Book of the Week #9: 16th July 2020 - TELL ME YOUR SECRET by Dorothy Koomson

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

It feels pretty mind-boggling that we’re already half-way through this year, and well into a summer that has been marred by lockdown. While most of us would have been jetting off to sun-drenched holidays – shout out to Worldwide Festival, see you next year! – we’ve been mostly stuck at home. But even if we’re not on the beach, I know that some of my favourite books to read on vacation are high-quality page-turners. So this week, my selection is by one of the absolute best in the business for just that kind of fiction – the award-winning, incredibly prolific Dorothy Koomson, and her fifteenth novel, Tell Me Your Secret.

While the book could be classed as a thriller, or a police procedural, there’s a huge amount going on below the surface. Tell Me Your Secret follows Pieta, a journalist who we learn earlier in her life was kidnapped by a sinister individual known as The Blindfolder, and told to keep her eyes closed for 48 hours or he would kill her. We also meet Jody, a detective who is investigating a spate of recent crimes very similar to that experienced by Pieta, whose victims had a much worse fate. She may have a closer connection to the cases then it would seem…

Koomson’s mastery of a compelling plot keeps us completely gripped – trust me, you’ll be absolutely dying to find out what happens next. But there are also very important underlying themes in terms of humanising, and focusing on, the victims of horrific crimes. And as with all of her novels, we get to see a range of Black women characters that are nuanced and made the centre of their story. That is still disappointingly rare, especially in genres like this, where we aren’t always seen and heard. And that is why Tell Me Your Secret by Dorothy Koomson is my Book of the Week this week.