Author: Natalie D. Richards
Narrator: Natasha Soudek
Publisher: Dreamscape Media
Publication Date: November 2021
Genre: Teen / Young Adult / Mystery / Thriller
Description: I know seven dirty secrets:
One caused the fall. One did nothing. One saw it all.
One didn't care. One used their head. One played the hero.
One was left for dead.
On her eighteenth birthday, Cleo receives a mysterious invitation to a scavenger hunt. She's sure her best friend Hope or her brother Connor is behind it, but no one confesses. And as Cleo and Hope embark on the hunt, the seemingly random locations and clues begin to feel familiar.
In fact, all of the clues seem to be about Cleo's dead boyfriend, Declan, who drowned on a group rafting trip exactly a year ago. A bracelet she bought him. A song he loved. A photo of the rafting group, taken just before Declan drowned. And then the phone calls start, Declan's voice taunting Cleo with a cryptic question: You ready?
As the clock on the scavenger hunt ticks down, it becomes clear that someone knows what really happened to Declan. And that person will stop at nothing to make sure Cleo and her friends pay. Can they solve the hunt before someone else winds up dead?
My Thoughts: Told in first person point of view from Cleo, the reader is introduced to so many characters that I found it not only hard to keep it all straight, but started to get dizzy with all the who did what and to who merry-go-round.
In a nutshell, one year after her abusive boyfriend dies on a rafting trip, on her eighteenth birthday, Cleo finds a box in her home after she gets out of the shower. As she was the only person in the home, she has no idea who the sender is and the contents and clues are an invitation to a scavenger hunt. Sounds pretty interesting, right? Especially as the clues all point to her dead boyfriend, Declan, and the threat that if she doesn’t complete the scavenger hunt in time, this unknown person will ruin her life and tell everyone what really happened. Cleo ran track in high school and is looking to get into college to study forensics, so she has a lot to lose. Of course, I immediately assumed that Declan wasn’t dead, but has decided being the abusive jerk is fun and wants to torment Cleo, but that got old really quick and the only thing motivating me to continue was to just find out who was behind this and why.
There are several flashback scenes where the reader gets more than a passing introduction to Declan and the levels he would go to hurt Cleo, often without remorse. Major trigger warning for me and to be honest, pushed some hot buttons that nobody noticed what was happening to Cleo. It shouldn’t have surprised me as Cleo, her brother and all these so-called friends keep a lot of secrets, themselves. I didn’t rate this book higher than I am because I felt almost zero sympathy or compassion for any of them and when the identity of the person behind it is finally revealed, it wasn’t a surprise and really anti-climactic.
The narration performance by Natasha Soudek was well done. She demonstrated appropriate levels of emotion and tension to make the situation Cleo and her friends are going through realistic
My Final Verdict: This was my first book by this author and though overall, I found the book to be just OK, I would be willing to read more of her work. The premise of the story was amazing and is what drew me to the story in the first place, but the delivery left me disappointed.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of Seven Dirty Secrets from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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