The Secret of Lies {My Thoughts}

The Secret of Lies by Barbara Forte Abate
EBook Edition 304 pagesPublished December 17th 2010By Dog Ear PublishingISBN   1457500523  (ISBN 13:  9781457500527)
Source: ECopy of book provided by author in exchange for honest review.
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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Book Synopsis:

Propelled by an insurmountable sense of desperation, Stevie Burke is recklessly abandoning home, husband, and outwardly contented life under cover of night; at last resigned to defeat in her long battle against the tortured memories of her past.

Days later, lost and floundering in a dreary motel room without plan or destination, it is a long ago song playing on the radio that gently tugs Stevie back through the dust of remembrance. 1957 - The last summer spent at the ancient house overlooking the North Atlantic. A season which had unfolded with abundant promise, but then spiraled horribly out of control - torn apart by a shattering tragedy that remains splintered in fragments upon her soul. And it is only now, when Stevie at last lifts her eyes to stare deep into the heart of her long sequestered memories, that the long held secrets of past and future are at last unveiled.
My Thoughts:

We all have childhood memories that when triggered can cause us pain and sometimes even despair. Stevie Burke however carries the weight of the world on her shoulders due to a horrible ending to the summer of 1957 when she lost her sister, when her innocence was forever shattered and when her world was turned upside down!

Author Barbara Forte Abate may have only written one novel but the story that she chose to share is one of family, betrayal, lies, heartache, lost innocence and most of all coming to terms with things that are out of one person's ability to have ever controlled or prevented happening.

The character of Stevie Burke starts out as a teenager of 14 when she is on the brink of young womanhood and her story ends in her twenties when she is a grownup, tormented for all the years in between by what happened the summer her sister died.

Facing things head-on has never been easy for Stevie, as a child she always had her parents to buffer her from the harsher side of life. With both her Father and Mother gone as a grown woman she learns to depend on Ash Waterman, a young man who she met years before he came to work on her parents farm and developed a strong distaste for until one day she opened her eyes and her feelings changed to acceptance, then friendship and seemingly overnight into a deep and abiding love.

However, even with the steady embracing love of Ash she never laid to rest the tragedy of her childhood. Running away from her husband and her despised childhood home seem like the only solution to ending her misery.

Stevie's headlong flight from all that is familiar and good in her life leads her back to where she once was happiest, the place where her sister lost her life and the place Stevie thought she would never revisit again.

This is a tale of a character who loses her way, a character who is driven by inner demons that lead her to push those in her life who care about her the most as far away as possible. The journey to reconciling her past with her future is a hard one for Stevie, it almost costs her more than she can ever bear to lose.

In the end there are still unanswered questions whether things will work out between Stevie and Ash, however other issues for Stevie are resolved completely so it works out in my mind that the reader knows all they need to.

[ECopy of book provided by author in exchange for an honest review.]

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