Author: Anna Snoekstra
ISBN: 9781489242266
RRP: $29.99
Publisher: Harlequin HQ
Copy: Courtesy of the Publisher
Little Secrets is the second novel by Australian Anna Snoekstra and what an intriguing suspenseful tale she tells. I haven’t read her debut but after Little Secrets I am certainly interested in chasing up Only Daughter (one day when I have a little time).
There are many sub-plots woven through this story to keep the action moving and the suspense in place. You are left wondering how much is related because for one small town there is an awful lot going on.
Rose Blakey has lived her life in the small town of Colmstock but she is determined to make it out. She’s an aspiring journalist trying to get a cadetship and never quite making the grade, but she’s not going to give up. Her writing skills are what’s going to get her out of this town because she can’t pull beers at the pub forever, it won’t be enough for her. There are moments that she stops to wonder if settling down with a local and making a life would be easier but her dreams won’t be silenced.
Sleepy Colmstock isn’t quite so sleepy these days. There is an arsonist creating trouble and the latest fire left a young boy trapped in the local courthouse. The boy was a town favourite and the children are feeling his loss, in the wake of the tragedy a string of porcelain dolls start appearing on doorsteps across town. The dolls are precise replicas of the daughters living in the house, enough to create concern for parents and a lot more work for the police who are already struggling to solve the arson cases.
Colmstock is a small town where everyone knows everyone but it seems there is a lot to learn about the residents, and the arrival of a stranger that coincides with the appearance of the dolls seems a little too uncanny to be coincidence.
Rose recognises that there could be a way to use the drama unfolding in her small town to her advantage but the line between truth and good journalism gets a little blurred.
The action was pretty constant and I was left guessing throughout, there were a few pretty major surprises and some definite deplorable behaviour.
Regardless of how well you think you know your neighbours, that doesn’t mean that the threat is always from strangers. A twisted tale of threads that intersect in the unlikeliest of places means that I just can’t think how to effectively and thoroughly review this novel without spoilers.
The characters were well enough developed to get attached to but not explored to a depth that affected the suspense. You never quite knew anyone well enough to know what they were capable of, or what secrets they may be hiding. There were certainly some dark horses whose darkness was scary and though Rose blurred the lines in pursuit of a story I thought she redeemed herself.
The darkness in this story was disturbing. Little Secrets don’t seem so little when there is so much going on in your town and you can’t seem to find the source of the disturbances. Snippets of information are unearthed and completely taken out of context, or twisted to fit the facts and find a scapegoat.
A dark and disturbing tale that kept me up turning pages long after I should have been sleeping. Snoekstra is definitely an author I will be putting on my watch list.
Little Secrets is book #45 for the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge 2017.
Available now from Harlequin, Angus & Robertson Bookworld, Booktopia and where all good books are sold.
You can find Anna Snoekstra at her Website as well as on Facebook and Twitter.
Everyone is going to have a different take on this one I think and I will be interested to hear what our readers think.
Thanks to Harlequin 20 of our Beauty and Lace Club members will be reading Little Secrets so please be aware there may be spoilers in the comments below.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!
Thankyou Beauty &Lace,Harlequinbooks and Anna Snoekstra for the opportunity to read “Little Secrets” This was a very easy book to read and I throughly enjoy this authors writing style and would easily give it a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️review.
Set in a small rural town where everybody was privy to all secrets,the main character Rose was bored and stifled by her job,family and mundane existence. Rose’s best friend Mia seems to always have Rose’s back but I feel Mia felt jealous of Rose and her ambition to leave the small town of Colmstock behind.
As the secrets and the true personalities come to the surface one is left reading faster to try to find out who has set the whole town on tenterhooks waiting for the next frightening turn. The ending is a complete surprise, and I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to read a good mystery.
My copy of this book went missing so I had to wait quite some time before receiving a copy but boy oh boy was the wait worth it. I seriously enjoyed this book and with all the twists and turns it had me thinking that this book would make a fantastic tv mini series.
Rose is not happy with her life and desperately wants out. Out of the town she lives in, out of her dead end job at the local pub and pretty much just out of her life and into a new and exciting one. She longs for a job as a reporter for a major newspaper and as each rejection comes she feels more and more desperate but her luck changes when dolls begin being left on doorsteps. The dolls have the same hair style and colouring as the little girls that live in each house and its believed that they are warnings from someone with a sinister intent. This gives Rose something of interest to write about which is exciting but when one of the dolls is delivered to her baby sister it hits a little close to home and she becomes desperate to solve the case..
