Review for Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz

"Deadly Little Secret"
Author: Laurie Faria Stolarz
Publisher: Disney Hyperion Books
Source: Local Public Library
252 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Some secrets shouldn't be kept...
Up until three months ago, everything in sixteen-year-old Camelia's life had been fairly ordinary: decent grades; an okay relationship with her parents; and a pretty cool part-time job at the art studio downtown. But when Ben, the mysterious new guy, starts junior year at her high school, Camelia's life becomes anything but ordinary.
Rumored to be somehow responsible for his ex-girlfriend's accidental death, Ben is immediately ostracized by everyone on campus. Except for Camelia. She's reluctant to believe the rumors, even when her friends try to convince her otherwise. She's inexplicably drawn to Ben...and to his touch. But soon, Camelia is receiving eerie phone calls and strange packages with threatening notes. Ben insists she is in danger, and that he can help--but can he be trusted? She knows he's hiding something... but he's not the only one with a secret.

  I started this book thinking it would be a good mystery--and it was! The writing style that the author uses is very easy to follow along. Though this is not a hard topic...it does have some parts that some people may find hard to understand. Let me just say this book had a big, I want to say, twist. But its not really a twist. Let me try and describe. The author knows that the reader probably would think along this one line of thinking and uses that to her advantage, to make the reader surprised by the actual outcome. When you read it, you'll understand. I loved that about this book! I really enjoyed this book! I hope that my library is holding the second one in the series, if not I will be super disappointed! I recommend this book to anyone who likes a good suspense novel! I gave it four stars... My hat is tipped to the author, this was a very enjoyable read!

Excerpt:

   I could have died three months ago. Ever since, things haven't quite been the same for me. It happened on the last day of school. I was walking across the parking lot by the gym when my earring slipped off---a hammered sterling-sliver hoop clasp that never seemed to fit quite right. But the pair was my favourite, given to me by my mother just months before, on my sixteenth birthday. I squatted down to searth the pavement. Everything that happened next sped by in what felt like a three second blur: Gloria Beckham's car peeling across the parking lot in my direction. Me, sort of there frozen there, on hands and knees, assuming the car would come to a sudden halt when she saw me. It didn't. It kept racing toward me, toward the two hockey nets that Todd McCaffrey had left in the middle of the lot while he went in to fetch more equipment. At some point, I heard Todd's voice yell out, "Stop!" Then the car plowed into the hockey nets at a speed high enough to crush them beneath the grill. And it didn't stop there. The car continued toward me without missing a beat. I imagine my heart sped up, that my adrenaline did that hormonal-pumping thing it does when it's trying to brace you for what happens next. But what happened next I could never have prepared myself for. Being shoved out of the way....