A review by janjanjukebox
Our Little Secret by Kiersten Modglin

mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Our Little Secret by Kiersten Modglin 
 300 pages 
 5 hours and 54 minutes narrated by Mandy Kaplan and Wyatt Baker 
Genre: Suspense, Thriller > Mystery Thriller, Psychological Thriller; Contemporary, Mystery > Crime, Domestic 
Featuring: Small Towns, Secrets, Teen Drama, Sex - off camera, Multiple POVs, Flashbacks, Cul-de-sac, Sheriff, Teachers, Mayor, Bad Parenting, Neighbors, Childhood Friends 
Rating as a movie: PG-13 
My rating: ⭐️⭐️ 
My thoughts: 38% - Confusion! 😕 There are too many characters. So far I'm more annoyed than hooked. 😒 I think it's obvious what's going on but I don't have enough evidence to jump on anything yet. 
 55% - More than halfway through this one without a real plot or solid character development. There is still time to fix it but so far it's just been random talking from neighbors, like Cul-de-sac without events. 
Another dud. I have now read 11 books by Kiersten Modglin and this is the 5th to get less than 3 stars from me. Widow Falls came in this morning but I'm going to read 2 other books first. The first issue I had with Our Little Secret is it is very much domestic suspense with few thrilling moments. I am absolutely sick of publishers putting books in the wrong genre to get us to read them. If I want to read something slow I will pick it out, labeling your book as a thriller when it is a suspense is not doing your book any favors in the long run. Book was labeled as a psychological thriller which I don't feel like it is. Suspenses have tension, you fear whay may happen, as did the characters here for more than half the book. Thrillers are fast-paced and you feel danger and fear for the characters, not at all here. Psychological thrillers are supposed to take the external action and have the characters internalized it into deep emotions for the reader to analyze, not in this book, there is a lot of telling and almost no showing. The second issue I had with this story is the first 70% of it is a lot of anticipation, then there's an answer key ending. I hate answer keys, you're cheating! If your story is good write it, don't give me Cliff notes. His & Hers by Alice Feeny also used the answer key ending, she was going for Gone Girl and it doesn't have an answer key ending so I didn't understand. I could have used an answer key for Sometimes I Lie. Anyway I feel when authors use answer keys it's like they know how they want their story to end but they are tired of writing so they just feed you the answers, or they realize that they didn't reveal enough in the actual story so they tell you what happened. It's lazy writing to me and this story wasn't good so if that's how it was going to end she could have feed me the answers around 80%. 
Recommend to others?: Nope. Kiersten Modglin writes 3-5 books a year so understandably not all of them are going to get the same amount of care. This one felt thrown together. 
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