April Masterson has a YouTube baking show that is getting quite a bit of attention. It is called Sweet Secrets, where each episode has her secret to perfecting a certain baked good. She lives with her husband in a comfortable house in the suburbs, has a seven-year-old son Bobby, who she loves, and truly seems to be the wholesome mom persona she tries to curate for herself online. She is friends with the other moms at Bobby's school, including the uptight PTA head, Block Captain, and former lawyer Julie, whom she considers a 'best friend' but is secretly not that fond of. Enter Maria, a new neighbour with a son Bobby's age. Maria is sweet and genuine, and refreshing after Julie's exacting, and often ridiculous, demands regarding book clubs, PTA meetings, parking, pets, and everything else one could imagine. Maria and April become fast friends, and finally, it seems like April has found a trustworthy confidante, and can truly be herself for once. Everything is great, until her world starts to fall apart.
April's 'sweet' secrets aren't her only ones. A ubiquitous but mysterious someone knows too much about her, and keeps sending her anonymous texts that are both taunting and threatening. Telling someone about the texts isn't in her best interests; after all, she is trying to ensure the skeletons in her closet remain hidden. Everything she is supposed to be in charge of gets sabotaged, but to the public eye, which is really just the parents of the suburb, April is to blame. Everyone starts to turn against her, and the same is happening to Bobby. Maria also seems to be avoiding her, and maybe even hates her. As though that isn't enough to deal with, no matter how hard she works to look and be perfect online, she is getting a lot of hateful comments on her YouTube channel. Things start out as mildly inconvenient, but rapidly go to downright catastrophic. Every time she thinks nothing could possibly get worse, she is proven wrong. Someone is out to ruin her life. As time passes, she strongly suspects that it is Maria. What could Maria possibly have against her? And is it really her, anyway?
In a Freida McFadden book, you will be guessing until the end. Or more precisely, you will know who about halfway through, while the why is slowly unraveled in the second half. Although I haven't reviewed all of them, I have been devouring Freida books at an alarming rate, and each one I come across is like opening a shiny new present. Her plotting is always meticulous and elaborate, and all plot ends are tied together perfectly and concisely. In many ways, this book is similar to her others in terms of planning. Despite my best guesses, the plot twist was completely unexpected and yet reasonable, which was gratifying and relieving. Even then, somehow, this book did not pack the punch I have come to expect from Freida's books. It felt like the story was dragging at some points, and some clichés were used, but this was not evident until the second half of the book. Admittedly, there was also a lot less violence in this book, which normally increases the stakes in a thriller. However, excessive gore and murder are not necessary for a thriller to be fast-paced or impactful, as Freida herself has demonstrated several times. I do not think this was what made the book less exciting, and in my opinion and Freida's defense, clichés are based in truth to some extent.
I cannot pinpoint why exactly I am not gushing over this book, but I certainly did not dislike it. The book has a lot of interesting sociological insights. The dynamics amongst the moms were entertaining: the tendency to subtly compete, to one-up each other, to gossip, to exclude someone to further one's own sense of belonging, all while remaining 'friends' who do truly care about each other to some extent. I generally associate this behaviour with children or teenagers, but from what I have heard, it is true of adults as well, no matter how old they may be. Do people ever really grow up? Or is it that children emulate their parents' behaviours? I think the both are true, but the latter more so. Moreover, getting older does not necessarily make one more sensible.
After the plot twist, the perspective changed from April's to that of another character, who is usually the 'perpetrator' in Freida's books. I have a habit of believing everything a person says, and this book was a jolt back to reality, at least to the reality of unreliable narrators. Nothing is ever as it seems, characters are allowed to lie, especially by omission, and the same story, when told by two different people, can sound extremely different to the point where you cannot believe it is indeed the same story. Is anyone really ever right or wrong? Probably, but it's an entire greyscale and it's near impossible to be on either of the extremes. This book gave me a lot to think about. Maybe it wouldn't be in my top five favourite Freida McFadden books, but I do not regret reading it and I will be back for more of her work, probably too soon.
As for the narration, I thought Alyson Krawchuk did fairly good work. Some words were unintelligible and I had to rewind two or three times to understand them, but not frequently enough for me to have serious complaints. The kind of vocal skill required to enact an audiobook always leaves me in awe, and Krawchuk definitely has those skills.
P.S. The following does not really fit into the context of this review, therefore it is included in this postscript. I found out that barely two months before the writing of this review, Freida McFadden revealed her real name to be Sara Cohen. Earlier, I had learned that she was a practicing doctor who also wrote but preferred to keep her life private. While the name Sara Cohen in no way rings any bells because she is, after all, a complete stranger to me, it was still an exciting bit of news. The ability to maintain her practice while prolifically writing books of such high quality is truly impressive.
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