The Secrets She Kept (Fairham Island #2) by Brenda Novak

Title: The Secrets She Kept (Fairham Island #2)
Author: Brenda Novak
Published: July 26, 2016
Publisher: Mira Books
Pages: 394
Genre: Murder mystery/romance
Review: library book
Buy Links: Amazon, Amazon.uk 

The rich and powerful Josephine Lazarow, matriarch of Fairham Island, is dead. The police say it's suicide, but Keith, her estranged son, doesn't believe it.

Keith bears scars—both physical and emotional—from his childhood, but he's worked hard to overcome the past. After walking away from his mother and her controlling ways five years ago, he's built a new life in LA. He's also accumulated a fortune of his own. But as soon as he learns of his mother's death, he returns to Fairham. He feels he owes it to his grandfather to put the family empire together again—and he's determined to find his mother's killer.

Problem is…coming home to Fairham puts him back in contact with Nancy Dellinger, the woman he hurt so badly when he left before. And digging that deep into his mother's final days and hours entails a very real risk.

Because the person who killed her could be someone he loves…

So I didn't know this was part of a series until I looked it up on Goodreads. Which for me was no big deal as I didn't feel like I was missing anything major except some romance from two characters. 

Josephine is a very powerful woman who lives on Fairham Island and has not treated her children with the best of love or at least that is what I gathered. So when she ends up dead Keith her son wants to find out what happened. Something doesn't sound right and he is determined to find out. What he ends up uncovering with the help of the sheriff is his mother has some secrets and some have been buried for years. 

While trying to solve this case we see that he still has feelings for Nancy a woman he left years ago. Can they rekindle or will he be going back to his lifestyle in LA? We see how Nancy handles the whole situation and funny enough her sister doesn't make it easy. I found myself laughing at the antics her sister would say in front of Keith. That is true sisterly love right there. 

Character-wise the author did a great job with them and I felt them be well developed, I didn't have a favorite character because I liked them all in their own way.

The plot was a steady pace and it was hard to put down once I started reading. I wanted to know who was behind it all and once everything started clicking in place I figured it all out. Even with the little surprise at the end, I had that one already. 

Even though this is a book two it did well as stand-alone but it did peak my curiosity at the setting of Fairham Island that I will be reading book one to meet all the characters from the beginning. 

The one thing that did bother me a bit was just how opened the sheriff was with her investigation with Keith. Like he wasn't any type of law enforcement so he didn't need to know a lot of things. Yet it did work out in his favor. 

It was a shocking experience that jump-started Brenda Novak’s bestselling author career.
“I caught my day-care provider drugging my children with cough syrup and Tylenol to get them to sleep while I was away,” Brenda says. “It was then that I decided that I needed to do something from home.”
However, writing was the last profession she expected to undertake. In fact, Brenda swears she didn’t have a creative bone in her body. In school, math and science were her best subjects, and when it came time to pick a major in college, she chose business.

Abandoning her academic scholarship to Brigham Young University at the age of 20 in order to get married and start a family, Brenda dabbled in commercial real estate, then became a loan officer.

“When I first got the idea to become a novelist, it took me five years to teach myself the craft and finish my first book,” Brenda admits. “I learned how to write by reading what others have written. The best advice for any would-be author: read, read, read….”
Brenda sold her first book, and the rest is history. Many of her novels have won or placed in contests such as the National Reader's Choice, the Bookseller's Best, the Write Touch, the Award of Excellence and the Beacon Award for Published Authors.

Brenda and her husband, Ted, live in Sacramento and are the proud parents of five children—three girls and two boys. She juggles her writing career with her children’s softball and soccer games, field trips, carpool runs and homework sessions.
When she’s not spending time with her family or writing, Brenda is usually working on her annual fundraiser for diabetes research—an on-line auction held at her website May 1st – May 31st. Her youngest son, Thad, has diabetes, and Brenda is determined to help him and others like him. She also enjoys traveling, watching sporting events and biking--she rides an amazing 20 miles every day!