The Secrets You Keep

Great descriptive story, excellent thriller, with loads of twists in the plot. Very enjoyable book with strong characters. I was invested in the story from start to finish, a real page turner. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to Kate White and Netgalley who provided me with a copy of this book. I chose to read it and give a voluntary and unbiased review.

Five stars. Wow what a book it was brilliant I loved the twists and turns right through the book. You could not see what was coming next it managed to grip me from page one and I read it in one setting you seriously do not want to put it down. I really felt for Bryn and you could feel her pain. The story was brilliant and the ending was just as good. I have never read any books from this author but I cant wait to read the other books.

Posted on the listing page for the book on Amazon,com

I would like to thank Netgalley and Canelo for an advance copy of The Secrets You Keep, a standalone psychological thriller set in Saratoga Springs, New York State.

Bryn Harper, a Manhattanite through and through, has had a commuter marriage (yes, it's a new term to me too) with her husband Guy Carrington for the two years of their marriage but a serious car accident has left her tired and stressed so she decides to summer with him in Saratoga Springs where he works. Things are going okay although she notices he is getting a bit impatient with her lethargy as he perceives it. This pales into insignificance, however, when the chef catering their dinner party, Eve Blazer, is found murdered a couple of days later and the police link Bryn and Guy to it.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Secrets You Keep and read it in one sitting, desperate to know where Ms White was taking it next. 5* for readability. I'm not sure if readers of psychological fiction will find it totally engrossing in this respect. I'm not a fan of this genre which normally requires me to swallow a number of unbelievable scenarios from the outset but this I found relatively believable. It's serendipitous for the plot that the accident puts Bryn in a position of danger and suspicion - I can't say more without issuing spoilers - but it didn't stretch my credulity too far.

I like Bryn as a character. Despite the setbacks and sense of intimidation she is a tough, successful woman, undaunted by obstacles and determined to get her life back on track. Her strong moral compass and determination to do the right thing make a refreshing change in a market dominated by unreliable protagonists.

I have no hesitation in recommending The Secrets You Keep as a good read.

Months after being involved in a car crash,Bryn Harper is physically healed but she has no memory of the accident and is plagued by bad dreams.

After Bryn and her husband Guy,host a dinner party Bryn swears that some money has gone missing and confronts the caterer that night.The next day Bryn is horrified when she discovers the woman's brutally slain body.

After another murder occurs,Bryn realises that the danger is getting ever closer to home and that Guy has been keeping things from her.How well does Bryn really know the man she loves?

This twist packed thriller is voiced entirely by Bryn in the first person pov.All of the characters are untrustworthy including Bryn herself and I suspected that more than one of them was the killer as the story unfolded.One character who irritated the hell out me was Detective Corcoran who was so like Columbo that I kept expecting her to stop at the door and say "oh just one more thing".Only where Columbo is a loveable character Detective Corcoran was just incompetent and annoying.Although the reader is supposed to feel sympathy for Bryn because she is struggling with her guilt and the bad dreams after the car accident,at times her whining and constant complaints about feeling tired became repetitive as did her constant dithering over making decisions.For someone who was supposed to be the author of a book about making life choices this dithering didn't fit with her character.

Despite my mixed feelings about Bryn and my dislike of Detective Corcoran I did enjoy this fast paced,twist and red herring packed thriller.I was totally hooked from the intense opening chapter,genuinely surprised when the killer was revealed and the cause of the crash was totally unexpected and not what I expected.My one tiny criticism is that everytime Bryn met one of the main characters the reader was told what that character was wearing and it happened throughout the whole book.Why do we need to who what the character was wearing?what does that have to do with anything?

Like I said despite a couple of small niggles,I did enjoy this book and would happily read another book written by this author.

A Great story with a "Who done it" vibe running through it to keep you guessing until the end! Enough drama suspense and tension here that makes a great read.

