I
am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the THE SECRETS WE KEEP by Nikki Lee Taylor
Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the
giveaway!
About
The Book:
Title: THE SECRETS WE KEEP
Author: Nikki Lee
Taylor
Pub.
Date: January
11, 2021
Publisher: Magpie Creative
Media
Formats: Paperback,
eBook
Pages: 288
Find
it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, B&N,
Read for FREE with
a Kindle Unlimited Membership!
Not all mothers are created equal…
Some are better at hiding the truth.
Crippled with anxiety, Sophie is desperate to
overcome the pain of losing her husband and only child in a freak car accident.
Living and working in isolation with only the company of her dog Miss Molly,
Sophie agrees to take on a job reviewing the manuscript of an up-and-coming
writer. But this isn’t any story. It is one that unearths old secrets and to
discover the truth, Sophie must find the courage to embark on a search that
will change her life forever.
On the outside, Love Mommy blogging queen
Madelyn-May has it all. To her online community she is the perfect mother. She
has a successful husband, perfect twins, and an idyllic life. What they don’t
know is Madelyn-May also has a secret. When her past collides with the present,
Madelyn-May is forced to make a choice that could destroy everything she loves.
Would you risk destroying a family, if it meant
healing your own heart? Would you tell the truth, if it meant losing everything
you love?
The Secrets We Keep is a confronting look at the
complexities of family and lengths a mother will go to for her child.
WHAT READERS ARE SAYING
“If you want to add this to your To Be Read
List, you certainly can because this nail-biting
thriller gets you and at the same time makes you emotional. There is a
beautiful pain this book leaves behind, and I certainly couldn't figure
out the cover till the end and that is also something that I was not
expecting... NOT AT ALL”
“This is one intense, twisted, addictive,
complex, jaw-dropping novel! Not only is this a very well-written book with
wonderfully interesting characters, but the suspense builds at just the right
pace as the story unfolds.”
“This novel had quite a few
twists and turns and the twists are so juicy that I couldn't stop reading”
“The story and how the
characters are interconnected is an interesting twist, I can’t say I’ve read
before. This book was hard to put down because I felt like I was a spectator
with a front row seat to one highly dysfunctional family.”
“The book touches on so many
sources of pain addressing each with intelligence, empathy, and
humanity. It is a true thriller in women’s fiction”
‘The Secrets We Keep was by far
the best book I have read this year. Many twists and turns
throughout kept me looking forward to my reading time each day. The ending
was fantastic.”
Excerpt
The blinds are drawn because I need them to be. There are
days the light is welcome, but not today. Today I need the darkness. It is the
best way I know to pull them in close, here in the dark, in the empty spaces
where they no longer exist and yet still take up every particle of air.
My life. My love. My family. James and Josh. My husband
and son, stolen while I was sleeping, peacefully unaware at that very moment
that the entire world was shattering.
It’s the small things that hurt the most. An unexpected
letter with his name on it. A television commercial for Linvilla Orchards –
where we picked peaches every July, just the two of us at first, and then with
Josh. His familiar scent trailing behind a stranger, its ghostly arms wrapping
around my lungs and squeezing. The crisp sting of empty sheets as autumn turns
to winter. Worst of all: the sudden ring of a child’s laughter breaking the
silence and tearing my heart into a thousand tiny pieces.
I stroke the fur on Miss Molly’s golden head and close my
eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, even though dogs don’t understand apologies.
“It’s this day, it’s….”
I let the words trail off, unable to say out loud that
five years ago my husband and son took their last breath, trapped in a car
wreck, and I hadn’t been there. Unable to say that while they were dying, I lay
peacefully in bed, useless and selfish, taking an afternoon nap. It hadn’t even
woken me. I hadn’t sat up, my instincts kicking into overdrive. I hadn’t
experienced so much as a bad dream.
At the time friends told me I should try to forgive
myself, that it wasn’t my fault. They brought soup, and sent messages. They
held me and promised things would get better. They stood on my stoop and
reminded me, “There’s nothing you could have done.”
Therapists call my depression and anxiety a form of
post-traumatic stress disorder.
Survivor’s guilt, they say, although that’s not the
official term. Apparently it’s natural for parents who outlive their children
to experience a sense of blame, but I have struggled to believe there is
anything natural about it. Could there be anything more unnatural than for a
mother to bury her son?
Then there were the people who told me to have faith.
I’ve never been a religious person, but I have stood alone on a rainy afternoon
and heard the hollow thump of dirt shoveled onto a tiny white casket. I’ve
heard the mournful cry of a loon as people, not knowing what else to say,
turned and made the sad walk back to their cars. I have stood as day turned to
night, staring at two holes in the ground, hoping my husband and son wouldn’t
be cold on the first night away from their beds. Away from me. Having faith
would mean believing James and Josh were taken for a reason, that there was
some divinity to their absence. There is not. There is only pain and empty
spaces.
I get up from the couch and pull the
curtains further across. But no matter how dark I make the room, there are
always slivers of light that keep me in the place I don’t want to be.
Slivers that never let me bury the one question I still
have no answer for.
How do I ever find the strength to step into the light
when they are forever lost in the dark?
About
Nikki:
Nikki Lee Taylor is a long-time newspaper journalist
turned fiction writer. She is also a dreamer, a doer, a storyteller, a coffee
lover, and fur mum to two golden retrievers Max and Sam.
She spends most of her time staring into space,
walking between worlds, and creating out-loud character dialogue that sounds a
lot like talking to herself in the shower. She stays up late plotting and
planning the lives of characters yet to be created and starts every day
embraced by the warmth of a good coffee.
She is a courageous booktrovert who lives life with
her right foot in NSW, Australia and the left in a world that exists only in
her head.
She reads books out loud to anyone who’ll listen and
drives her husband mad spending all her free time with friends who exist only
on the page.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Amazon | Goodreads
Giveaway Details:
1 lucky winner will win a $10 Amazon
Gift Card, International.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Tour Schedule:
Week One:
Week Two:
Week Three:
Week Four:
