"A Killer Secret" by Jeff Berney is a pulse-pounding mystery that unravels a tangled web of secrets, keeping you guessing until the final revelation.

This was a great thriller and just kept me gripped all the way through from the very start right to the unexpected twist at the end! The author knows how to weave an intriguing plot line and I will be looking out for more from them.

I love a good twisted story that explores good vs evil, with all types of characters, twisted, complex, and screwed up. This story is told from the different points of views of three people. The areas are grey and no one is totally good or totally bad .... the book lives in the grey area of most people. I freaking loved it!! I read it in a few days in a couple of sittings. It may seem too top heavy in the beginning, but as you continue to read, everything plays out and realize how it contributes to the story. This was my first read by the author and it won't be my last.

Overall enjoyed this book. It was told through three points of view. I did like the plot and there were times I thought I had it figured out only to be wrong
The only downside was I didn’t really find myself routing for any of the characters because I found them all to be kind of annoying. Nothing against the writing style as the story had good flow ; I just did not love any of the three main characters

The blurb had promise – of (hopefully) incisive psychological analysis; of mystery.
I thank the author who gave me a free copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I was eager to read '' A Killer Secret' however, my anticipation was not realised. It seems I've read a different book from the reviewers who gave it a high rating.

The book consists of three characters, a pair of psychologists, protagonist, Dr. Edie McEvoy and her husband, Dr. Adrian Hilary; and Edie's client, Timothy. The three characters were quite abhorrent. It was hard to care about their choices or what happens to them. A detective arrives on the scene in the last third; a character who is not described at all; a caricature instead of a personality.

The first few chapters read like an essay – pages and pages of exposition; it is so much tell-not-show. The casual references to, daydreams of and activities relating to rape were disconcerting. The woman in question, in the presence of the language, inuendo and action, passively submits to the aggressions; seemed to accept it. Passive-aggressive I suppose. This is not expected in a novel post the Me-Too movement. Written by a man from a the woman's perspective, the thought processes were unnatural. This book needs to have trigger warnings about rape and deep misogyny.

Then there are countless grammatical errors, e.g., someone doesn't speak but laughs in quotes. 'Spouts' instead of 'sprouts'; 'they're' instead of 'their'. The last half of the book multiplies errors, e.g., even the names of the protagonists were misspelt as McVoy and Darain.

The female protagonist, psychologist, Edie always smiles at the most inopportune moments; moments when she is being attacked or belittled, or someone is lying to her, or she is being interrogated by the police or is in pain.

Things made of glass shatter three times in quick succession cutting the characters, who continue without needing to bandage themselves, or showing pain, or cleaning the place up though they must be leaving huge blood splatters all over the house.

When Edie makes her abhorrence of certain persons clear, why do men continue to pursue her, when she is not universally described as being beautiful? It makes it hard to engage with her.

The book is supposed to have a "Gone Girl" twist, but the so-called 'twist' comes after the 60% point, too late in the story to have the desired effect of page-turning momentum. Ho-hum. Almost DNF, but skimmed though to the end. I received this arc from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This review also appears in: https://thereadersvault.blogspot.com/2022/04/a-killer-secret-jeff-berney-1.html and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4672778404.

A Killer secret was not what I expected, so I liked it. I think I am going to buy a physical copy, because I want to read it one more time to get all the details.

What a good surprise! A Killer Secret is a story told from the point of view of two psychologists and one of their clients. At the beginning the reader may think why there's so much talking about feelings, facts lived and outlived so much analysis, but as the story keeps on going you realize that everything is part of the plot and to help put together each character in the book. Each one sees every tiny action differently from the other, they may even believe that their actions are benign and helpful, or sometimes that being hard, resolute, not being afraid is what is important. In reality, the weaker are the strong ones! The plot grows as the tension also grows and the ending is unexpected in some ways.
A real good book that is a must-read for thriller/suspense lovers!

I'll be honest and tell you that this one presented a bit of a problem for me. In fact, I had kind of DNF'd this a bit ago, but decided to revisit it.

I did appreciate it more this time (and finished it), but I also remembered immediately why I'd DNF'd it.

Unlikable characters alert! I know...I know...authors hate it when we dismiss a book due to unlikable characters and I get this. People are far from perfect. But the key to unlikable characters is that they still need to be fun. These weren't. I had no one to root for. I just wanted them all to die.

I will say that the author does take things in a very surprising direction - one that made things very interesting indeed - and it was this direction change that made me keep reading!

In the end, I was glad I revisited the book and I think I'll try the author again in the future!

*ARC via Publisher

You will enjoy the book for its amazing plot line but it will also leave you thinking - questioning what your own limits might be. Pay attention - the plot is a twisty one and the characters will try to lead you down different paths. Well written without spare prose to detract from the pace, this is a cracker of a thriller.

A lot of the time I discover new to me authors to read though Netgalley and that how I found this one frist because of the cover and 2nd becouse of what the book is about . Ok so I didn't read all of what it was about as soon as I saw Would You kill for a secret, I was like ok that's all I need to know and I'm so glad that I went in with just knew that one little part . This book kept surprising me through out it ,and every time I thought I knew what was going to happen ,man was I wrong. Not going to say more then that except its a most read .

