Review--No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall

 

The author of What Lies in the Woods returns with a novel about three sisters, two murders, and too many secrets to count.

Emma hasn't told her husband much about her past. He knows her parents are dead and she hasn't spoken to her sisters in years. Then they lose their apartment, her husband gets laid off, and Emma discovers she's pregnant―right as the bank account slips into the red.

That's when Emma confesses that she has one more asset: her parents' house, which she owns jointly with her estranged sisters. They can't sell it, but they can live in it. But returning home means that Emma is forced to reveal her secrets to her husband: that the house is not a run-down farmhouse but a stately mansion, and that her parents died there.

Were murdered.

And that some people say Emma did it.

Emma and her sisters have never spoken about what really happened that night. Now, her return to the house may lure her sisters back, but it will also crack open family and small-town secrets lots of people don’t want revealed. As Emma struggles to reconnect with her old family and hold together her new one, she begins to realize that the things they have left unspoken all these years have put them in danger again.

 

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest and voluntary review. I was in no way compensated for this review. 

Kate Alice Marshall's No One Can Know is an edgy mystery that has deep roots. This is my first adult read by Marshall, though it will not be my last! I have always enjoyed Marshall's YA thrillers as they tend to have a creepy supernatural vibe to them. While that supernatural vibe is not present in this book, the creepy factor still lives on.

When Emma was a teenager, her parents were violently murdered and everyone in their small town pretty much suspected that either she or none of her sisters did it. But what the town and everyone else didn't know was how vicious her parents really were. As to who actually killed them, well, that's the real mystery.

The story is told through all three sister's points of view in the present and past. We largely focus on Emma's present though. She and her husband were just about to start a new life together and buy a house, but then her husband loses his job, she finds out she's pregnant, which would normally be a happy thing but with money being tight, it's becoming somewhat problematic. Emma decides she wants to keep the baby though and she makes the tough decision to move back home temporarily, in the house that her parents were murdered in and holds so many painful memories.

As the story continues to unwind we see exactly what kind of childhood the sisters had and it's a startling one. There was violence and abuse and it was never-ending. You almost are kind of glad her parents were killed. But there's still the mystery of whodunit?

Unfortunately mysteries of the past get set aside when new problems popup and they will once again change Emma's life and possibly make things even more difficult for her.

This mystery was deeply layered. There were so many different aspects to it that took time to be revealed to the reader. Moving between three points of view in both past and present was easier than you would expect. The chapters flowed together seamlessly. I was actually looking forward to the past moments eager for clues as to what happened to the parents. But with all these layers, it did make the pacing a little on the slow side. It was never to the point where I felt like I was dragging my feet to finish the book, but putting it down for things like sleep or meals was done fairly easily. I suppose it's because we go back and forth in the past and present that made it so. 

After finishing the book, I've come to realize that maybe not all of these flashbacks were necessary. I see why there included though, and even though they didn't always feel necessary they were still rather quick to read. There's a lot of history to be unearthed to understand the present. Which the present itself was filled with many secrets that built up into a new mystery to be solved.

In the end, we do get everything resolved. We finally get the whodunit to the murders of the past...which was a shocking one! The author throws in a red herring or two and it kept throwing me through a loop when a new answer popped up! 

But all in all, I was quite satisfied with where things ended. No One Can Know was a deeply layered mystery wrapped in intrigue! You can't help but fall into these sisters' lives and see what turmoil they went through when they were younger and how it shaped them into who they are today. There was a great deal of character growth and an engaging plot to boot! This is definitely the kind of mystery to read if you want something less cozy, but not utterly terrifying either! It's the perfect balance of mystery and thriller!

Overall Rating 4/5 stars