My Secret Lies With You by Faye Bird
“Three close friends…Two unforgettable summers… One girl’s deepest secret…
Alys appeared last summer, and then she vanished without a trace. Ifan fell in love with her. Hannah hated her. And Marko regrets what they did. This summer Cait is new in town, and a girl has been reported missing. Cait needs to uncover the truth. What happened last summer? And who is Alys?”
It’s a typical young adult mystery as so many are these days, but the mystery isn’t that deep. A young girl appears and changes the lives of three people forever. Cait is drawn into that intrigue the summer after and while the ending is sad, and yes, I cried, I wanted Alys to be happy and find a way to make things work because so much can go wrong with the life she’s chosen. And even though the end was somewhat resolved, there were other things that needed resolving and I don’t like it when books, like TV shows, end without the satisfaction of being neatly wrapped up in a bow.
I give it 7/10.
The Secret Orphan by Glynis Peters.
“Keep her secret. Keep her safe.
On the 14th November 1940, Hitler’s bombs rain down on Coventry. From the rubble of a bombed-out family home, a young girl is saved…
As the Nazis’ relentless bombs fall during the Blitz of Coventry, six-year-old Rose Sherbourne finds herself orphaned and under the guardianship of a Cornish farmer’s daughter, Elenor Cardew. Elenor knows that the only way to protect spirited Rose is to leave the city and make a new life for themselves away from harm. But soon Elenor discovers that Hitler’s firestorm is not the only thing she must fear when she learns a devastating secret about Rose…
With Rose’s life in imminent danger, Elenor turns to the only person she can trust to keep the deadly secret, heroic Canadian pilot, Jackson St John. And amidst the destruction of war, an unlikely romance blossoms as they find a way to protect the child they have both grown to love…and each other.”
Be prepared to go through a box of tissues.
I cried from the first few pages until the end, and I think that’s mainly because it’s a story involving a poor little girl losing her parents, orphans in particular get me, but it’s also about the war and how many lost their lives senselessly and how much needed to be rebuilt. And while this one ended in happier times, it ended without wrapping things up.
Without giving too much away, by the end of the book you learn nothing about what happens to the rest of the ensemble, even though you’ve read about them for most of the book. It’s all well and good for the story to end well for the orphan, but I would’ve liked to’ve known what happened to everyone else. Would’ve liked Titch to get her comeuppance, and wanted to know how Elenor and Jack went after moving to Canada and whether they had any more children. It needed to be filled out with details and finished off properly as each person’s story is left open-ended and you have to fill in the blanks and guess what happens.
The story itself has minor issues, and you need to have a good grasp of who’s who and what’s going on. One thing this book did was made me never want to read another orphan book again. Too damn sad.
I give it 7/10.