These Things Hidden

Adult mystery

    Well it's mid afternoon on New Year's Eve.  Eugene has gone to spend the day with his brother.  I'm glad that they're close.  But I also have to admit to often wishing that I had a sibling I could spend time with and be close to, one who wasn't severely and irreversibly brain damaged.  

     I've been reviewing some real gems of picture and juvenile books I discovered while shelf reading.  But now we're up to the main event.  Six adult books by my favorite newly discovered adult mystery writer, Heather Gudenkauf.

     The lives of four women are interconnected in These Things Hidden.  They live pretty much in the same area.  They even are acquainted.  But if the secrets that invisibly bind them were discovered all would be thrust into a frightening new normal.

     Claire and her husband, Jonathan l, have had their hearts broken by miscarriage and failed in vitro fertilization.  A child they fostered with the hopes of adoption was abruptly taken away and reunified with her mother after they fell in love with her.  Then baby Joshua came into their life.  Five years later he's starting kindergarten and she's running a bookstore in a building Jonathan restored.  Life is looking good for this little family.

     But there's a fear Claire somehow can't shake.

     Allison has just been released early from prison after five years.  Up through her junior year in high school she'd been an academic achiever, a five sport athlete, and popular with her peers.  Then an ill advised relationship left her pregnant and alone with this knowledge until a home delivery with only sister Brynn in attendance.  She was arrested for drowning her baby in the river behind her home.

     When Allison gets a job at Claire's bookstore somehow Joshua looks very familiar.

     Brynn can't get that night out of her mind.  She also feels guilty for Allison's arrest.  She'd called for medical help when her sister took a turn for the worse.  Her life is looking up.  She's moved away from her demanding parents to live with her beloved grandmother.  She's going to a community college in their companion animal program.

     She wants to see Allison basically when Hell freezes over.

     Charm is a nursing student who is getting practical experience at home as well as in her hospital rotations.  She's caring for her stepfather who is dying of cancer.  She wants nothing to do with her irresponsible, manipulative mother or her selfish bad boy brother.  

     And she knows a lot of Claire's secrets.

     At first slowly and incrementally but then rapidly all things hidden start revealing themselves.  The players and their loved ones struggle to cope with their increasingly precarious lives.

     And the fate of one little boy hangs in the balance.

On a purrrsonal note, darkness has started to fall.  I'm about to start working on the very sensible meatloaf supper I'm making for Eugene and, of course Tim if he wants to stay for dinner.  (Jules)

It's almost time to party.  Better nap now so I won't miss any of the fun.  (Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to our readers who will hopefully soon be safely and safely seeing in 2023.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

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