The Deepest Secret by Carla Buckley

Good morning, everyone! Today I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Carla Buckley's The Deepest Secret.

For fourteen years, Eve has been completely devoted to protecting her son, Tyler. Tyler has xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare genetic disorder that leaves him extremely sensitive to ultraviolet light. Any exposure means burns and lesions, which can result in blindness, cancer, and ultimately death. 

The constant worry and stress is a lot for Eve to handle and lately it seems the rest of her family is being neglected. Her relationship with her husband is strained, her daughter is increasingly acting out, and Tyler himself, an average teenage boy in every other way, is tired of living such a sheltered life. 

Then the unimaginable happens. An accident that threatens Eve and her family. Eve's first instinct is to keep Tyler and the rest of her family safe but this time to do so will mean hiding something truly horrendous.

Carla Buckley's latest is a powerful read. It's a difficult one, too. Eve's accident really is awful but it's impossible not to sympathize with her. She's a good person, doing the best she can trying to be there for her family and deal with a totally unique situation when she literally makes a life changing mistake. One instance is all it takes for her world to start to crumble around her. It really does make the reader consider what they might do in Eve's situation.

The impact of her actions are massive and Buckley admirably illustrates this, showing the cracks that start to form in the community. Things begin to snowball as Eve tries harder and harder to ensure her secret is kept safe.

But even more interesting is the fact that Eve isn't the only one keeping secrets. Tyler's nighttime wanderings reveal some really odd behaviors on the part of his neighbors. Some are odd simply because they're taken out of context when the neighborhood peeping teen sees just snippets of other people's lives. Others we come to learn are quite serious secrets indeed.

With the pacing and intensity of a thriller, The Deepest Secret is yet another in a string of potential one sitting reads I've been tackling of late (I read about half in one sitting and then had to return to real life. I could have finished it in one go given the chance!).

Rating: 4.5/5

To see more stops on the tour be sure to visit the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Carla Buckley and her work, check out her website here. You can also like Carla on Facebook and follow her on Twitter and Goodreads.