The Secrets She Keeps

Michael Robotham is as good as it gets when it comes to the psychological thriller and The Secrets She Keeps is latest example of a chilling thriller. Here we meet pregnant Agatha, who works part-time as a stocker at a little grocery store in London. She envies Meghan, the pretty, well-off mother of two with a handsome husband, a nice house, and a mommy blog. Agatha learns that Meghan is pregnant and due at about the same time as she is when a chance encounter in the store leads to an unlikely friendship.

As with most Robotham novels, surface appearances hide deeper secrets and truths. Like peeling an onion, layer after layer is exposed with new details revealed each time. Is Meghan’s life as perfect as it seems? Is cheerful Agatha as show more good as she appears? What does it mean to have a perfect life and a perfect family? And what would you be willing to do to get and keep it?

Robotham skillfully pulls you in deeper and deeper, revealing darker truths and stakes that keep escalating until they have so much momentum it’s unclear if they can be stopped. The pages fly by as you move towards a conclusion that is impossible to predict. The uncertainty of outcomes lends tension to an already high stakes situation.

The audiobook is read by Lucy Price-Lewis who does a great job. Her character voices reflect both the difference in social status of the two principle characters as well as their different and changing states of mind. She adds urgency to the words on the page as situations become both more tense and more tragic. One of Michael Robotham’s greatest skills is in investing your emotions in the characters and making it absolutely gut-wrenching as you see tragedy approaching. Lucy Price-Lewis captures this dimension and perfectly complements the story.

This is a great story and an author who never fails to entertain. Highly recommended.

I was fortunate to receive a copy of the audiobook from the publisher. show less

This was extremely good! Michael Robotham knows how to write psychological thrillers! Sure there are plenty of unexpected twists and turns, but what makes this one fantastic is the depth of the story. He takes the reader to such unexpected levels. He makes you feel for every character, regardless of their poor decisions. The ending is a bit of a mind bender and allows for reader interpretation.

Meghan, is a married pregnant mom of two, who appears to have it all. Agatha, is an unmarried pregnant woman working in a grocery store. Agatha sees Meghan daily and becomes overly curious about Meghan’s life. One day they finally strike up a conversation. The only thing expected from this story is that no one lives the life we imagine for them.

My emotions were a whirl with this well thought out book.
 
Though it was a bit length for the genre, this was a really quick read because of how gripping the plot was. I felt a real connection to both of the characters and emphasized with the way each of them felt. I became quite invested in the fate of all involved.
 
The entire concept was incredibly well plotted and thought through. This was reflected in Agatha's character--she was precise and methodical. Meg had more going on than seemed on surface level which helped me to become quickly invested. I loved the details Robotham included and how they all tied together. The policework involved was also quite intriguing to read about.
 
At the beginning, Agatha gave me the creeps, but show more flashbacks and pointed details really drew me to her and by the end, though I also wanted to shake some sense into her, I wanted to see her growing up a bit and being happy.
 
The ending had a few surprises, including a relationship that I hadn't quite seen developing and a very solid finale. This was a rare book where the ending was quite satisfying in that I didn't want to read more about the characters because I knew enough to safely envision the rest of their lives.
 
Though this book wasn't outstanding, it was enjoyable and very easy to get lost in.
 
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham is a 2017 Scribner publication.

Whew! Now that was intense!!

Agatha, a store clerk, and Meghan, a stay at home mom/blogger with a seemingly idyllic life, two women who are vastly different in class and style, find a common ground when their lives casually intersect.

Meghan meets Agatha in the market she shops in, striking up a conversation over their pregnancies. However, what you see on the surface of their lives is not always the same as what lies beneath- and that’s putting it mildly!!

When this book first started getting a little buzz, I knew I wanted to check it out for myself. I also saw that it was compared to Ruth Ware’s novel and to…. Yep- one of “The Girl” books. So, I tried show more to tamp down on my enthusiasm just a bit, worried I would be disappointed.

Well, I wasn’t at all disappointed. This is a well constructed thriller, that not only kept the suspense level at a maximum peak, but was an intelligent, clever, and distinct novel. I admit, it did make me squirm a little at times, though. I had a terrible feeling of foreboding right off, and as I went deeper into the story, that feeling of dread became almost unbearable.

The characters are spectacularly flawed, morally questionable on several levels, and so you may or may not feel sympathy towards them, but there are innocent victims at stake, so I was very concerned for the welfare of some of these people.

"We need the darkness to appreciate the light, and the bumps along the road to stop us from falling asleep at the wheel.”

While there is the clear sense of danger coming, there are multi-layers of suspense. Both Meghan and Agatha have backed themselves into a corner which adds another rich layer of stress to the story, giving it an unrelentingly tense atmosphere!

The final showdown is absolutely breathtaking, and the ending is utterly chilling!

