Gracie's Secret: A heartbreaking page turner that will stay with you forever

The repetetive use of the word 'judder' and its varying forms was bothersome but far worse was the main character of Jenny and how everything in her story reads as if she's speaking to her three year old daughter, Gracie. There were no breaks of Jenny's inner dialogue reverting back to her own thoughts (Jenny is telling the story from first person but seemingly only to her young daughter, which is pointed out often) so it was very jarring to read her description of having sex as if it was being told to her very young child. Jenny related the entire graphic description of her sexual encounter as it was happening and in the middle of sex stated that she recalled losing her virginity and then of 'giving birth to you, my love" as if telling her child about it, all while oral sex is being performed on her. It was very, very off-putting. Jen also has very unkind thoughts of Gracie's father and since so many paragraphs include Jenny's term of endearment for little Gracie ("my love") it was very difficult to get into the story since it seemed like highly inappropriate dialogue to be having with a toddler! I am only partway through the book but for this reason I may be unable to finish it. I think it was a very poor choice for the author to give the character's voice an autobiographical feel but with the character's three year old child as the seemingly only intended audience. It comes across as disturbing, inappropriate, and dare I say? Juddering.

And then I juddered with disgust at the egregious overuse of the word “juddered.” It’s as if the author learned one “big” word and then had to use it — over, and over, and over — throughout this tiresome story of this ignorant mother and the rest of the one-dimensional characters in this tedious book. I juddered with relief as I skipped to the end, when the cardboard characters played out their tiresome ends and the story finally came to a juddering conclusion. Don’t waste your ninety-nine cents.

As a mother I was sickened by Jennifer's obsessive behavior with her daughter. This was not love! Jennifer was a deeply flawed character who created chaos around her. This book did not bring me to tears but rather nausea. Very sad in a sick way. I could not recommend this book.

Let me start with one positive thought, since I'll bash this with no mercy afterwards. If you can ignore the religious cliches and hundreds of pages of "I love yous," gushing like geysers on every page, there really is a suspenseful mystery underneath it all. As such, I couldn't put the book down, painful as it was, simply to get to the end and see why I wasted my time. But even that requires a big stretch of the imagination. Are we to believe that a woman dating a doctor for all that time would not get suspicious of a man with no friends or family that she can see, who never invites her to his home, never takes her to his work, and can in fact never be reached at work? (She was even told there is no doctor by that name, duh.) For her stupidity alone I have zero empathy for the character Jenny. She comes across as an airhead who never thinks about anything in any depth, believes just about anything, and has no interests in her life beyond her devotion to her child. No wonder her husband ran for his life. Sorry if I offend, but I really wanted her daughter to die at the end because I couldn't stand Jenny any longer. As for the religious mumb-jumbo, couldn't the author think of something a little more interesting than dying and seeing a bright light and being greeted by a kind old man? Seriously? It terrifies me beyond all else that so many people can fall for this excuse of a novel and give it good reviews. It could have stood on its own as a second-rate mystery without St. Michael & company. Oh, and I agree with all who raised the issue of writing in second person to her daughter. I suppose the author thought it very creative. It's painful to read and often jarring (as in the sex scene). Trash at its worst.

This book went on way too long. I found it very upsetting and not my cup of tea. The characters weren’t well defined which made the book a lot less interesting. I wanted more info about the marriage, no reason given for the split.

I started reading this thinking I knew what would happen, and I more or less did but that didn't spoil my enjoyment at all. The thing that struck me about the story was the theme of love and it was a comforting love, a love that's there forever and never dies. It's a lovely thought that we're never alone and this novel puts it into words. Highly recommended.

I loved this book. I couldn't work out how it would end so it was good for me to end the book that way. I couldn't put it down and read it in record time. I am a bad sleeper and always up around 4 am. This is normally a right pain but I used this time to read the book in two days, Will be buying from this author again. I read a lot 35 books my kindle says in 6 months and I enjoyed this very much

I absolutely loved this book and very much look forward to the next one. I could not leave it alone and stayed up until all hours reading it and not wanting to finish it but on the other hand, I did. I was a little bit sad at the ending but what a marvellous book. Can’t wait for the next. !!!

Yep, sorry, not really my cup of tea style-wise; too much waxing lyrically by the central character about her feelings for her daughter - I will say the reason why is perhaps explained by the ending - but it made the book a little over cloying and annoying to read, so I skipped through/scanned several chapters just to get it over with (I will add that I do have a daughter, who is adorable and lovely, but this over-gushing style became for me a little dreary quite quickly). As others have said, the little girl in the book seems to have an extremely precocious command of the English language by the age of two or three, which detracts from the believability of this book. It’s an interesting idea for a plot but the writing style wandered about far too much for my liking and the characters were not sufficiently drawn upon, I.e. a little simplistic. Sorry!,

A good read. Had an idea who Matt was but not until well into the book. Would recommend as thoroughly enjoyed it. Have ordered another book by this authoress but have to wait until September for it to be published.