Little White Secrets by Carol Mason

"They say normal people tell a white lie three times a day. Lately, I feel like I'm exceeding my limit"

Little White Secrets by Carol Mason is an addictive domestic noir. It has all the right elements of a compulsive read: obsession, lust, revenge, menace and death.

Emily Rossi is quite content with her life. Her marriage to Eric has withstood the hard times, they live in a big house in the country with their two lovely children. Her career is on the right track as well.
Outwardly they appear an almost perfect family.
Behind the façade there are all sorts of cracks. Eric has taken a job in London after a chronic spell of unemployment, and sees his family at the weekends. He is an alcoholic, though his wife seems to find excuses for his drinking habits. As she later describes it to her friend, for them it has become a normal.

Emily is stressed with her job-family balance: "Lately I'm always running after life as though it's ten minutes ahead of me. I don't know where the balance went...
Lately I find myself watching my kids as though we are rapidly becoming Venn diagrams that will no longer overlap".

She has lost her mother recently, and the grief is still raw: "I have noticed that grief for my mother has me one step removed from even the most routine of rituals, It's like being partially deaf. Life's noise is going on out there, but there is a buffer between it and my ability to be properly attuned to it".

Talking to their new neighbour Steven about her children, she says: "When you become a mother, no one else can even come close to making you feel how their little life makes you feel, so much that you reposition everyone else you love. You love them all a slightly distant second".
While I share this sentiment whole-heartedly, I don't think Emily notices that her love isn't equally distributed to both of her children.

Daniel is their golden boy, who was born prematurely. He is a talented tennis player, and all the family ambitions are centred around him and his needs.
His younger sister Zara, a teen with no particular skills or talents, is resentful of all the money and attention Daniel gets. Parents think of her as a quiet, undemanding girl, with no ambitions of her own.
They don't notice that she's seething with discontent.
No wonder, that when an opportunity presents, she goes off the rails.

She is befriended by a teen from hell, Bethany. Bethany is every parent's nightmare, she is rude, obnoxious, is into drugs, alcohol and has a boyfriend who's 10 years older.
Zara relishes the company of her toxic friend. Finally, her parents begin to notice her and worry about her.
Their little cocoon of middle-class banality starts to spiral out of control.

Zara's parents believe "Zara is shielding Bethany because this is what Zara does. Zara loves loners, underdogs and the disenfranchised; she has a bizarre way of martyring herself for them".

Bethany's mother Janet, an embittered single mother, seems to know more about Emily's family that she's comfortable with. Just who is she, and where did she come from? What are her motives?
And more importantly, how can Emily stop her daughter from a path of self-destruction she's so intent on?

None of the characters is particularly likeable. In fact, they are all quite unpleasant, except perhaps Daniel, whose "easy charisma always brings out the best in people", but then he doesn't feature much in the plot.
As it happens, they all have their secrets, not so little or white at all. In fact, they are pretty damning secrets, with devastating consequences.

I guessed pretty much from the beginning some of the plot development, but the last couple of pages were still a bit of a shock.

The novel poses a lot of ethical questions. There are quite a few potential triggers: alcoholism, still birth, drug-related death, harassment, sexual coercion etc.

Going back to Eric, he's a cliché alcoholic. "Drama and self-pity: the hallmarks of an alcoholic. When he used to say he was tired, so tired, before, I thought he meant he needed to sleep. I'd encourage him to go to bed, feel better; tomorrow is a new day. I didn't know he meant he was tired of the intolerable state of his own existence".

Little White Secrets is a terrific domestic noir, with a shocking twist at the end. It's dark and disturbing. I simply couldn't stop reading, and had to finish it in the early hours of the morning.
And after I finished, I couldn't fall asleep either, as it kept me thinking.

About the Author:
Carol Mason was born and grew up in the north-east of England. As a teenager she was crowned Britain's National Smile Princess and subsequently became a model, a diplomat-in-training, hotel receptionist and advertising copywriter.
She currently lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her Canadian husband.
To learn more about Carol and her novels, visit www.carolmasonbooks.com

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