Author: Stephanie Butland
Format: ARC
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Publish Date: July 1, 2015
Source: I received a copy from the author; however, this did not affect my review.
What's the Story?:
From Goodreads.com: "A tragic accident, a broken heart, and a marriage drowning in secrets...
Mike always walks the dog in the evening while Elizabeth relaxes in the bathtub--but one night he doesn’t come back. Mike has drowned while saving a teenage girl named Kate, his dog standing on the bank barking frantically as the police pull his body from the water.
But despite her husband being lauded as a hero, Elizabeth can’t wrap her mind around the fact that Mike is gone--and Kate won’t reveal the details of what really happened that night.
Elizabeth finds herself facing the unfathomable possibility that she may not have known her husband at all. Does she really want to know the truth? Or will the weight of Mike’s secrets pull her under?"
My Two Cents:
In "The Secrets We Keep," Elizabeth's husband, Michael, drowns while saving a nineteen year old girl named Kate. At first, it seems like Michael saved Kate selflessly and sacrificed himself. Then the secrets start coming out. Michael and Kate seem to know each other a little bit more than Elizabeth originally knew. Now Elizabeth can't be sure that she really ever knew her husband. Told through Elizabeth's letters to her dead husband and third person present tense, this book takes a look at what happens and how we cope when we don't really know the people closest to us.
This book was a little bit predictable for me but I still enjoyed it. The story itself is one that has been done a lot: one person in a marriage happens to be carrying on a relationship with another person and their spouse doesn't find out until after they are gone. I did like the addition of Elizabeth's letters to Michael as she starts to unravel the mystery of who he really was. That addition really helped me to get into the book.
The character that we get to know best is Elizabeth. Although this story is told from the third person, we get the best sense of who Elizabeth is and what makes her tick. We the readers don't really get a good picture of what make some of the other characters do what they do in the book. Some of the characters like Michael and Kate seem to be not as clearly described to me and I really wanted to get a little closer to those characters since they made up so much of the story arc in this book. I really wanted to know a little bit more about why they did what they did.
Overall, I found this book to be predictable but still enjoyable. I enjoyed seeing how Elizabeth comes to terms with understanding that the Michael she thought she knew is not really the Michael that existed. This would be a good pick for someone looking for a book with a familiar story that they can get into easily.
Like the sound of this one. Thanks for the review
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