This book definitely lived up to the hype!! The writing is superb, with well drawn characters, and perfect pacing.

If you enjoy domestic and psychological thrillers, you do not want to miss this one!!

4.5 stars
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The thing with a Michael Robotham thriller is that even when he's working in territory that's been extensively explored, there's always something extra about his interpretations. So it is with THE SECRET SHE KEEPS, where again there's complexity and nuance in the portrayal of both "good" and "bad".

The narrative in THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS switches between two main female characters. Both are eight weeks pregnant, both have secrets they are keeping to themselves, yet they are very different people. Agatha is struggling on her own, poor and clearly underprivileged she's working in a local supermarket, doing it tough, envious of Meghan's seemingly perfect life. Meghan's the one with the nice house, two children, the successful husband. show more Agatha's watching Meghan, very closely, envy quickly slipping into something more creepy, worrying, especially as Meghan's utterly unaware of the interest, battling with her own life, that might seem perfect to Agatha, but is riven with problems of its own.

Robotham choreograph's an elaborate dance between these two characters, delicately revealing more and more details about their lives, intertwining them together closer and closer - building the tension gently, slowly, languidly in the beginning, until suddenly the reader will find themselves a page turning witness to a slow moving car crash that is all the more disturbing because of the carefully crafted inevitability of many of the plot lines.

It's a mark of Robotham's skill that he's inserted THE SECRET SHE KEEPS into a crowded domestic noir scene, littered with unreliable narrators, dysfunctional families and tension because of poor judgements, and created an extremely readable, quite chilling, page turning entrant.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/secrets-she-keeps-michael-robotham-1 show less

Excellent story!! I knew from probably the second line of the story that Agatha was a nut job stalker and likely a con-artist, but it didn't make the ride any less exciting! The author did a great job of intertwining the past and the present to almost make you feel sorry for Agatha, and at the same time think "this chick's bat-shit crazy, somebody needs to stop her!" Great use of psychological events to develop this character as well. The character of Megan was also well developed but a little less interesting, although she had her own secrets as well. The ending was not quite expected but definitely gave closure with the characters. I like that! I hate being left hanging. I believe this is the first of this authors books that I have show more read but I will definitely be looking out for more. show less

Michael Robotham’s standalone novels have a tendency to cajole me into empathising with people who I wouldn’t expect to find sympathetic. In 2014’s LIFE OR DEATH I found myself on the side of a convicted robber and with THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS I ended up feeling compassion for two women who present, at least initially, as downright unlikable.

Agatha is single(ish), works as a supermarket shelf stacker and will lose her job – and what paltry benefits it comes with – when her baby is born later in the year. Meghan has a successful and loving husband, a pigeon pair of children soon to be supplemented by an ‘oops baby’ and her mummy blog has recently been plucked from obscurity by a women’s magazine. It’s not a complete show more surprise then that Agatha fantasizes about having Meghan’s life. But we’re not in SINGLE WHITE FEMALE territory here; there’s something far more subtle than sheer covetousness for the sake of it going on.

Although it is suspenseful, especially in its second half, THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS is more of an exploration of its two central characters than the term ‘thriller’ might suggest. We realise almost immediately that all is not as it seems with Agatha, but as her secrets (and she has many) are revealed Agatha morphs from the scary, one-dimensional character of many ‘airport reads’ into a woman who has had more than her fair share of life’s travails and understandably yearns for the kind of life she sees other people leading. While I baulked at some of Agatha’s methods I grew to admire the strength of her determination and could identify with the depth of her need. It became really easy to like Agatha and to somehow want her to succeed, even though for her to do so would harm Meghan and her family irrevocably. And I didn’t want that either as I grew to know Meghan. Whose life is not as perfect as it appears to outsiders and who has at least one element of her life she’ll fight to keep secret. I suppose it’s not exactly a revelation that people are rarely what they present to the world but depicting that kind of dichotomy is often done in a pretty ham-fisted way whereas here it has a real ring of authenticity and is, more than once, quite beautifully sad.

The novel also offers some cuttingly sharp observations about modern living but it’s hard to say much about these without giving away spoilers. Given that even the publisher’s blurb for this book is remarkably (and wonderfully) scant on the plot’s surprises I’d hate to give the game away so will just say that I enjoyed the book’s take on the modern media landscape and our collective culpability when rushing to judgement about things or people we know bugger all about.

In short, THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS is a terrific, character-driven novel of considered suspense. Its subject matter will be tough going for those who have shared Agatha’s particular problems but because her experiences are only ever shown to help us understand her choices, the depiction shouldn’t elicit the kind of manufactured outrage so popular in today’s world.

My experience of this book was only enhanced in the audio format very ably narrated by experienced voice artist Lucy Price-Lewis. She managed to convey the different narrative voices with subtle but observable differences and didn’t over dramatise (a pet peeve of mine). show less