sam. The twist at the end of who is after the group was one I didn't see coming, and I enjoyed how it all played out.

Fair YA mystery, didn't like the ending.

Every Halloween, Sam Hall and his friends visit this cabin in the woods they call "The Dark Place" where they go inside one by one and confess their deepest, darkest secrets, hoping to assuage their guilt for one more year. This year, someone else is there, and that someone is blackmailing them with their secrets.

The way the story is told is exciting and intriguing, but in the end there are two issues with this book:
First, the secrets are not really that deep and dark. Some of them could have been eliminated with an honest conversation.
Second, the ending was blah. I liked how the story worked out, the reveal of the person behind the blackmail...then we go OTTM (One Twist Too Many) and throw in some random extra thing that made NO SENSE.

I listened to the audiobook of this one and the narrator does a great job at keeping the tension mounting throughout. I did speed up the narration, but overall I didn't get bored, I kept listening to find out what would happen.

Despite its ups and downs, this book will appeal to the YA audience and fans of Vincent Ralph's mysteries.

Summary: We call it the Dark Place. I don’t know who built it or when but, for us, it’s special.

One night every year Sam Hall and his friends hold funerals for their secrets in an abandoned hut in the woods that they call the Dark Place. But this year, their secrets are taking on a life of their own.

Sam is a former child star whose career went up in flames―literally. And no one, not even his best friend knows why. His friends each hold a secret pertaining to the night. A secret they would all like buried.

Now someone from the past is blackmailing them with their dangerous secrets. Sam isn’t sure who he can trust, who’s watching him – or how far he’s willing to go to bury the past once and for all.
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Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
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My thoughts: happy pub day to this YA thriller, thank you so much @wednesdaybooks for the gifted copy! I would compare this to I know what you did last summer with that movie having much higher stakes. I found the secrets they were hiding to be not worth the black mail 😅I just kept having to remind myself that they were teens. Overall a good mystery with a fun concept but the secrets could have been more intense to warrant all the black mail.
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This one reminded me of I Know What You Did Last Summer so my QOTD is what’s your favorite scary movie?! 👻
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#secretsneverdie #vinceralph #wednesdaybooks #bookstagram #booksofinstagram #booksofig #bookworm #bookwormsunite #booklover #booknerd #readersofinstagram #readersgonnaread #readmorebooks #bookish #bibliophile #boo

Whether you're looking to add to your spooky season TBR or looking for a book to read around the evening campfire, Secrets Never Die by Vincent Ralph has got you covered!

Sam and his friends hold yearly funerals for their secrets until those very secrets suddenly start coming back to haunt them. Now Sam is trying to figure out who is blackmailing them, who can be trusted, and how to keep their secrets buried.

An abandoned hut in the woods called the Dark Place instantly makes for the perfect setting, and when you throw in a small town urban legend and "friendly" games meant to terrify even the unnerved, it all contributes to a spine tingling atmosphere. This thriller took me back to reading R. L. Stine's Goosebumps, and watching I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Scream from the 90s.

A roller coaster ride of terror, making my heart pound, and keeping me guessing at the who and why - this is one to read with the lights on!

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and Wednesday Books for the complimentary copy to read and review.

“You can’t always look away from scary things. Sometimes they’ll come for you regardless.”

3.5 out of 5 stars (3.5 / 5) Every year, a group of friends hold “funerals” for their secrets from that year. It’s a fun game they’ve played since they were young, it also helps lift some of the weight of the secrets. Except this year, their secrets are coming to tear them apart and be held out for everyone to see.

I found this one was creative in the creepiness. It starts out with a few events that really didn’t rankle me much. But as it progressed, the events got worse and worse to the point where I was feeling the creeps! The creepiness was done in a way that was purely psychological but was very effective. Brilliant planning on the authors part.

Thank you to Wednesday Books for the copy!

The book releases August 29, 2023.

Oh I liked this story. The concept of stating your massive mistakes in secretive place on Halloween? Um yes! Where do secrets go? Where do those we create end up? Talking about it lends energy - these high schoolers quickly find out after their annual tradition. Creative and fun.

A place to whisper your secrets once a year so they don’t burden you? Sounds like a perfect setup for some fantastic secrets. Alas, we got something else. The secrets are so tame that they hardly seem exploitable. I felt like we were dealing with 10-year-olds who didn’t know any better, as the secrets weren’t worth hiding and definitely not worth what they did because of blackmail.

The cover and five-year-old prodigy Molly are the stars of this show. Her insight was thoughtful, and while the scenes involving her didn’t move the story along, I enjoyed them much more than the secrets.

And really, we learn that maybe you should actually deal with your problems instead of whispering them into the dark.

My thanks to St. Martin’s for the advanced copy.

