Portobello Book Blog

Tell Me No Secrets is Lynda Stacey’s second novel with ChocLit, the first House of Secrets, having won their Search for a Star competition in 2015. Tell Me No Secrets follows Kate Duggan as she begins a new job in a private investigator’s firm. Kate hasn’t worked for a while having been seriously injured in a car accident which claimed the life of her brother and left her twin sister Eve in a wheelchair. Kate was left badly scarred by the accident and this has really knocked her self-confidence. As she gets to know her new colleagues when she begins her work investigating possible drug dealing, she soon finds herself in dangerous situations and with the biggest danger closer to home that she might think.

I have to start by saying how much I hated Kate’s partner Rob. He was so awful to her and I couldn’t understand why she’d want to stay with him. I suppose the accident and its effects on her appearance made her feel she wouldn’t ever be loved by anyone else but really, if I were her friend I would have been telling her she’d be better off on her own! With her mother and father seemingly blaming her for the car accident, poor Kate really was in need of kind and supportive people surrounding her. Luckily, she did have her sister Eve close by. By contrast, her work colleagues were lovely. In particular, Ben was a great character. Despite the fact that he too had known deep grief in his life, he was so caring and understanding towards Kate and saw past the scar to the intelligent, strong woman beneath.

There was quite a lot of action in this book with Kate and her colleagues getting into all kinds of tricky situations. Lynda Stacey was great at building up the drama and tension within a chapter, then leaving her reader hanging at she moved to a different part of the story. As a reader getting the different characters’ points of view, I was obviously more aware of what was going on than Kate, so there weren’t lots of surprises but there was certainly suspense as I wondered how some of the situations would resolve.

As I expect with a ChocLit novel, at the heart of the book was a love story and a satisfying one at that. The book was well paced with the romance and the drama well-balanced. An enjoyable read, I’ll look out for more from this author in the future.

Thanks to Liz at publishers ChocLit for my copy of the book. Tell Me No Secrets was published yesterday as an e-book and you can order a copy online here Tell Me No Secrets and it’s currently a bargain at just 99p.

From the back of the book

Can a secret be worse than a lie?

Every time Kate Duggan looks in a mirror she is confronted by her guilt; a long, red scar reminding her that she was ‘the one to walk away’ from the car accident. Not everyone was so lucky …

On the surface her fiancé Rob is supportive – but the reality is different. He’s controlling, manipulative and, if the phone call Kate overhears is anything to go by, he has a secret. But just how dangerous is that secret?

When Kate begins work at a firm of private investigators, she meets Ben Parker. His strong and silent persona is intriguing but it’s also a cover – because something devastating happened to Ben, something he can’t get over.

As Kate and Ben begin their first assignment, they become close. But, what they don’t realise is how close to home the investigation will bring them, or who will be hurt in the process …