Julianna and her lover’s “place” is a room in the abandoned hotel La Belle Riviere, known as The Belle to locals.  The Belle is an old building with a long history, including tragedies too.  The Belle’s owner closed it after her son drowned in the pool. 

Adrienne Reynolds and her fourteen year old daughter Skye are out at The Belle taking pictures for a painting Adrienne is going to paint before the hotel is torn down.  While there, the two find Julianna dead.  Adrienne, Julianna and Kit (The Belle’s owner’s daughter) have been best friends since childhood.  Adrienne can’t understand who would want to kill vibrant, beautiful Julianna. 

Then Adrienne finds herself a victim of several incidents – her house is ransacked, she’s mugged and she gets a threatening message.  The police believe her lover is the killer.  But who is that?  Is the murderer behind the incidents to Adrienne?

The story reads more soap opera than suspense.  All the married couples in Point Pleasant are unhappily married and at least one partner in each marriage is having an affair.  Can’t leave the single people out, at least three quarters of them are having affairs with a married man or woman.  With Julianna’s lover as the main suspect, who is sleeping with whom is slowly revealed.  Each time a new lover is revealed, someone dies because he/she also knows who killed Julianna.  Slowly revealing the lovers and killing them off is not at all suspenseful.  The only difference between a soap opera and this book is that the dead in the book stay dead rather than returning several years later with amnesia or a new spouse.

Carlene Thompson’s novels are categorized as “romantic suspense.” But the only thing in Share No Secrets that could be called romance is the fact that the Adrienne dates, but even then she’s seeing two men at the same time.  All the hopping in and out of each other’s bed is not romantic.

The “surprise” ending came out of left field.  There is nothing in the rest of the story to hint at or foreshadow it.  The surprise felt like it was thrown in just to shock the reader. If you’re a fan of soap operas, the continuous gossip and relationship melodrama in might grab you.  Otherwise think twice before reading this one.

--Terry Lawrence