SECRETS NEVER DIE

A group of friends learn that secrets can be dangerous when a mysterious stalker turns their lives upside down.

Former child star Sam and friends Haran, Dom, Elisha, and Lauren have a Halloween ritual: They go to a hut in the woods near their hometown of Hayschurch and take turns inside it confessing their darkest secrets. They always leave feeling better, but this year someone overhears them and starts tormenting each member of the group: throwing blood-filled eggs at the hut, sending menacing texts, leaving dolls’ heads in their lockers, and surreptitiously following and taking videos of them. One of the videos includes an image of the mystery sender wearing a creepy mask, and Sam is sure he’s seen it before. Once he remembers the connection, the teens realize that their situation is part of something bigger and darker going back long before they were born. The friends show a great deal of ingenuity as they investigate the few clues they have to work with. Genuinely suspenseful scenes keep the tension ratcheting up, and short chapters, plenty of well-timed twists, and an unexpected ending make this a quick, satisfying read, though readers may question whether the teens’ secrets are really terrible enough to justify the lengths they go to protect them. Contextual details point to a British setting, and names offer the only clues to ethnicity.

Fans of thrillers and stories about small-town secrets will be turning the pages late into the night.