Bryn is a successful non-fiction writer laid low by a devastating accident that claimed the life of her friend; she decamps to up-state New York to spend the Summer with her new husband in his Albany workplace. Her physical and mental recovery is slow and she is being haunted by dreams which seem to want to return her to the accident, and pass on a message related to this. Bryn and her husband host a dinner for some of the donors he wishes to encourage to fund the opera company he works for and this event sets in to motion a spiral which sees Bryn's life fall out of control and even put it at risk.
The Secrets You Keep is an easy read and a real page turner. It is suspenseful and you quickly learn that no-one in the story can be trusted. Just as Bryn's confidence in those she knows fails, the reader's does too. There is a real twist in the ending which I did guess but it isn't overtly telegraphed and the denouement was enjoyable and gripping. I did find the writing a little clunky to begin with, White's writing is a little awkward to start and there's a lot of unnecessary description which slows the story down a little, by about two-thirds in the book does pick up speed and I found myself really rooting for Bryn to find the answers she so desperately needs.

I enjoyed this book. I liked the ongoing mystery of the car crash and what was happening with Guy. I think i suspected most people at some point which is the sign of a good mystery.

A proper thriller!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would fully recommend it to readers searching for the next great thriller. There's been a tendency within the thriller genre to explore different themes, but this book takes things back to basics with a small town, relationship/couple based thriller.

It's a well written book which I couldn't put down, with the added bonus of a satisfying ending, which many thrillers often don't have. In addition, there's two main mysteries unfolding: who the murderer in the town is and who Bryn can trust, and what happened to cause her recent accident.

I can see this book has had mixed reviews, but I really couldn't recommend it highly enough: do take the plunge and read as you won't be disappointed by the deft story weaving and excellent twists!

The Secrets You Keep
Bryn Harper wakes to the smell of smoke and panics not remembering where she is then remembers she's been travelling on business and is staying in a hotel. As she reaches the door there's a mans voice telling her to wait she cant wait and grabs the door handle at first it won't open then it does only to reveal theres no way out.
Bryn wakens properly and realises that its been a dream another nightmare she's been having since the car crash three months ago where her colleague Paul Durham was killed.
Bryn is a best selling author on self help books however since the crash she has gotten over the broken bones but not the mental scarring. Herself and husband Guy Carrington decide to rent a house where he works in Saratoga to help her get her mojo back up until then it had been a commuting relationship they'd met two years ago and been married almost a year so it would be good to see each other every night. The next night they would be hosting their first dinner party in the house that's when Bryn meets Eve Blazer she's the owner of the catering company.
Eve is very stand offish but if her food is good then Bryn will be happy. The dinner party goes well until the end of the night she goes to get some money but it was nowhere to be found and in its place was a used box of matches was this to play games with her head?
The next day Bryn goes to see Eve to ask about the money but it was more used matches she was bothered about. Eve says she'll look into it so when Bryn receives a phone call the following day to tell her Eve wants to give her something she assumes she's found out who stole the money but when she gets to Eves workplace she finds her murdered. Who did it and why?
This is a brilliant read I really enjoyed it wouldn't hesitate to read another of Kate Whites book I'm definitely a big fan.

My Thoughts:

Firstly I'd like to thank NetGalley and Canelo for the chance to read and review this book. I'd also like to thank Canelo for the opportunity of this blog tour.

I'll be completely honest, I don't normally check out reviews on Goodreads before I read a book as don't want it to be biased. But I went against what I normally do and read a few. I was a little disheartened when I noticed a lot of them were saying they hadn't finished the book. But I started and finished and oh my! How wrong were they? I loved it from start to finish.

The synopsis does make out that poor Bryn has completely lost her memory but in fact she's only missing a few minutes before her awful accident where her work colleague died. It certainly has a 'who done it?' feel throughout the whole book and the twist at the end certainly had me fooled. I certainly had suspicions about Guy from the start, especially where he stuck up for Eve instead of Bryn.

There is a lot of suspicion, paranoia, red herrings and tension, to keep you reading throughout. I started reading this on a Monday afternoon and finished it the next day (figured I'd better get some sleep Monday night).

This book for me was a Kate White debut and I thoroughly enjoyed and recommend it. It was well written and keeps you guessing. Definitely a page turner in my eyes and I'm going to be on the lookout for more in the future. I'm going to give this book a rating of 5/5.

Author, Bryn Harper, has relocated from New York to Saratoga Springs where her husband is working for the summer. She is recovering from a car accident in which her companion died, and has no memory of what happened or why she was really in the car with him. She's fragile and vulnerable, she is unable to write and finding herself plagued by a crippling fatigue.
Bryn finds the body of a woman with whom she had had an altercation, who had been brutally murdered and the circumstances are looking strange to outsiders. It sparks a chain of events that leave Bryn wondering who around her she can really trust, all the time being haunted by recurring dreams of what happened before the fatal crash. She feels she's so close to finding answers that are a fingertip away. She wonders if this is what someone is scared of as it's soon plain that someone is out to get her.

