Our Little Secret

Angela sits at the police station, being grilled about a missing woman named Saskia. But Angela prefers to talk about Saskia's husband, HP, who is Angela's childhood friend and first love. She insists her account, which unfolds over the course of Our Little Secret, isn't a love story, though--"what love story ends in a police station interview room?"

When Angela moved to Cove, Vt., at the age of 15, HP saved her from being bullied by a mean girl at school, and he and Angela became fast friends. At 18, after summer nights spent under the stars sharing their deepest secrets--and their bodies--Angela left for the University of Oxford for a year while HP stayed behind, which partly led to him marrying Saskia. Now the two have had a child, and Angela signs on as godmother. But does she really want HP to be happily married, or does she think he belongs to her?

Roz Nay, in her debut, keeps readers enthralled with prose that's at once lyrical and incisive. The author can make a drug trip seem poetic; Angela gets high for the first time and starts seeing shapes in clouds: "I learned... that what you see each day is entirely your own invention... I could alter what's in front of me--I could literally write the sky." When HP tells Angela a tragedy happened in his childhood home and she asks why his family didn't move, he answers, "Because pain isn't in houses... it ties you to the house." Our Little Secret should keep readers tied to its pages. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

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