This was a book I did not want to put down. It had interesting twists and turns, a complex protagonist, and a not-entirely-resolved but discernible ending. I listened to the audiobook and also LOVED the narrator.

A fast paced, page turning thriller. Very English in its writing. Some likeable characters, some despicable, damaged and narcissist characters. A good read with some surprising twists.

Full twists and turns, and the final one that you just didn't see coming

I am a huge fan of Alex Marwood. I loved The Killer Next Door and The Wicked Girls. This one starts a little slow, but it really pays off in the end. Most of the characters in this book are awful and selfish. Mila and Ruby are the only likeable characters and I started to like Claire by the end of the novel. This book has a lot of great twists and a very satisfying ending.

A well-written, compelling read. A few lose ends left untied, though.

It's not often I award a book with 5 stars but The Darkest Secret deserves every single one. Twisty, dark and gripping. At times, I had to put this book down because the characters and the things they do made me so angry - which shows how fantastic the writing is and how it makes you feel. With the story centering around a toddler presumed kidnapped while on holiday with her parents, siblings and friends of the family, it is hard not to draw comparisons to an infamous missing toddler from 2007. Fantastic. My second must read book of 2016

I am very torn about the rating of this book. On the one had, I zipped through it, so it's obviously very engaging and readable. On the other hand, having read a few others afterwards, the details are already growing fuzzy, telling me that this book was, unfortunately, not terribly memorable. I think this has largely to do with the cast of almost exclusively unlikable characters, or at the very least one's I couldn't connect with very well. Milly and Ruby are okay, but the others are all rather despicable. Added to that is the sheer number of characters and the jumping around in time and POVs that felt, at times, a little jarring. That said, the premise of the story is very intriguing and Marwood plots it out quite well. The ending is not entirely satisfying, but it is fitting. I had guessed a part of the resolution, but the final revelation came as a surprise. This is my third book by Marwood and probably the one I found most compulsively readable, despite some of the niggles discussed above, so I will probably be keeping an eye out for whatever she comes up with next.

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This book gets off to a slow start and it’s quite hard to follow initially- lots of time jumps and told from several different characters points of view. So it takes a while to get a real sense of what's happening and who's involved. But once you get into the rhythm of it it’s intriguing and, eventually, gripping.

Many of the characters are narcissistic and deeply unloveable and at the outset I wasn’t sure if I’d care about any of them. But the two young women, Ruby and Mila, who eventually become the centre of the story, are warm and empathetic and I couldn’t help but like them. But what I like most of all about this book is that it doesn’t tie up all the ends neatly and I wasn’t able to figure everything out myself. I thought I was being clever and had worked out everything very early on, but there are good plot twists right to the very end.

I’d definitely read another of Marwood's books.

Very entertaining, big parties, rich awful people, secrets and crimes.