Though Heather knew that digging deeper into her mother’s past was likely only to provide her more heartache, after her second shocking discovery in nearly as many days, she felt unable to stop seeking answers. But it wasn’t the fact that her mother had written back and forth with a mysterious pen-pal that Heather found hard to swallow, it was the identity of the person who was on the other end of the exchange: Michael Reaves, a serial killer notorious both for his brutality and for the scope of his crimes. Hidden in her mother’s things, tucked away in a biscuit tin, were years’ worth of correspondence. But despite any preparations she took to ready herself for unexpected discoveries, what she found still shook her to her core. So, as she returned home, she was somewhat expecting to find that there was a dark depth that her mother had deliberately kept hidden. Having never known her mother to suffer from depression - or even to be particularly sad - Heather was understandably shocked when she received the news.

The first indication that she didn’t truly know her mother as intimately as she had always assumed she did was the way in which her mother died, by suicide. My reflection on this unanswerable question was resurrected as I read A Dark and Secret Place.Īs this novel opens, our protagonist, Heather, returns to her childhood home following her mother's unexpected death only to find that she perhaps did not know her mother at all.

Is nurture really so much more powerful than nature? And, each time, I’ve wondered, how could I be so significantly different from the people who had made the person who was responsible for half of my DNA? But, since then, I have reflected upon this unexpected exchange many times. It's on the long side, and could have benefited from some editorial fat-trimming in places, but it's enjoyably well written and the winning combination of intricate plotting and psychological depth means that the reader's patience will be amply rewarded.Knowing after two attempts that I would get nothing approximating a true answer, I stopped pressing. As well as divides of age and class, French handles the gender clashes superbly. Here.the incessant and often vicious jockeying for position is described with such appalling accuracy as to leave this reviewer practically weeping with gratitude that she is no longer a teenager. Joanne Heffernan, a rival clique's queen bee-dealing out casual humiliation even to her acolytes and claiming virtual, if not actual, droit du seigneur over any boy she fancies-is an absolute masterpiece of vulnerable cruelty. The characterization of the girls is particularly strong: all the manufactured attitude, intense loyalty, harsh judgment and vying for alpha status with a rival clique in the way that only adolescent girls can.

The secret place book