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Release date: May 28, 2019

Publisher: MIRA

Genre: Fiction

Blurb:

How far would you go to protect the ones you love…when they may not be yours to protect?

When Josh’s longtime partner, Grace, dies in a tragic accident, he is left with a mess of grief—and full custody of her seven-year-old son, Logan. While not his biological father, Josh has been a dad to Logan in every way that counts, and with Grace gone, Logan needs him more than ever.

Wanting to do right by Logan, Josh begins the process of becoming his legal guardian—something that seems suddenly urgent, though Grace always brushed it off as an unnecessary formality. But now, as Josh struggles to find the paperwork associated with Logan’s birth, he begins to wonder whether there were more troubling reasons for Grace’s reluctance to make their family official.

As he digs deeper into the past of the woman he loved, Josh soon finds that there are many dark secrets to uncover, and that the truth about where Logan came from is much more sinister than he could have imagined…

Tightly paced and brimming with tension, Her Secret Son is a heartbreakingly honest portrait of a family on the edge of disaster and a father desperate to hold on to the boy who changed his life. 

Review:

I think my expectations for what this book would be weren’t accurate at all and it unfortunately made this one not the best for me in the end. I always talk about how having the right expectations about a book before picking it up helps me SO much and I really wish I would’ve known before I started this that it’s not a thriller at all, the authors last book, The Neighbors was a thriller and I stupidly assumed this would be as well. At best I would say this is a suspense, but really it’s more of a family drama with a mystery. All of that to say, had I known all of this beforehand I think I would’ve enjoyed this one more so take my thoughts knowing that my expectations affected my opinions.

Through the first half of this one I was totally sucked in, it begins when Grace dies and Josh is left to pick up the pieces. I loved the premise, the idea that after his girlfriend dies he begins to find out there is much that he didn’t know about her past and how the secrets she was keeping would effect their son as well. When Josh began to search for answers I was invested, I too was interested in what Grace had been hiding and how this would all make it harder for him to become Logan’s legal guardian. I wouldn’t necessarily say this was fast paced, but it was steady and engaging enough to keep me flipping the pages.

The second half of the story is where things started to fall apart a little for me. I can’t say too much for fear of spoilers but the direction it took was far fetched and a touch dramatic. I was still on board though, I figured the ending would be strong and it would all make sense for me but then that ended up being a little off for me as well. Was it surprising? Sure, but in a ridiculous way that just didn’t sit well with me. Look, it wasn’t incredibly stupid or anything, it just didn’t totally make sense to me, that’s all. I will say the author is a great writer and I’ll definitely be reading anything else she comes up with next, I just don’t think this was the right one for me.

Overall rating: 3/5

Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.