Secrets Never Die by Vincent Ralph is his best YA thriller yet! IMO….
I’ve enjoyed his previous titles but SND was exciting.
This one had me absolutely glued to the pages.
The author does such a great job describing the characters and setting.
A perfect YA thriller with lots of suspense and twists that you don't see coming.
Extremely well written, suspenseful it will put you on the edge.
A wonderfully crafted story with a well-executed mystery at its core.
This book will keep you flying through the pages.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank You NetGalley and Wednesday Books for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
4/5 STARS

Genre: YA Horror/Thriller

Similar Books:
Five Survive
There’s Someone Inside Your House

Synopsis:
Every Halloween a group of friends tell their darkest secrets in a secluded cabin to rid themselves of the guilt of their mistakes. Until someone finds out the secrets and blackmails them.

This is a YA horror perfect for fall/spooky season. The chapters are really short and I was able to read it in one sitting. There are a lot of twists and turns with a very surprise ending. Once I finished, I wanted to go back and reread some of the clues/foreshadowing I picked up on. This is my first book from this author, but I will definitely read more!

Thank you Wednesday Books for the gifted copy! 🤫

I’m sad to say that I didn’t love this one, especially since I was SO excited for it! Before I go on, I do think if you read this for spooky season, you’ll enjoy it since the whole story starts on Halloween night and is about secrets that didn’t stay buried. However, midway through reading this, I felt like the story just wasn’t clicking for me. The secrets weren’t anything crazy, especially the main characters and it just didn’t feel that serious to me.

I did enjoy the group of friends and the turn of events near the end and can appreciate the fact that I had no clue why Sam and his friends were targeted. This could just not be for me but if you’re looking for a spooky season book go add to your tbr, this might be a fun one!

2.75/5 ⭐⭐

**Many thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan for sharing this advanced digital copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.**

"We call it the Dark Place. I don’t know who built it or when but, for us, it’s special.
Every year Sam Hall and his friends hold funerals for their secrets in an abandoned hut in the woods that they call the Dark Place. But this year, their secrets are coming back from the dead...to terrorize them."

I really wanted to like this one!! The premise seemed fun, and I absolutely love this genre of YA murder mystery. Unfortunately, it fell flat for me.

The story follows teenagers Sam, Harran, Elisha, Laureen, and Dom, who meet up every year on Halloween night at an abandoned cabin that they call the "dark place." Here, they share their ‘deep/dark’ secrets as a way of lifting the burden off themselves. Usually, this makes them feel better, and they carry on with their lives. However, this year, when they are in the middle of conducting this ritual, they are interrupted by an unknown intruder. They don’t catch who scares them that night, but the next day they start getting text messages from a person called Sasha, who already knows their secrets and starts blackmailing them. The story then unfolds with them trying to figure out who it is and stop them before it’s too late.

Let’s start with some positives first. I really enjoyed the pacing, the short chapters; it was definitely action-packed, and there were some good twists and turns. I liked how the whole story was written from Sam’s perspective; it kept things simple when I was trying to get the hang of the characters.

The top 2 things that didn’t work for me, that hindered my rating, were: 1. The secrets were really not life-ending. I know they are teenagers, and that everything is the end of the world for them... But for example, when Lauren reveals her secret, I was like “ok?” that’s it? Couldn’t they have killed someone? Honestly LOL, so that’s when I knew it was not going to be a strong read for me.

The story lacked character depth and overall originality. It gave off Pretty Little Liars vibes, and that’s not a good thing. :(

3.5 ✨ I did enjoy this book overall and would recommend for anyone looking for a quick YA thriller/mystery. This had the potential to be great but it missed the mark just a bit for me. I didn’t feel the secrets the characters had were really blackmail worthy as they came out in the story and didn’t feel we got to know enough about the characters to feel truly invested in what was happening. I also wish there was just a little more finality to the ending than we got

*thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review*

This is my second Vincent Ralph book and once again I am blown away by the pacing and story. I am a sucker for short chapters, and this is another short chapter YA thriller that kept my attention the whole time.

I loved this honestly. I love thrillers, and reading this near the end of August when most people say Spooky Season starts was a 10/10 experience. This felt like a horror/thriller mix and it kept my attention the entire time.

The characters: from what I remember, the other book I've read by Ralph (14 Ways to Die) didn't have any LGBTQ+ characters (I could be mistaken though!). But Secrets Never Die had quite a few LGBTQ+ characters! The MC isn't, but secondary characters in his friend group are; his best friend, his other best friend's older sister (who is part of the main 5), and the older sister's ex-partner (nonbinary). I was pleasantly surprised to read LGBTQ+ characters when I wasn't even thinking there would be!

As for the plot, I am notorious for never guessing plot twists, and this one is another to add to the list where I had no idea where the story was going. I was reacting to every plot twist, and my goodreads updates show that.

I loved this book and it gets a 5 stars from me.

THOUGHTS

This book is simultaneously high melodrama and, somehow, incredibly bland. But I kind of expected that going in. For a book that revolves around secrets, the secrets were a letdown, but that's my biggest critique. This book is everything it claims to be, no more and no less.


