ARC AUDIO BOOK REVIEW: All the Dirty Secrets by Aggie Blum Thompson

 

Publication Date: July 12, 2022 Format: Audio Genre:  Mystery/Thriller Narrators: Hillary Huber/Josephine Hoang

Publisher: Macmillan Audio Length: 11 hours 38 min Buy: Kindle | Audio

Synopsis

Set in the upscale DC private school scene, where silence can easily be bought, Aggie Blum Thompson's 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.

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, she's 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.

Review: 

I receive this book from the publisher through netgalley.com I am voluntarily leaving this review. 

This is a really good read, well written and good narration.  I will admit that the actor that gave voice to Zoe made me nuts. She gave a cringe worthy but realistic portrayal of those awful teen years.  I kept thinking god I hate teenagers every time she narrated the chapter.  I remember friends kids behaving like Zoe and it made me crazy but it was really well executed. 

Liza is woefully naive, she doesn't seem to know what is happening around her.  Its like she is living in a bubble.  Liza is an accurate portrayal of white privilege.  She just doesn't see what is right in front of her.  From the way that the rich kids from her school are treated differently by police to the fact that her friends death was barely investigated, which probably would have been different had she not been Latina. Even her daughters experience being half Japanese is overlooked by her.  Her total inability to see other's experiences until the fateful events that unfold around her daughter are mind blowing but also so common. 

Very well written, great mystery and strangely enough I started reading this book right before I headed down to my house on the Delaware Beach which is one of the settings in the book. 

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