The Summer of Keeping Secrets reviewer Tour

 

Title: The Summer of Keeping Secrets

Author: Jill Lynn

Publisher: Love Inspired Trade

Genre: Christian Fiction, Christian Romance,Contemporary

Source: JustReads Publicity e-copy

My Review:

The Summer of Keeping Secrets is a different type of story for Jill Lynn. I appreciate how well she transitioned into adding a mystery element to her story.

A family ensconced in grief comes together to clear out the parent's/grandparent's home to sell it. All three have hard things going on in their lives and have been keeping secrets from each other. As is always the case, secrets have a way of coming out. 

Slade is looking for a distraction when she comes to help her mother clean out her grandparent's house. She finds it in the form of a man dying on their property years ago with no clear answers. As she works to solve the mystery, she uncovers more than anticipated, without realizing how deeply it will affect those around her. 

While the story should have been heavy with everyone dealing with grief, it wasn't. It is very hopeful, with working through their issues, and their grief. The story moved at a nice pace, and the mystery made the story hard to put down.

Thank you to JustReads Publicity and the author for the opportunity to read this book. I was not required to provide a positive review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

★★★★/5

Synopsis (Goodreads): 

For fans of Denise Hunter and Susan Mallery, a captivating story about a single summer that could completely break a family apart—or bring them back together.

Recently widowed Marin Henderson considers time with her two adult children a gift. And she’s intent on not prying into their lives while they’re all together, cleaning out her late parents’ Colorado home. But from the start, nothing goes as planned. Her free-spirited daughter, Slade, and her strait-laced son, Reed, both arrive ahead of schedule, and no one is explaining why. Marin knows they’re hiding issues in their personal lives. But she can only push so far because she, too, is keeping secrets.

Setting aside family tensions, the three of them get to work purging the house. But when Slade discovers a decades-old newspaper clipping about a body found on the rocks below the house, questions arise. Marin insists the death was ruled an accident, but Slade’s curiosity is piqued. And when a roof leak compels Marin to call on an old friend and flame for help, it’s the catalyst for a wave of revelations.

Between a daughter bent on distracting herself from her own career turmoil, a son desperate to hold on to his marriage and a mother forced to confront her choices from that long-ago summer, pieces of the past and present begin to unravel. And before the summer is over, they each must decide what to hold on to and what to let go…