PROS
Bully There's something about having a bully in the "friend" group that just immediately ups the ante. Sure, Dom is reformed... or at least Dom is nice enough to his friends. But there are a lot of people motivated to take Dom down, so when things start going awry, the suspect list really is huge. Anyone could have a reason to mess with Dom and his friends.

Quick This is exactly the type of book that you can really fly through. It doesn't require deep processing or a lot of thought. The chapters are short and snappy. There's always a hook to pull you on. You could rip through these pages in no time, so the fact that this isn't the peak of literature doesn't really matter. It's such a quick read, you'll have no time for regret.

Atmosphere The culprit here could be a person, but... all signs point to something a little more supernatural. The whole setup feels particularly... demonic. Blood-filled eggs splattering. An abandoned hut in the woods. Flickering candlelight on Halloween night. All of it builds up to create a sense that these kids really might have summoned something in these woods. Sure, there are benign possible explanations, but at the same time, all this evidence...


CONS
Consequences: It wasn't really until the end that anything here actually, you know, happened. Sure, the blackmailer was sending weird videos of these kids out in public... but wasn't making actual threats with these videos? I just wasn't ever sure what the actual intention was. What was motivating these threats? What was the threat itself? It just all felt a little vague. Melodramatic, for sure, but not particularly concrete.

Convenient Slaughterhouse: Where's the nearest slaughterhouse to your house? If you're a suburban kid, you probably don't know, and yet, these kids have a slaughterhouse right in their (metaphorical) backyard. And they know about it. That's just a weird feature in their suburban lives. It feels so convenient. They need to source some blood, and that's not an ordeal. There's a slaughterhouse right around the corner! This is just so odd.

No Big Secrets: This book hinges on secrets, secrets big enough to blackmail somebody over. And yet these secrets were so incredibly mundane. There was no real reason for these kids to feel the need to hide most of these secrets in the first place, let alone create a whole elaborate, candlelight-in-the-woods ceremony to kill these secrets year after year. When this is so integral to the plot... Yeah, it's just bad.


Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐
4/10
Fans of Sara Shepherd's Pretty Little Liars will like this world of secrets and not-so-stellar friends. Those who enjoyed Diana Urban's These Deadly Games will enjoy the creeping (and possibly deserved) blackmail of this plot.

We call it the Dark Place. I don't know who built it or when but, for us, it's special. Every year Sam Hall and his friends hold funerals for their secrets in an abandoned hut in the woods that they call the Dark Place. But this year, their secrets are coming back from the dead...to terrorize them.
I absolutely love the slasher thriller vibe the cover is giving me. I’m a sucker a good thriller.
First impression of this book is that reminds me of a Scream/ Pretty Little Liars mixture. Messages to each member of the group and a dark place that was supposed to be a healing one.
This book for sure had me on the edge of my seat for the whole book. I loved the who dun it? Trope so much that it’s always fun guessing who was the culprit behind the mask. The short chapters were a plus cause of my attention span and it for sure was intense following along with this group of friends while their lives pretty much implode around them.
The biggest let down was.. The reveal. It was a little bit of a let down to be completely honest. Kind of a basic reveal that made me sigh in disappointment. That could have been a lot better and the a lot of the side characters should have gotten a lot more development in my personal opinion. Such as the characters parents and the little minions helping the big bad of the novel.
Overall a solid book. I applaud the build up in its intensity and pacing. For sure could have had a better reveal and could have a tad more character development to the side characters to round out the book.
3.5 stars.


Thank you to NetGalley & St. Martin’s Press for an ARC of this book. My review is a honest reflection of my feelings towards this book.

Wasn't what I thought. DNF. Couldn't keep my attention. Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read it.

Secrets Never Die begins in an utterly creepy manner that I just loved. It was so creepy that I wondered if the story would be too scary for me. I'm happy to say that it wasn't. It has a tremendous atmospheric quality, perfect for the story.

I also loved that the story is fast-paced and focused, with short chapters. It's easily an afternoon read that immerses you in the story and thoroughly entertains. The premise and twists reminded me of the original Pretty Little Liars with the over-the-topness of it all, but that's something you either love or you don't. This is not a realistic or particularly original story; it's just pure entertainment.

The characters are all very interesting, though I wouldn't say they are particularly well-developed. Sam leads this story, and it's his first-person point of view that the reader follows, except at one point when someone else takes over for a brief time. Sam has some pretty big secrets, but still, he manages to tell the story clearly and concisely. His five-year-old sister, Molly, stole the show, though, or at least my heart. She is delightfully precocious and takes some fantastic pictures.

There are many twists and turns to enjoy in this story, and of course, with secrets being in the title, you know there will be many shocking revelations. I figured out the surprise person behind it all early on, but that's okay because this story is more about the journey, not the destination.