There’s no such thing as a secret.

SOMETHING happened to Ava. The curving scar on her face is proof. But Ava would rather keep that something hidden—buried deep in her heart and her soul.

She has her best friend Syd, and she has her tattoos—a colorful quilt, like a security blanket, over her whole body—and now, suddenly, she has Hailey. Beautiful, sweet Hailey, who seems to like Ava as much as she likes her. And Ava isn’t letting anything get in the way of finally, finally seeking peace. But in the woods on the outskirts of town, the traces of someone else’s secrets lie frozen, awaiting Ava’s discovery—and what Ava finds threatens to topple the carefully-constructed wall of normalcy that she’s spent years building. Secrets leave scars. But when the secret in question is not your own—do you ignore the truth and walk away? Or do you uncover it from its shallow grave, and let it reopen old wounds—wounds that have finally begun to heal?

Thank you so much to Edelweiss for the ARC of this novel! I honestly did not know what to expect from this book when I requested it. I knew the cover was beautiful and that the premise felt like a YA horror novel that I could not miss out on. It was so much more than that, and I was left with an overwhelming sadness but also a kind of peace. It was so genuine and felt like the protagonist was telling her story to just me and soon she became less of a fictional character and more of a living, breathing person. Little did I know until I reached the afterword from the author that it was probably because Saundra opened up her heart and poured her life onto these pages. 

We meet Ava, and she wastes no time in telling us her story. There are people and places that have shaped the Ava that she presents to the world, and her story intertwines with that of a girl just as broken as she is that leads her to find who she really is. She starts at the very beginning, even though she states first off that she knows we want to get to the meat of the story, but to tell that story is to begin with hers. She recounts her encounter with The Summer Man, a stranger who took her childhood, safety, and peace of mind, and left her with a scar trailing down her face at nine years old. She could never hide what happened to her, and it made her cautious. She sought out a routine and never broke it. She hid behind celebrities when she was able to escape in the tattooist’s chair; taking their art for her own. She stayed inside her house, and her mom let her. 

Tiny things started adding up to crack the shell of her resolve. She meets Hailey, who is sweet and funny, and makes her feel things she didn’t know that she could anymore. Her best friend, Syd, is unexpectedly rude and callous towards her, and won’t tell her why. The biggest thing, however, is that one night as she attempts to walk home from the city via the woods, Ava finds Jane. She is hidden in a tree stump, mutilated and with the life drained from her. In Jane, Ava sees a kindred spirit. Her first thought is to call the police, but her own experience after The Summer Man stops her cold. She doesn’t want Jane to be put through the things she had to endure, and so she covers her back up but takes her essence with her.

Ava sees and hears Jane everywhere. She starts to do things she never dreamed she would; sneaking out of her house late at night, stealing her mother’s car, making a move on Hailey, and standing up to Syd. She starts to break open, and it is terrifying and beautiful all at the same time. When she finds someone else at Jane’s impromptu grave site, she realizes there is so much more to this story than she could have ever deduced alone. We see Ava find out Jane’s true identity and bring her killer to justice. This completely changes Ava. She is a completely new person, and she is able to ask for help to deal with her trauma.

This is a story about life. Lives interrupted, lives changed, lives reborn. I love the open and inviting way it was written, and I cannot thank the author enough for her courage in sharing her life with us. She writes in the afterword that she tells her story so others out there don’t have to. She didn’t want to make up something to damage this character that would just be another fictional happenstance that we would read about and then close the book and set it all aside. She put her truth in these pages, and though it is surrounded by fiction, you can feel the heartbeat of sincerity. It was a truly compelling read, and I think it’s going to help so many people.

5/5 stars