The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robatham

Amazon describes this as "a dark and twisted page-turner"...gotta say, that's quite the exaggeration.  I mean, is it dark and twisty?  Sure, I guess.  The beyond the backyard hideout gave me the creeps.  A page-turner?  Not so much.  First off, I get annoyed with the trope of the unreliable narrator.  While I think its ok for a character to be confused and therefore untruthful, or to tell his or her own "truth" even if it ends up being a complete fantasy...but in this book the narrator was telling us things as if they were true when they weren't, and not only were they not true, the narrator herself did not believe them.  Her actions may have been unhinged, and her motivations deranged, but at no point did I understand her to not know that her actual actions were wrong and would result in harm.  This motif bugged me the whole book and really took me outside of the story.  The plot itself was one that has been done before, and done better.  Interesting twist at the end but it took so long getting there and I was so distrustful of the author by that point that by the time we got there it just did not have the impact it might have had he not lost me along the way.  

Rating:  #6 Bearable, Just Barely