In the past two weeks, I’ve accidentally read the same book twice. Well, basically the same book—different titles, different covers, but the same core plot: Terrible things happen in college. Fast forward to adulthood, and surprise! Those terrible things come back to haunt the survivors.
For the record, my college experience was pretty wholesome. Basketball games, parties, weird advertising projects, philosophical debates in business law, and long afternoons on the library lawn pretending to study while actually checking out the hot guys walking by. Did we do bad things? Sure. Did we kill anyone? Absolutely not. (At least, not that I recall. But memory is tricky.)
Both This Stays Between Us and Our Secrets Were Safe follow a familiar formula: secrets, lies, and murder wrapped up in guilt that’s been simmering for a decade. Why is this trope everywhere? Probably because it’s easy to set up. Commit a crime, bury the past, let it rot, and watch what happens when it claws its way back.
In This Stays Between Us, the story takes us to the Australian Outback, where the remains of Phoebe, a missing American student, are found ten years after she vanished during a study abroad trip. The surviving members of her little travel group reunite for police interviews, and Claire, Phoebe’s old roommate, has to reckon with her own questionable choices. There’s drugs, there’s sex, there’s violence.
In Our Secrets Were Safe, we’re stateside in New York, where Brooke and Charlotte are being blackmailed by “Sophie,” their ex-roommate who (minor detail) has been dead for years. As the layers peel back, it turns out Sophie is exposing more than just the truth about her death. There’s… you guessed it: drugs, sex, violence. See the pattern?
Are these good books? Hmm. Debatable. Did I enjoy reading them? Sort of. It really depends on how much disbelief you’re willing to suspend and how much you enjoy watching messy people implode under the weight of their own secrets.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the advance copies!