Every Single Secret: A Novel

This book was provided to me for free in return for an honest review.

We follow Daphne as she navigates her new engagement to Heath, the man of her dreams. Only, he is having nightmares that scare her, and he wants to break their pact of keeping the past in the past. So, she reluctantly joins him at a couples therapy retreat...

"Our minds were tricky things, manipulators of time and space, coloring events with our personal palette of rage, fear, or desire."

Now, we jump around a bit, from the 19th of October, the week leading up to this day, and Daphne's past. Daphne is an interesting character, sometimes a bit reckless. Daphne is a foster kid, has a thing for counting as a coping mechanism, and snaps a rubber band around her wrist when anxious.

I'm speechless at what this book represents and how easily it blurs the line between love and obsession. Forget what you think you know, the last few chapters throw you around and tosses everything you want to happen out.

"Sometimes I wonder if there's anywhere we can go to escape. The pain that's been inflicted upon us or that we inflict." - Gladys

Emily's writing is straight-forward, easy to follow, and to the point. She makes use of the jumps in time to keep us guessing, and while I thought I figured it all out, there were still a few surprises that I didn't see coming at all.

Personally, I liked to read about Daphne's past way more than the full story, and think that there is such a missed opportunity there to learn about the foster home and the girls that she shared her childhood with. Also, I liked the interaction between Daphne and Gladys too...

"We'd both kept our secrets, kept the doors shut and locked tight. And now, I had the worst feeling that those doors were about to burst wide open. That our secrets - beasts with claws and fangs and foul breath that had grown in the dark and transformed into something hideous - were on the verge of escaping."

This story is more creepy after you finish the book and let the story run through your mind for a while. What Emily wrote can really make you think about love, hate, obsession and passion - and the lengths people will go to to keep what they think they deserve.