Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier is a messed up book. This was the first thriller where I found the subject matter unsettling, so unsettling that I almost stopped reading after the first two chapters despite having read many books with a similar premise so I don't know why this specific story hit me so hard, it just did. Be warned there are a lot of intense topics in this story and this is not a read for everyone. I can't read novels about ceramic dolls because they terrify me and you may not be able to read Little Secrets because it hits hard on parental suffering and the lengths they go to come to terms with the disappearance and heal, or not heal, from it.

I did decide to persist despite the subject because I again had read previous novels regarding this topic as I knew I would enjoy the read eventually and holy moly, this novel blew me out of the water. I had some suspicions about the culprit but it took me a long time to come to that conclusion because of the rapidly changing mindset of the narrator interspersed with the antagonist's thought which made it tough to connect the dots in a wonderful thriller-like way. This novel is a slow-burn thriller filled with pain, so much goddam pain but the pain fuels the plot making Little Secrets a strong and uncomfortable read.

This is a novel worth your time as it is filled with thriller moments and decisions you won't see coming. Little Secrets is a good read and one worth an hour of your time.

Marin's son is abducted. The plot is what happens one year after, immediately after she discovers her husband's affair. The plot is the lengths Marin will go to ensure she doesn't lose another person in her life. The plot is filled with grief and suffering caused by a missing child and the grief does help you empathise with the characters and root for them to make good decisions. The characters drive this story and are supported by a good plot and intense and very worthy ending.

The characters themselves are nothing flash but they worked perfectly in Little Secrets. The way they are written makes it easy to envision yourself as them, especially the protagonist, allowing for you to feel their pain and determination. All the characters are in pain and it means the decisions they make are not necessarily ones that should be made. These decisions make the story crazy because it is a story about average humans being shoved into an insane situation and how they respond to that undesirable and intense change. The characters are flawed and you warm to them making you want to root for victory and cry when stupidity occurs. They are solid to read and really help humanise this novel for any reader.

The ending is as intense as any typical thriller ending is. Little Secrets is a painful thriller undoubtedly worth your time.

I mean, this was messed up. Sebastian is kidnapped within the first twenty pages or so and I almost stopped reading because I so was heavily impacted and I have no idea why that severe reaction occurred. I have read countless thriller-based missing children novels and never responded as intensely as I have to the premise of Little Secrets; I think that is a testament to the writer that she made me feel so uncomfortable but not too uncomfortable I stopped. I am glad I continued because Little Secrets was good. I adore how flawed Marin was, she represented a woman grieving for her child, carrying the burden she believed it was her fault, holding in pain that she was about to lose her husband, and being frustrated at the world for not caring her child was gone - it was so much emotion and her decisions made the novel great.

I hated Marin at times, I mean she did hire someone to kill the mistress but simultaneously, I couldn't be mad? It was such a conflicting sense of emotions reading her decisions because all I could think was "Would I do the same thing if I had lost a child?" Grief does insane things and she had every right to be riddled by grief but killing someone? I don't know. It was so messed up and that non-perfect and flawed human that was Marin allowed me to connect to the story and I somehow was always on her side. I was mad at Derek. I was pissed at Mackenzie. I was enraged at Sal when I discovered he was the kidnapper and then I was proud of myself for suspecting it was him towards the end.

Very very close to the end when he was so adamant about her not visiting his mother was when I thought it was him. Hillier did a great job throwing subtle clues about Sal going to visit his mother more often than before the kidnapping so there were moments that indicated Sal was up to something and I did not pick up on them. I liked that I was able to come to the conclusion the same time Marin did and I was relieved Sebastian was found alive.

I suspected he would be found alive but I wasn't confident. There was so much suffering throughout the book that I kept my hopes low he would be found alive but once I started suspecting Sal, my hope did increase because I couldn't imagine Sal killing the child of the woman he loved.

I also like how I hated Derek at the beginning and toward the end, all I saw was a broken man. Initially, you only see him through Marin's eyes and as she was so blinded by her own suffering, you as a reader had clouded judgment on Derek's suffering. And then bam - it hit like a ton of bricks, he was coping in a different way and again, I no longer could be upset at him cheating because his wife attempted suicide, his wife was on the dark web (terrifying), and he thought his child was dead because of a mishap during drop-off.  Plus, Marin then hired a killer to kill his "girlfriend," so ... their are too many conflicting emotions in me to come to a conclusion on how I feel about their actions.

I found this novel to be more painful than usual and I still enjoyed it. It pulled me in tightly and Little Secrets was an intense read and one I am glad I read. A major thumbs up from me and I would love to hear your thoughts on the complexity of Marin and Derek's decisions as they drove the novel and the novel was insane.