The Secrets at Ocean’s Edge by Kali Napier
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book was half ‘The Light Between Oceans’, and half ‘Cloudstreet’ – sounds like a great mix, right? Wrong. All this book succeeded in doing for me, was making me want to re-read those two books because they were so much better than this offering.
I am a fan of suspenseful and mysterious reads, and like the slow unravelling of secrets throughout a story, and at first this seemed like the perfect book to meet that requirement. The problem was my lack of interest in any character other than Ernie who didn’t get much air-time, my dislike of Lily who was a horrible person to everyone, and this ‘secret’ that was totally unremarkable and not worth reading until the end for.
Pacing was a huge issue for me, because at some point we need to know what exactly our secret means, otherwise why do we care about finding it out? This information came at too stunted a pace, and left me with a sense of complete disappointment when it wasn’t even that good.
With the mystery unravelling so slowly, it drew more attention to the fact the there was no other story – or to be more accurate, there was an interesting story in the town’s everyday workings, the author just didn’t tell it well. She focused instead on trying to be clever with her mystery, and it actually took away from the part that could have been good.
I wasn’t impressed, and would recommend people to either read ‘Light Between Oceans’, or ‘Cloudstreet’ instead.
Ally Jane 