All the Dirty Secrets by Aggie Blum Thompson

Genre ~ Mystery, Suspense

Release date ~ July 12, 2022

POV ~ multiple

Page count ~  349

Audio length ~ 11 hours and 38 minutes

My rating ~ 4 ⭐

My review:

Content warning from the author in the audio version, not e-book ~ rape, sexual assault, suicide references

I can totally relate to some of the same things as Liza. I, too, have a teenage daughter who is an only child and who I am an overbearing smother to. I want to know every little thing, but I am just nosey by nature. And are we smotherers because we’ve ‘been there done that’ and don’t want them to make the same mistakes we did? Or do we just gotta let em live and learn?

Liza is recently divorced and having a tough time connecting with her teenage daughter, Zoe. Liza works at Washington Prep where she attended years ago, and where Zoe attends now. Unbeknownst to Liza, Zoe had befriended a girl named, Emery. When Emery turns up dead in a similar manner to her friend, Nikki, 28 years earlier, Liza starts wondering if the similarities are just that ~ similar or are they somehow related to each other.

Multiple POV’s ~ Liza (mother) & Zoe (daughter) & Nikki
We have a dual timeline ~ present and 1994 and dual mysterious beach week deaths that are interconnected.

Overall, a decent read that I would recommend. It’s definitely full of dirty secrets, so fittingly titled. There are many unlikable characters. There were some nice twists in there that I didn’t see coming. This is my first time with this author and I’d read her work again.

I was able to grab this as on audio from my library too, so I went back and forth reading and listening. I am so happy there were 2 narrators ~ Hillary Huber & Josephine Huang did a lovely job and I think their voices fit perfectly for the ages. Zoe like totally had an annoyed teenager tone going on. 11 hours and 38 minutes and easy to follow along at 2x.

*Thanks to Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Forge Books, Aggie Blum Thompson and NetGalley for the ARC. I am voluntarily leaving my honest review*

⬇Purchase links⬇

Book blurb:

One warm summer night twenty-five years ago, Liza Gold and her friends celebrated their high school graduation with a party on the beach. It should have been the best night of their lives, only, one of them never came back out of the ocean.

The tragedy haunted Liza Gold for years. Now, Liza is a recently divorced working mom struggling to connect with her standoffish teenager daughter Zoe when history repeats itself. Another young woman has drowned at Beach Week, and this time the victim is Zoe’s secret best friend.

Liza begins to suspect that the two deaths are somehow related, which causes her to face hard truths and take an unflinching look at the people she’s called her closest friends for the past two decades. She must discover what really happened to both women before it’s too late.

Set in the upscale DC private school scene, where silence can easily be bought, All the Dirty Secrets asks how far you would go to protect your status and your family, and if some secrets should ever be revealed.

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