⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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.

i loved how short the chapters were! the story also picked up really quickly which was so nice!! i was always like on my seat needing more and more, and i loved the ending a lot! i can't wait to read more from Vincent Ralph!

This book kept me intrigued from the beginning. I think the title fit the book perfectly. There was a page 183/310 that was missing the closed parentheses.

If I were posting this review on my social media, I would rate it a 5 star. The book was well written, lots of twists and turns. The suspense was just what I like.

This is my second Vincent Ralph book and I had a lot of hesitation requesting this on Netgalley because I didn't like 14 Ways to Die. But I am happy to report that I REALLY liked Secrets Never Die!!

The setting right off the bat was a Halloween party, a creepy forest, and lots of suspicious things happening. There was no stalling with the plot which I appreciated and the short chapters that Vincent seems to do are a huge plus!

I wish we had gotten multiple POVs because it was frustrating not getting let in on everyone's secrets for awhile but boy when I found out the secrets I was SHOCKED and sad and mad. Maybe I was just having an emotional day reading this but the book made me very emotional and I couldn't go to bed until I finished it.

I can't say anything else because everything is pretty a secret and therefore a spoiler but seriously what a fun read!

Thank you Netgalley and St.Martin's Press/Wednesday Books for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I wanted to love this book, I am a fan of Ralph Vincent and was stoked when NetGalley and Wednesday books selected me to read and review it.
Basic synopsis, every year on Halloween, a group of teenagers venture into the forest, to the “hut”, to confess their secrets, one-by-one., alone, inside. But this year, someone was listening. After they go into the forest, confess their “secrets”, they all start receiving ominous texts from a person named Sasha, asking them to do devious things, in return for their secrets not being revealed.
The story sounded amazing, but it fell flat for me. I wanted to know who this Sasha was (who was blackmailing them), and also know what terrible secrets they were hiding to make them comply. Personally I found the secrets to not be ‘that’ terrible, and the force behind Sasha disappointing. I do not want to give anything away. Reading felt more like a chore for closure, instead of a fantastic ride.
Absolutely a YA thriller (which I enjoy), and probably a good read for someone just entering and testing out the thriller genre.

📖: Secrets Never Die by: Vincent Ralph | 📅Pub Day: Tuesday August 29, 2023

I have just been eating up these beautifully crafted YA novels lately! This book being the third book that I read from this author I was sooooo excited to get it in my hands and start reading!!! And not surprisingly, this was another winner of a book for me! So much so that I think this author just became my favorite YA Author!

Perfect for readers that like:
✨Short fast-paced chapters
✨YA horror/thrillers
✨Binge-able all in one sitting books
✨Creepy suspenseful jump scare twists
✨Blackmail
✨90s/early 2000s horror movie vibes

My only complaint is I wanted a little bit MORE backstory of all the characters. Maybe even a short prequel vibe?! I was really wanted the whole scoop on the child acting as it reminded me somewhat, of the ✨MAGIC✨ that was this author’s 1st (and my favorite) novel 14 Ways To Die and how “meta” that was!

That’s all to say this was a super fun fast-paced YA novel. Perfect for any autumnal/spooky szn TBR!

4.75⭐️


Special thanks to @wednesdaybooks and @netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book before its publication date.

Sam was a child star, but he wants to leave that all behind him. His friend Dom and his sister Lauren have a mysterious hut in the woods behind their house they call The Dark Place where they go once a year on Halloween to tell all their secrets, and after Sam's house burns down, he invites Sam and their other friend Haran to use the hut, too. Except this Halloween, the secrets seem to have come to life, and they want revenge.

This was a pretty good YA thriller, maybe bordering a bit on horror. It had a nice set of characters, but I do wish they had been fleshed out a bit more, a couple of them were a little wooden, like Dom. Dom appears to be a giant bully, but it's barely addressed at all in the book. Why is he a bully? What has he done to kids? The pacing is pretty good, with just a snarl here and there. And the reveal at the end was very well done--I didn't see that one coming!

This is definitely written for a younger side of YA (12-15), so if you're not that demographic, you might have an issue with the writing style, but I'm always glad to read a YA book that is aimed AT YA readers, so I enjoyed this quite a bit.

Vincent Ralph delivers a spine-tingling YA thriller in "Secrets Never Die." The ominous allure of the Dark Place sets the stage for a tale where buried secrets resurface with a vengeance. As the haunting pasts of Sam and his friends unravel, the tension escalates, leading to a heart-pounding game of blackmail that leaves them questioning their trust and the boundaries they're willing to cross to protect their fragile peace. Ralph's masterful storytelling weaves together suspense, friendship, and the dangerous power of secrets, keeping readers eagerly flipping pages to uncover the shocking truths hidden in the shadows.

Secrets Never Die is a compelling YA thriller/horror that drew my attention thanks to the compelling premise. It’s twisty and absorbing, and the quick pace of the plot was matched with the short chapters, creating constant tension and suspense.
As the title implies, it revolves around the secrets members of the group are hiding, which they think they are able to confide to the others and leave behind them, but will instead come to haunt them. The mystery behind who could be threatening them is compelling, and it kept me guessing throughout.
Most of the characters aren’t necessarily all the most likable or even dynamic, but I did understand their purpose within the grand scheme of the story. A lot of the story is about how their secrets impact how they behave with each other, and that manufactures a lot of the tension, along with the fear of the mysterious enemy themselves. Sam is one of the few exceptions who has nuance, being a failed child star and his secret relates to what happened to his career. But I think having the others be more catty did help contribute to questions of their trustworthiness, which ultimately made them effective for the narrative in the long run.
I really enjoyed this book, and I’d recommend it to readers looking for a YA thriller/horror novel.

Secrets Never Die by Vincent Ralph is a captivating and exhilarating tale that will leave you breathless. This fast-paced and intricately woven narrative delves into the repercussions that unfold when long-concealed truths resurface, and the extraordinary measures we take to safeguard the darkest aspects of our lives, shrouded in secrecy.

Secrets Never Die is a YA thriller from Vincent Ralph.

"Every Halloween, Sam and his friends go to a hut in the woods they call the dark place and leave their biggest secret there. But this year someone else is there and chases them from the woods. Now someone is blackmailing them with their secrets. Sam is not sure who's watching or who he can trust...or how far he's willing to go to bury the past."

This was my first book from Ralph. I always like to see a YA thriller. Of course, it's always about the secrets. Each teen has something that revolves around Sam and his child star past. There are some red herrings and a plot pivot that's surprising. But it's always about the secrets.. It's easy to yell at characters to talk, but it's realistic when they don't. People don't really share or talk as much as they should.

Some interesting observations about Sam's dad - someone who's desperate to be noticed in any way, even if it's through the kids.

A wild ending and conclusion to this one.

Good option if you like to mix in some YA. I'll definitely be looking for Ralph's other books.

This book was really good. It was full of twists and turns and your perfect mystery/ thriller book. It had lots of interesting back story details. It was a very fast passed story and I really enjoyed the short chapters( I HATE long chapters). I also liked that the author kept the mystery till the end and it was a pretty cool ending. If you like rollercoaster mysteries this one if for you. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time and I just flew through it.