I adored this fast paced thriller. I found myself racing to turn the pages, and the usual 'just one more chapter' mantra kicked in.
I loved White's style of writing, the characters and the settings. She has a real knack for keeping the reader guessing, and I had various theories of what I thought was happening - I was wrong on all counts.
The ending was perfect - it was all tied up nicely. Especially when Bryn finally got to the bottom of the crash, her demons were finally slayed.
I can't say too much more without giving anything away - but I would urge anyone who likes this genre to give it a try. It had me hooked from the start.

Oooh, where to start?! Bryn is an author whose best-selling self-help books have allowed her a comfortable life. Despite being married to Guy, the man of her dreams, they continue to live apart and only seeing each other on weekends but after being involved in a fatal car accident that caused the death of a man from her publisher's they've made the decision to spend the summer together. Or at least Bryn has, with Guy going along with her choice trying to be supportive after the accident.



After a dinner party thrown for donors of Guy's company the caterer is brutally murdered and it would appear just about everyone is a suspect, including Bryn. Questioned by the police, Bryn starts to doubt and suspect everybody and, at the same time, starts to realize that she might not know her husband as well as she thinks. Plagued by nightmares since the accident, they feature a man who is trying to tell her something. The only thing she knows for sure is that the man is not Guy.


Things deteriorate from there. Bryn doesn't know who to trust, and that includes herself. Everywhere she looks she sees a suspect and is terrified that she might be married to a murderer and if he's not a murderer then he's cheating on her.


A great psychological thriller with so many twists and turns it's almost impossible to keep up and with an ending that I did not see coming. Every single character is unreliable and hiding something, from the guests at the dinner party to a woman from the Arts Council who visits Bryn to see if Bryn will attend an event during the summer. Not only are they unreliable but most are also downright unlikable, I found it hard to warm to any of them really except for feeling sympathy for what Bryn was going through.



Kate White does a great job at making the reader suspect everybody of the murders, reeling you in with a plethora of red herrings - most of which fooled me as by the time the final curtain dropped I was surprised by the identity of the killer. For a book full of characters that I took a dislike to I still managed to sit up until the early hours of the morning to finish the book in one go. I had to know who the killer was before I could sleep! I hadn't read any of The author's books before The Secrets You Keep but I will definitely try another one soon. Many thanks to Canelo for a copy of the book!

The beginning of the story really captures you and makes you want to read more. From the first page, I couldn't put the book down it was so gripping and I did, in fact, finish this in one sitting. I loved how suspense was built in the novel it was paced extremely well! All the separate plot lines really did build into one, and I thought that was very clever and it worked so well, as the story goes you begin to put things together and I loved that. I also thought the theme of memory was very good and that worked well with relating all the plots together and I did think that was brilliant. I felt like her husband was a bit dodgy, I was right. Throughout the book you are constantly unsure who you can trust and who you can't and I didn't trust anybody, apart from a character named Derek, I felt like he was trying to help her but other than that I really didn't trust any of these characters. I was glad I was right about the killer. I didn't guess who the killer was not until the moment it was revealed and I was very shocked. I liked it.

This book really surprised me.. it is fast paced tangled web of lies! really enjoyed it and look forward to more by this author. Thank you to Netgalley and Canelo for a copy of this book to read and review.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Canelo for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.* Successful writer Bryn Harper is spending the summer in Saratoga, recovering from a terrible car accident that left one of her colleagues dead. What is supposed to be a time of relaxing and getting her next book proposal ready quickly becomes something much more dangerous. Bryn and her husband Guy host a dinner party in their home. Not long after, Bryn discovers the caterer dead, with an axe in her face. Not prepared to leave it to the local police, Bryn begins investigating what has happened and in the process puts her own life at risk. Kate White does an excellent job of building up the suspense in the novel, until the final few twists.

Excellent book - Great characters and plot. I would highly recommend this book.