The character depth was amazing! Just how far will you go to do the wrong things for the right reasons!
This was one of those books that sucked me in from the beginning and didn’t let go until I finished!

⭐⭐⭐⭐Thanks to #netgalley for the ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. A great thriller for me to end 2021 on. A psychologist who has her own demons...her patient who tells her he is a serial killer and her older partner who is also her rather creepy mentor....this book had me captivated from the start. I loved how dark the characters were and how their secrets were slowly revealed. #akillersecret #jeffberney #netgalley #tea_sipping_bookworm #goodreads #litsy #thestorygraph #amazonkindle #bookqueen #bookstagram #thriller

I wasn't immediately hooked...It was a little slow at first but once it started to pick up I needed to keep reading, needed to know who was lying, who was telling the truth and what their secrets were. None of the characters are particularly likeable but the writing compelled me to read on and unravel the mystery surrounding them. I did not see the end coming and I loved it! I'm looking forward to reading more from Jeff Berney

Edie, the jaded wife of a Great Man in the field of psychology, meets more than her match when one of her clients, Timothy, confesses to being a serial murderer. How is your oath of confidentiality supposed to sit comfortably with a bombshell of that nature? Then there's the little matter of the fact that he seems to understand her so well and wants more secrets from her if he is to share more with her.

As they do.......

The founder of the practise where she works and her husband, Adrian. is scarcely a sympathetic character, being overweight and self-absorbed. He buys her sexy underwear and wipes himself on it after practising his conjugal rights. When his dead body washes up, the police are sure Edie did it, but can she get her psychopathic patient to confess?

Not sure the writer really needed to allude to other stories from psycho-land, surely it should be able to stand on its own merits. There is a twist to all of this though, which I didn't see coming, so from that point of view, and beyond the sleaziness and mysogyny of one or two of the main characters, this ceverly written and well crafted.

At first, it was a little slow for me but I hung in there after checking others reviews. So glad I did. It really starts picking up. You may not like the characters but this isn't Mary Poppins, is it?

Give it a chance. You'll be happy you did.

Will definitely read more from this author.

TW: Rape (including of a minor), cutting, misogyny

I just couldn't do it. There were too many things that didn't sit right and bugged me with this book. I had to DNF it at around the 30% mark.

The story kicks off with a car accident, I guess? It doesn't get explained in anything I read so I don't know what caused it. I DO know that the character, Edie, decides to walk to the restaurant she was on her way to, but at one point she thinks she's being followed so she starts running. And I guess kicks her shoes off in the process, because it specifies that she tears her hose she's wearing. But when she gets to the restaurant, everything is fine? If her shoes are missing, they aren't mentioned, and if they aren't missing, I'm not sure how she managed to tear her hose.

Another continuity error involved Adrian Hillary (who is insufferable and quite obviously a caricature of the standard man overcompensating and not feeling "manly" enough). He comes home after a long day, and Edie has made him a drink. He downs said drink three times in the span of a couple of pages. I'm not sure if the author just doesn't know what "downs" means in the case of drinks (i.e. finishing it off) or if it escaped the notice of an editor, but considering Adrian never made another drink for himself, it threw me and took me out of the story.

One more possible continuity error - at one point from Adrian's perspective, we're told that Edie doesn't like the cellar, which he has turned into his man cave and has all the trappings of cliched male setups - dark wood and furniture, wine, cigars (only Cubans, because elite or something like that). Because she doesn't like it, she never goes down there. Yet, from Edie's perspective, we're told that Adrian had a roommate contract drawn up for the two of them and included a clause that she isn't allowed in the cellar, so continuity error maybe? Or maybe just a kind of pointless bit? I don't know.

I also don't like that cutting is romanticized. Edie, who is a psychologist, refers to it as her "private therapy" and at one point says "her inner thighs tingled at the thought of the blade's kiss".

The misogyny is strong. Adrian is a pushy asshole and his internal monologue talks about how Edie will "come around, she always does" whenever she pushes back in the least. There's a lot of fighting, and she seems to WANT to leave him, but doesn't, and I'm not sure why. She doesn't seem afraid of him in the least, just angry at the path her life has taken because of him and what he's done to her.

I skipped ahead to the end so I got a few spoilers but nothing that convinced me I could continue reading this book. It gets such high ratings on Goodreads, I was legitimately surprised to be so disappointed with it. Maybe some of this stuff makes sense later on, but 12 chapters in and I don't care enough about the characters to slog through and find out.

I was not a huge fan of this. The first 2/3 of the book were slow and uneventful. It didn't start getting interesting until the end and even then I fought to stay awake.

This took me a lot longer to finish than normal. I almost DNF. The only reason I continued was because I got this copy for free from Netgalley.

It was completely different than I thought it would be based off the summary. I was bored. It also would have been nice to have some trigger warnings about rape, incest, and self harm.

Not my cup of tea personally, hence the rating. Overall, wasn't awful.

This book wasn't really for me, took me a while to get into the story line and then it didn't grab me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Books Go Social for allowing me to read this book.

It took a little bit to get into this one., but then it hooked me. Well written and twists I didn't see coming. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

A psychologist out of control, her partner a control freak and a patient who ends up controlling everything. An interesting thought provoking first novel that keeps you guessing until the last page.