{"id":833,"date":"2026-04-07T12:21:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T02:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/?p=833"},"modified":"2026-04-07T12:24:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T02:24:31","slug":"the-secrets-of-strangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/?p=833","title":{"rendered":"The Secrets of Strangers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.simonandschuster.com.au\/authors\/Jess-Kitching\/228232546\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.simonandschuster.com.au\/authors\/Jess-Kitching\/228232546\">Jess Kitching <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Release date April 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Publisher: Simon &amp; Schuster Australia (April 28, 2026)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Length: 320 pages<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>ISBN13: 9781761633218<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>My review:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This book didn\u2019t really hold my attention.<br>Jess has written other books that I felt are better. The Life Experiment is brilliant and I would love to see that made into a film tv drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I read a lot of thriller\/suspense novels and can usually relate to the characters and situation in some way. I found this a bit of a stretch to believe that so many people trusted Janine, a complete stranger with so much personal information including the police. I found it odd that the police were not overly concerned about Janine even though she kept appearing where they were investigating.<br>Sonya, Alexa &#8220;so called best friend&#8221; spilling so much detail to a stranger (Janine), though that was more about getting people on her side and attention seeking.<br>Gabby, Otis friend and a lawyer, I felt suspicious of, was she stringing Jaime along, using her has her own investigator. It appears like that, she blew hot and cold and put Janine in uncomfortable situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Would you trust a stranger, a writer, with so much personal information at what is a potential crime scene, it\u2019s like trusting a journalist with your life story and hoping they will not write about it. The degree of trust and information that Jaime is being party to I found baffling.<br>I know the title is the Secret of Strangers but I did find even the police trusting Janine with so much information a little far fetched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I liked the writing group gossip, that really helped put some links into the story. The chat discussions where as amusing as they were serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I felt Jim was a red herring, I thought he was much older than Alexa but was left a bit confused about there relationship at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I loved Dorrit the nosy neighbour, I did however have my suspicions about her, unfounded it turns out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I struggled with Janine&#8217;s treatment of her sister Beth and husband Kamal. I wanted to shake her and tell her to stop before she lost them both. I felt sorry for Kamal, his patience was admirable, but there was no real mention of how much he was hurting because of his wife&#8217;s behaviour and the pain he was going through too. The story of loss was very much centred around Janine and Alexa the mothers, though Otis pain is obvious when Alexa is missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The murderer however wasn\u2019t who I expected, that was a twist I never saw coming. Jess pulled that surprise out the bag. There were no clues that I picked up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jealously is a powerful emotion and coupled with the drive to succeed it\u2019s deadly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an advance copy of TSOS. I love Jess&#8217;s books and was keen to read this one. I did feel a bit disappointed that it wasn&#8217;t as gripping as i hoped but it a great read and the twist at the end is worth sticking with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After suffering a loss, Janine and her husband, Kamal, need a fresh start. They leave their family and everything they know in Manchester and move to Bamblethorpe, a picturesque Lancashire village where they expect nothing but peace and quiet. It\u2019ll be just what Janine, a thriller writer, needs to work on her next manuscript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the peace of their new village life is disrupted when longtime local Alexa Clarke goes missing. Did she leave her husband, like some people suspect? Or is there credibility to the rumours that something more nefarious has happened to Alexa?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Frozen by writer\u2019s block, Janine stumbles into investigating Alexa\u2019s disappearance, and the more she discovers about Alexa\u2019s life, the more complicated things become. Nothing is as it seems, and Janine begins to realise that there are disturbing parallels between Alexa\u2019s life and her own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What starts as curious procrastination quickly spirals into a tangled web of secrets, lies and a truth Janine may not be ready to face \u2026 if she survives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jess Kitching Release date April 2026 My review: This book didn\u2019t really hold my attention.Jess has written other books that I felt are better. The Life Experiment is brilliant and I would love to see that made into a film tv drama. I read a lot of thriller\/suspense novels and can usually relate to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836,"href":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions\/836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kgracereads.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}