There are so many people in town with secrets and some are bigger secrets then others but each secret has an impact.
As soon as you think you know whats happening there will be yet another twist and suddenly you are heading in a different direction. This is one of those books that you just wont want to put down. Perfect for quiet evening reading.
I really enjoyed Little Secrets – mostly the second half because the first half was all about setting the scene. The intriguing ending had me going back through looking for the clues I missed which I loved (there’s nothing worse than predicting the ending early on in a story). I only wish the character and storyline of the police officer was expanded on more.
Usually I steer clear of thrillers, however Anna Snoekstra’s Little Secrets has changed my mind. I thoroughly enjoyed how at the start of the book I thought it was going in one direction and then the storyline progressed through the development of the character of Rose.
There is the exploration of the secrets that are hidden by the characters in a small town, and eventually unravel. This novel touches on the struggle of Rose to form her own identity and what she will do to reach her dream of being a journalist.
I don’t want to give away too much, as the book does have small hints throughout that come together and you realize it was there all along.
At the end, I found that many of the key storylines were cut short and concluded with a very brief explanation. I would have liked for there to be more detail at the start of the book to balance out the ending.
Thank you to Beauty and Lace for the opportunity to review Little Secrets by Anna Snoekstra.
This is a fantastic Aussie book, it is a page turner! The Characters are described in a way that feels real , like i was there with them, going through the mystery too and desperation…
Little Secrets is a story about a girl that has big goals and a small town that is going through a tough time. I felt the hopelessness and despair… It was dark, gritty and such a gripping read.
thank you for allowing me to review xo
Loved this book ….. Little Secrets is a fantastic book, I love reading books that have a twist and this definetely delivers.
This is a who done it book, so a process of elimination keeps you thinking.
This crime novel was a great read. Love to read more from Anna Snoekstra.
An arsonist burns down the courthouse in a small Australian town, killing a young boy. An aspiring journalist searches for her first big story. After the fire, porcelain dolls are left on doorsteps, looking exactly like the daughters of the families in those homes. And soon, the town turns into chaos.
This book was extremely disappointing. The plot sounded amazing, and even though I didn’t really enjoy Anna’s previous novel, the description of this one had me gripped. However, I found the story to be all over the place.
At first, I didn’t mind some of the characters. However, as the story progressed, I found myself hating every single character. Nearly every conversation was littered with the word ‘fuck’, some even using the word in almost every line. It made me think that the author was desperate to reach a word count, and tried to make the book edgy, but it just left me feeling frustrated. Each character was also very quick to anger, and their personalities just dropped off through the novel.
The end result of the story also left me frustrated. I felt like I had read a book about someone’s day, their very aggressive, cursive day. To be honest, I’m really surprised that in the end, it was almost like nothing had happened. It was a sloppy, kind of rushed ending, that I wouldn’t expect in a book.
Overall, I don’t think I will ever pick up another novel by Anna. I was left angry, and bitterly disappointed that I had spent so much time on this book, only for it to be written in such a rushed, careless way with no real resolution.
Thank you, Beauty & Lace and Harlequin for the chance to read ‘Little Secrets’ by Anna Snoekstra. This is a first read of this Author for me.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel and can say with absolute certainty I will be chasing up Anna’s other book ‘Only Daughter’.
This was another great Australian read. Set in a town, Colmstock, which is described as being like many outback country towns in Australia, so is easily relatable. Suspense and an ever-widening mystery have this country town in its grasp, as Rose has her sights set on writing a journalistic piece that will provide the way for her to leave Colmstock far behind. But the more Rose investigates, the deeper involved she becomes.
If you like a good mystery, then you will love the story behind this. I had a couple of negative views on the book and these negative areas were actually parts of the story that really didn’t need to be there, the story would’ve been great without them. One area was the characters and their hate-filled psyches at one stage, so much hate. And the second, the constant swearing in the book towards the end. I don’t mind when it’s used in normal everyday speech but not when the foul language is used in every sentence almost – and I do swear too and am no prude, but this was overboard.
I’d rate the book a 4 out of 5. I thought Anna’s writing style made for easy reading and the suspense kept the pages turning.