REVIEW: Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz

            Some secrets shouldn’t be kept…

            Until three months ago, everything about sixteen-year-old Camelia’s life had been fairly ordinary: decent grades; an okay relationship with her parents; and a pretty cool part-time job at the art studio downtown. But when Ben, the mysterious new guy, starts junior year at her high school, Camelia’s life becomes far from ordinary.

            Rumored to be somehow responsible for his ex-girlfriend’s accidental death, Ben is immediately ostracized by everyone on campus. Except for Camelia. She’s reluctant to believe the rumors, even when her friends try to convince her otherwise. Instead, she’s inexplicably drawn to Ben…and to his touch. But soon, Camelia is receiving eerie phone calls and strange packages with threatening notes. Ben insists she is in danger, and that he wants to help—but can he be trusted? She knows he’s hiding something… but he’s not the only one with a secret.

            While I expected to absolutely love Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz, it ended up falling short in comparison to her Blue is for Nightmares series. To me, at least. It also took me longer to get into than her other books. For some reason the characters just had annoying voices in the beginning. Granted they did grow on me over time and I did really enjoy the book, but my initial feeling toward them was annoyance. I realize that the voices of the characters were very mirrored with the voices of teens, but it did not ring well with me and left a gross taste in my mouth.

            The book cover is really beautiful, though misleading. The cover says ghosts but the synopsis says stalkers. I guess the stalker is metaphorically a ghost but no. Cover = misleading. The characters were very 2D and they should have really been developed into more 3D versions. The plot was stereotypical of the stalker genre, and the addition of Ben’s abilities did nothing to assist in the story except to turn Camelia into an incredibly unlikeable character. The story as a whole just wasn’t believable enough. In comparison to Laurie Faria Stolarz’ other works, this was nowhere near as good as any of it.

            I hated the majority of the first half of the book. The characters were atrocious. Camelia, Kimmie and Wes were annoying as all get out. I hated Kimmie so much in the beginning; I mean, what a horrible best friend. All three of the characters had grating voices and over-the-top personalities (usually a good thing, but bad this time around). However, I should mention that I did end up liking Kimmie and Wes. They were way too obnoxious in the beginning, and only when they got a little bit of depth did I like them. Camelia was a boring protagonist, and she just kept putting the phone of the holder! I think I face-palmed every single time she did this. I just didn’t believe her character or her fear enough. And then the way she just accepted Ben’s gifts like they were normal, everyday occurrences? No. Unbelievable, and thus I hated her after that. I was totally with her friends. If Ben kills her it’s her fault for not listening to her friends. I think I might be ranting.

Anyway, the plot was a little stereotypical, but I really loved how she kept the stalker a deep dark secret until the very end. There were so many guys I thought would be the killer at so many moments throughout the book and by the end I was reading so quickly all “tell me who the stupid stalker is”! So, in terms of genre, the suspense was absolutely there but the magic was unnecessary and made the book too similar to one of her other series’.

This was one of the most annoying things about this book. It was almost exactly like Blue is for Nightmares only not as good. I love Laurie Faria Stolarz’ works. She writes stalker/creepy books scarily well, but this book was just like her other. So not only is it not very original because stalker books have been done, and even more have been done with magic involved, the author has herself done it before. This book just wasn’t incredibly gripping and the stalker was kind of predictable (even though I had no idea who it would be until the very end). I was just let down here, and that makes me really sad. Of course, I will read the next two because I own them. I’m hoping things will get better. I mean, I really enjoyed the book at the end and had no idea what would happen, so I’m just hoping the oomph in her writing that I know and love will show up in the next book.

XOXO Tia