Welcome to the February 10th stop on the blog tour for The Secrets We Keep by Nikki Lee Taylor, organized by Rockstar Book Tours. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for excerpts, reviews, guest posts by the author, and a giveaway! (More on that at the end of this post.)
Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means there is no additional cost to you if you shop using my links, but I will earn a small percentage in commission. A program-specific disclaimer is at the bottom of this post.
About the Book
The Secrets We Keep
by Nikki Lee Taylor
Published 4 January 2021
Magpie Creative Media
Genre: Women’s Fiction, Domestic Thriller
Page Count: 288
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Not all mothers are created equal… Some are better at hiding the truth.
Crippled with anxiety, Sophie is desperate to overcome the pain of losing her husband and only child in a freak car accident. Living and working in isolation with only the company of her dog Miss Molly, Sophie agrees to take on a job reviewing the manuscript of an up-and-coming writer. But this isn’t any story. It is one that unearths old secrets and to discover the truth, Sophie must find the courage to embark on a search that will change her life forever.
On the outside, Love Mommy blogging queen Madelyn-May has it all. To her online community she is the perfect mother. She has a successful husband, perfect twins, and an idyllic life. What they don’t know is Madelyn-May also has a secret. When her past collides with the present, Madelyn-May is forced to make a choice that could destroy everything she loves.
Would you risk destroying a family, if it meant healing your own heart? Would you tell the truth, if it meant losing everything you love?
The Secrets We Keep is a confronting look at the complexities of family and lengths a mother will go to for her child.
WHAT READERS ARE SAYING
“If you want to add this to your To Be Read List, you certainly can because this nail-biting thriller gets you and at the same time makes you emotional. There is a beautiful pain this book leaves behind, and I certainly couldn’t figure out the cover till the end and that is also something that I was not expecting… NOT AT ALL”
“This is one intense, twisted, addictive, complex, jaw-dropping novel! Not only is this a very well-written book with wonderfully interesting characters, but the suspense builds at just the right pace as the story unfolds.”
“This novel had quite a few twists and turns and the twists are so juicy that I couldn’t stop reading”
“The story and how the characters are interconnected is an interesting twist, I can’t say I’ve read before. This book was hard to put down because I felt like I was a spectator with a front row seat to one highly dysfunctional family.”
“The book touches on so many sources of pain addressing each with intelligence, empathy, and humanity. It is a true thriller in women’s fiction”
‘The Secrets We Keep was by far the best book I have read this year. Many twists and turns throughout kept me looking forward to my reading time each day. The ending was fantastic.”
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | B&N
Read it for free on Kindle Unlimited!
Excerpt
The blinds are drawn because I need them to be. There are days the light is welcome, but not today. Today I need the darkness. It is the best way I know to pull them in close, here in the dark, in the empty spaces where they no longer exist and yet still take up every particle of air.
My life. My love. My family. James and Josh. My husband and son, stolen while I was sleeping, peacefully unaware at that very moment that the entire world was shattering.
It’s the small things that hurt the most. An unexpected letter with his name on it. A television commercial for Linvilla Orchards – where we picked peaches every July, just the two of us at first, and then with Josh. His familiar scent trailing behind a stranger, its ghostly arms wrapping around my lungs and squeezing. The crisp sting of empty sheets as autumn turns to winter. Worst of all: the sudden ring of a child’s laughter breaking the silence and tearing my heart into a thousand tiny pieces.
I stroke the fur on Miss Molly’s golden head and close my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, even though dogs don’t understand apologies. “It’s this day, it’s….”
I let the words trail off, unable to say out loud that five years ago my husband and son took their last breath, trapped in a car wreck, and I hadn’t been there. Unable to say that while they were dying, I lay peacefully in bed, useless and selfish, taking an afternoon nap. It hadn’t even woken me. I hadn’t sat up, my instincts kicking into overdrive. I hadn’t experienced so much as a bad dream.
At the time friends told me I should try to forgive myself, that it wasn’t my fault. They brought soup, and sent messages. They held me and promised things would get better. They stood on my stoop and reminded me, “There’s nothing you could have done.”
Therapists call my depression and anxiety a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Survivor’s guilt, they say, although that’s not the official term. Apparently it’s natural for parents who outlive their children to experience a sense of blame, but I have struggled to believe there is anything natural about it. Could there be anything more unnatural than for a mother to bury her son?
Then there were the people who told me to have faith. I’ve never been a religious person, but I have stood alone on a rainy afternoon and heard the hollow thump of dirt shoveled onto a tiny white casket. I’ve heard the mournful cry of a loon as people, not knowing what else to say, turned and made the sad walk back to their cars. I have stood as day turned to night, staring at two holes in the ground, hoping my husband and son wouldn’t be cold on the first night away from their beds. Away from me. Having faith would mean believing James and Josh were taken for a reason, that there was some divinity to their absence. There is not. There is only pain and empty spaces.
I get up from the couch and pull the curtains further across. But no matter how dark I make the room, there are always slivers of light that keep me in the place I don’t want to be.
Slivers that never let me bury the one question I still have no answer for.
How do I ever find the strength to step into the light when they are forever lost in the dark?
About the Author
Nikki Lee Taylor is a long-time newspaper journalist turned fiction writer. She is also a dreamer, a doer, a storyteller, a coffee lover, and fur mum to two golden retrievers Max and Sam.
She spends most of her time staring into space, walking between worlds, and creating out-loud character dialogue that sounds a lot like talking to herself in the shower. She stays up late plotting and planning the lives of characters yet to be created and starts every day embraced by the warmth of a good coffee.
She is a courageous booktrovert who lives life with her right foot in NSW, Australia and the left in a world that exists only in her head.
She reads books out loud to anyone who’ll listen and drives her husband mad spending all her free time with friends who exist only on the page.
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amazon | Goodreads
Giveaway Alert!
1 lucky winner will win a $10 Amazon Gift Card, International.
a Rafflecopter giveaway| 1/18/2021 | Rockstar Book Tours |
| 1/19/2021 | The Momma Spot |
| 1/20/2021 | Jaime’s World |
| 1/21/2021 | JaimeRockstarBookTours |
| 1/22/2021 | Two Chicks on Books |
| 1/25/2021 | The Phantom Paragrapher |
| 1/26/2021 | She Just Loves Books |
| 1/27/2021 | Lifestyle of Me |
| 1/28/2021 | Hurn Publications |
| 1/29/2021 | Jazzy Book Reviews |
| 2/1/2021 | Down The Rabbit Hole |
| 2/2/2021 | Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers |
| 2/3/2021 | BookHounds |
| 2/4/2021 | Fire and ice |
| 2/5/2021 | Books A-Brewin’ |
| 2/8/2021 | A Dream Within A Dream |
| 2/9/2021 | Three gals and plenty of books |
| 2/10/2021 | Westveil Publishing |
| 2/11/2021 | Pick a good book |
| 2/12/2021 | Books and Zebras @jypsylynn |
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.