The Children's Secret: A Novel by Nina Monroe

 

Eva Day is enjoying the last few days of summer.
It's hard to believe only a few months ago she moved to this sleepy New Hampshire town from England with her husband and daughter. The Days are settling into their new community well, although Eva's daughter Lily has been withdrawn; she's missing home.

But Eva has the perfect distraction for her: the Wrights - another family in town - are throwing a back-to-school party for their son, a great opportunity for Lily to start making new friends. The problem is it's well-known that the Wrights have guns on their farm, and other parents in the town are reluctant to play at the house.

In an attempt to bring families together, Eva convinces all the other mothers in her circle - bar one - to attend the party. It's a beautiful day, and adults and children alike having a wonderful time. Until the happy atmosphere is shattered by a gunshot ringing out from the barn where the children are playing.

What follows is a tense and claustrophobic story about a tight-knit community fracturing, and the eventual healing process after the children's secret is revealed. ~taken from Goodreads

I have such mixed feelings about this book. The plot is intriguing and deals with gun violence among children, a story we see much too often in America. This shooting happens to take place in a small town America where no one ever expects something like this to happen. The children involved all have a secret to keep, and finding out what those secrets are take up the majority of the book. 

Let's start with the characters. While they are well written and the author obviously took good time to create them all, there were just too many to keep track of. Plus this story is told from alternating perspectives and it was just confusing trying to keep track of who was who and where they fit in with every other character. It was so overwhelming. Plus they were all so cliché. Typical interpretations of different types of people with no real originality. They all just sort of blended together after awhile. 

Then, there was the story's pace. It was so slow. Entirely way too slow and repetitive. I would say half the book could have been chopped and the story would still be the same. There was just too much rambling from character to character. It didn't add to the story, but rather made me start skimming paragraphs, hoping for it to come to an end. By the time the pace picked up it snowballed so fast I was left with whiplash, trying to re-read instances because it all spilled onto the pages and came to a conclusion so fast. 

I do like the author's writing style and their were times when the story just flowed perfectly. I had no problem imagining each scene and characters involved. The plot itself, like stated before, was interesting and unique, but I would classify this as more of a mystery than a thriller with the slow moving pace. The ending was wrapped up neatly and was a bit too sugar-coated for my liking. 

Thank to Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for allowing me an early digital copy to read and give my honest review. It was a 3 star read. 

The Children's Secret is set to be released on September 7, 2021 here in the U.S. so if this sounds like a novel you want to experience please pre-order and add it to your TBR list now!

Happy Reading!