This is the story of Bryn Harper, a self help author who was involved in a car crash which results in her loosing her memory. She moves from the city into a more rural area so she can spend time with her husband who, up until now, she has had a commuter relationship with and to make an attempt to work on her next book. Whilst there Bryn becomes involved in some strange occurrences and brutal murders. It quickly becomes down to her to discover just how related all of these things are and just how well does she know the people around her. I really enjoyed this story. I thought it was full of twists and turns and kept me guessing right until the very end.


In the synopsis above it mentions that this novel is recommended for fans on Before I Go to Sleep and I can definitely relate to that. There are several themes, including the memory loss and the unreliability of the husband, that are comparable across both stories. So because of this I did think near the beginning of the book that it may be too similar and this would therefore hinder my enjoyment of the story but it soon became clear that this was not the case. Although there were lots of common mystery/thriller themes running through this book they were handled in a very different way and to me this was particularly evident in the way Bryn handled things as the main character.


I found Bryn to be a very rational character. She didn't jump head first into situations and often talked through her actions and the consequences of those. I found this to be quite refreshing as often characters in thriller novels can be quite reckless and I find I can often be left thinking what are you doing! Bryn's memory loss also made her a bit unreliable and I really enjoy unreliable narrators. This coupled with how untrustworthy the other characters were meant I was constantly questioning what was happening.


Overall I really enjoyed this story. It was page turning and kept me hooked throughout. We were fed a lot of red herrings and the ending was completely unexpected, I did not guess who the murderer was. I also really enjoyed the way the characters were portrayed and the unreliability of them kept me guessing and always wanting more. This is one I would recommend to thriller fans.

I enjoyed this tense thriller with its fast pace and unpredictable twists and turns.
The characters were likeable, if not a bit paranoid but it all added to the story.
I found this novel easy to read with understandable language and a way with words that kept me wondering where it would all end.
Overall a good psychological thriller.

Amazing book that grips you from start to finish. I will definitely look out for Kate White's next book! This book is packed with murder, mystery, betrayal and red herrings. Another classic psychological thriller.

This is a real page turner with strong characters that will grip you from page one. Bryn, a writer, has been in a car crash leaving her with no memory of the accident and suffering from bad dreams. Bryn and her husband, Guy, hold a dinner party, after which their caterer is found dead and Bryn finds Guy has been lying to her. This is a really intense thriller that will keep you wanting just one more chapter until you devour the whole thing. I had several guesses about the ending, and as I read a lot of this genre, I’m usually pretty good at guessing! but this one I didn’t guess. If you love psychological thrillers, definitely grab a copy of this one!

Bryn Harper is a successful self help author, recovering from a devestating car accident that has left her haunted by recurring nightmares. She can't quite remember what happened, but she knows deep down that there's an underlying warning that she needs to figure out. Murder, mystery, suspense, relationships, betrayal... this book has it all. Kate White traverses the ups and downs of married life with ease, slowly building a relationship that has strange things happening within it, a home that isn't quite safe, and bodies that just keep turning up...without a real reason. The connection? Bryn isn't sure, but she knows she must find out exactly what is happening and the key is within her nightmares. From start to finish I was hooked!

Kate White has written an extremely addictive read here. Bryn, an author is recovering from an accident in the care of her husband with whom she has only ever had a long distance relationship. Everything she believes starts to unwind when firstly money goes missing after a dinner party and then the chef who catered for the dinner party is murdered. The twists and turns in the story keeps the book flowing and made it hard to put down. Definitely recommended.

Another great quality page turner by Kate White. I'm looking forward to reading her other stories!

Another page turner of a read I’ve picked up in the last week or so. I’m often confounded by female characters who have whirlwind romances and end up married to someone they don’t truly know, but then their stories often make for compelling reading.

The Secrets You Keep was no exception to this rule. The difference being that in this tale Bryn has not just the mystery of her own husband to unravel, but also the mystery of her missing memory. Fighting nightmares, trying to make new friendships in her summer home town, all while discovering the brutally murdered body of her caterer, and trying to get to the bottom of the inconsistencies and concerns she faces in her life.

It’s got a delicious twist on the killer and it was someone I didn’t see coming from a mile away, I had it pegged as a whole different character for most of the book, and if you can get one past me you’re on a major winner. 🙂

Highly recommended.

A good gripping thriller and worth the read. I am looking forward to reading the next one.