Secrets Never Die by Vincent Ralph
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Secrets Never Die is a YA-Horror/Thriller release from Vincent Ralph. With a cover that screams 90s-Horror to me, I was super excited to pick this one up.
I listened to the audiobook on a solo road trip and it was a pleasant way to pass the time. The audio narration is good, it sounds young-feeling and fits the story well.
Admittedly, my attention wavered, but I’m not sure if that was necessarily the story, or my mind being on vacation.
This story follows teenaged, Sam and his close-knit friend group. They have an annual tradition of holding private funerals for their secrets at an abandoned hut in the woods, which they call the Dark Place.
Suddenly, those secrets are coming back to haunt them in eerie and unexpected ways.
Sam, once a promising child star, had his career tank after a terrifying fire at his home. This event is heavily tied to the current events, but how?
There’s blackmail, dangerous secrets and lots of head-scratching twists and turns. Sam isn’t sure who he can trust.
Even his friends are starting to feel like potential threats. How far will Sam be willing to go to bury the past and free himself from his own deeply held secrets?
This was a good time. As far as YA Horror-Thrillers go, it does read a little on the younger side, in my opinion. Maybe more in the Tween category.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, I am just pointing it out so that you can decide whether or not that would suit your tastes. For me, personally, I enjoy Horror-Thrillers from Childrens, all the way up through Adult, so it doesn’t bother me at all.
Content-wise, this is a decent, fast-paced story. It would probably go direct to video if it were a movie, but again, there’s nothing wrong with that.
I think for me, I just found the narrative a little hard to track. Sam’s personal story was compelling, but his friends lacked memorability to me and I had a difficult time distinguishing between them.
These difficulties could perhaps be due to the audio format, but I’m not sure about that. I consume A LOT of stories via audio and that’s not a common problem for me.
I think, personally, I would have just liked to see a bit more character development to go along with the action.
Also, some of the darker elements felt a bit all over the place; like perhaps too much was going on at one time. That could 100% be personal taste though.
Overall, I think this is a solid story. A fun way to pass a weekend and I know a lot of Readers, particularly the Teens this is intended for, will really enjoy this.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Wednesday Books and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with a copies to read and review. I would definitely be interested in picking up more from this author!