Review: Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz

Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Goodreads summary:


Until three months ago, everything about sixteen-year-old Camelia's life had been fairly ordinary: decent grades; an okay relationship with her parents; and a pretty cool part-time job at an art studio downtown. But when Ben, the mysterious new guy, starts junior year at her high school, Camelia's life becomes far from ordinary.

Rumored to be somehow responsible for his ex-girlfriend's accidental death, Ben is immediately ostracized by everyone on campus. Except for Camelia. She's reluctant to believe he's trouble, even when her friends try to convince her otherwise. Instead she's inexplicably drawn to Ben...and to his touch. But soon, Camelia is receiving eerie phone calls and strange packages with threatening notes. Ben insists she is in danger, and that he can help – but can he be trusted? She knows he's hiding something...but he's not the only one with a secret.


My review:

I have not had good luck with books this week.

After abandoning one (though its technically still on pause for now.), this one came up in my library hold queue and I dove in. Wasn't long, unfortunately, before I wanted to dive right back out again. It wasn't a long, overly wordy story, though, and I did want to find out how it would end, so I pushed on to the end.



The story premise is pretty good, if not altogether unique, with some similarities to Twilight but without the vampires (boy saves girl from nearly being crushed by a car, boy has staklerish tendencies, boy is keeping secrets, etc.) These Twilight ties aren't the reason I came away with a lot of meh when I was finished. My problem was that there wasn't a lot of consistency. It's a case of the author wanting to keep the reader guessing about whether or not boy is protecting girl or the creepy stalker. I'm all for mystery - but when consistant characterization suffers? End the mystery and pair the two up to fight the bad guy.


Ben was continually "don't touch me" all over the place, but then out of nowhere (and sometimes only a minute after that "don't touch" bark, he's reaching for her hand.) Cue me blinking and rereading to see if I got it right. I'm still trying to figure out the "trying too hard" part - where he'd hold on for too long and somehow hurt the person he was touching. I don't know if that element added anything other than confusion for anyone else, or just me.

It all just seemed like a lot of potential that was unrealized.

I think what kept me from connecting with these two is how long it took Camelia to accept Ben as the good guy. She's defending him to her friends, she admits she's scared, and then when he comes over all she can do is level accusations at him. Repeatedly. Kinda made the kissing hard to swallow, too. If she didn't trust him, thought he was the one behind the pictures and notes and calls, then kissing should be coming in last. On the same token, if she trusts him enough to be kissing him, stop accusing him of stalking another girl.

I'm still trying to decide if the best friend, Kimmie, was supposed to be cute, and maybe some found her that way. To me? She was just flat out annoying. I wanted to crawl into my Kindle with a roll of duct tape and silence her for good. Could very well be that I've read too many Mean Girls-based books lately, but any "friend" who constantly, and openly, mocks and derides the guy you like....probably needs to look the word friend up in the dictionary.

There are more books in this series, but for me, it ends here.