Six Little Secrets by Katlyn Duncan
Expected Publication: November 24th 2017 by HQ Publishing
Some secrets can never stay hidden for long…
Six teenagers meet in Saturday detention: a brain, a beauty, a cheerleader, a rebel, a recluse and the new girl.
But someone is watching. Someone has made sure that they are all in the same room at the same time. Someone knows that each of them is hiding a terrible secret…
…and by the end of detention, everyone will know the truth.
Note: I received an ARC copy of this via Netgalley. This in no way influences my opinion.
I stumbled across this book whilst looking through titles on Netgalley. The cover and blurb immediately drew me in and I had to know what was going to happen. Unfortunately, I was hugely disappointed with this book and I found it relatively predictable.
The biggest issue within this book for me was the characters. They are completely superficial and there is no depth created – we see short snippets of the characters a few days earlier (what ultimately lands them in detention) and we find out the secrets they didn’t want everyone to know. However, other than that, we don’t really delve into the lives of the characters; there is no connection created between the characters and the readers and it makes the book difficult to read because I didn’t really care about them enough to not want them to get hurt etc.
The secrets they didn’t want everyone to know were also pretty cliche to the genre. It was nothing mind blowing and they were all pretty predictable. I was expecting something that would have really shocked me and it never came. The reasoning behind what someone was doing to the characters during detention was also uninteresting and cliche. I feel like a better reason could have been thought out than what was given.
The book didn’t have enough time to develop any aspect of it – plot wise or with the characters. We see a couple of the punishments and then the reason was suddenly told by the perpetrator and then… nothing. Suddenly our characters, who previously had NOTHING in common, were suddenly all best friends and walking down the school hallway together? The relationship between the characters never developed during the events to warrant them suddenly being connected to each other. There was no consequences for the perpetrator, either, they just suddenly disappear – which is completely unrealistic. No social media, no online print, not anywhere to be found anywhere even though we eventually find out their real name…
The author also skimmed over the issue of Teacher/student relationships without actually delving into the the societal issues and the consequences that it has on the student as well as the teacher – along with the school and the community itself. It is a problem that we face in todays society and it was gleaned over without enough of an explanation or representation. The other issues from the other students should have also been represented in a much more in depth and personal way to really show the issues and the consequences of those – whether they be the issues the characters themselves face or the effect they have on the society within the book.
All in all, I was pretty disappointed with this book. The characters were superficial at best and the issues were not represented properly to show the consequences for the characters involved, along with the community as a whole. I was expecting a lot more from this book and it just didn’t deliver. I gave this book 1/5 stars.
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