Deeply buried secrets make for a disturbing family reunion in bestselling author Catherine McKenzie’s tantalizing novel of psychological suspense, named one of the Hottest Books of Summer by Goodreads.What happened to Amanda Holmes?Twenty years ago, she was found bludgeoned in a rowboat at the MacAllister family’s Camp Macaw. No one was ever charged with the crime.Now, after their parents’ sudden … crime.
Now, after their parents’ sudden deaths, the MacAllister siblings return to camp to read the will and decide what to do with the prime real estate the camp occupies. Ryan needs to sell. Margaux hasn’t made up her mind. Mary believes in leaving well enough alone. Kate and Liddie—the twins—have opposing views. And Sean Booth, the groundskeeper, just hopes he still has a home when all is said and done.
But it’s more complicated than a simple vote. The will stipulates that until they unravel the mystery of what happened to Amanda, they can’t settle the estate. Any one of them could have done it, and each one is holding a piece of the puzzle. Will they work together to finally discover the truth, or will their secrets finally tear the family apart?
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This book immediately starts with a mystery and wanting you to know what happened. I like how the author has you questioning the whole family during the book. Who did it, and why?
This was a good whodunit that had you convinced you knew the culprit. However, all of a sudden, there is a great twist so that your thought was not necessarily accurate. I love reading a book that has me trying to figure out who is guilty as I flip through the pages. All of the family secrets were a pleasure to discover. And I LOVE books with short chapters! It makes the reading so quick.
As many people have suggested, this is an Agatha Christie style book. And that is the ultimate of compliments. The camp setting, the secrets, the lies, the family dynamics…they combine to make this an enjoyable read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for my advanced review copy. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
Good writing, good story. Keeps you guessing.
Once I picked this one up, I literally couldn’t put it down. I read it in a few days. It was like a trip down memory lane at times, because I have many of my own fond memories of summer camp and the different things that we did there.
After their parents are killed in a train wreck, the MacAllister siblings reunite at the family summer camp, along with the family lawyer and two of the long-time camp employees, to hear what their parents decided to do in the will. Up until this point there was a clause that said the family couldn’t sell the camp or the land it sits on. But, the clause ended with their father’s life, and that means its up to the kids to figure out if they’re going to keep the camp going, do something else with the property, or get rid of the place all together.
Their father has a surprise in store for them, however. Two decades before the book opens, Amanda Holmes was murdered at camp. They never figured out who was responsible, despite years of investigations, and the elder MacAllister wants the group to figure out who killed Amanda that night.
This book is so well-written. I could close my eyes and imagine what the camp looked like, what the air smelled like, and could hear the sound of campers laughing and screaming. I loved how McKenzie wove Amanda’s story in using flashbacks and gave readers a visual to keep track of where each key person was throughout the night that Amanda died. I was always waiting eagerly to get to the next part where I’d get another sliver of Amanda’s story. Even though she wasn’t prominently featured in the story, I found her easy to relate to and really felt for her as a character. The excitement of young love and the anticipation of a first kiss are something that most of us can relate to in some way.
The MacAllister family is messed up and that was a heartbreaking thing about the book. Each person has gone his or her own way, never making too much of an effort to keep in touch with each other or their parents. And to be honest, some of the siblings are icky people, but that spoke to me of how talented of a writer McKenzie is.
I felt like I was a detective alongside the siblings. And I was constantly left second-guessing and trying to figure out what had happened. I must have come up with at least five or six different theories along the way and, in the end, none of them were correct. I was blindsided when I finally found out who took Amanda’s life all those years ago. Nothing was predictable and that only made this an even more enjoyable read for me.
The suspense was good, the plot well thought-out and crafted, and the characters developed. McKenzie revealed things at the perfect pace and did a great job of giving readers a suspenseful and heartbreaking story about family, love, and bonds that hold people together.
Five stars to this story!
The MacAllister family is surrounded by secrets. Each member of the family holds a key to unlocking the mystery of the tragic accident that happened 20 years before at their families summer camp. The sudden death of both of their parents finds them all reunited at their family camp for the will reading and the chance to solve the mystery that has loomed over all of them for the past 20 years. The truth will take you by surprise as each secret comes to light. A wonderful mystery!
3.5s.
Okay read. I had everyone in the book guilty at one time or another. But, this is one messed up family.
I liked none of the characters, not even a little.
I’ll Never Tell is the first Catherine McKenzie Book for me. It will not be the last. It is a perfect summer read. Especially for anyone who has been to a summer camp as a child, it brought back fond memories for me. This is a perfect “who did it” novel. The parent’s will have set up certain conditions for who is to inherit the camp. This is where the mystery and intrigue starts. So many secrets. Enjoy unraveling what happened. Thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Author Catherine McKenzie knocks it out of the park with this novel! This one takes place at a campground for kids and teens, and a crime that took place there years ago. It played on all of my fears about what can go wrong while camping! McKenzie’s cast of characters are delicious like campfire smores! You will not be disappointed!
I love everything Catherine McKenzie writes and her latest was no exception.
I thought I had this one figured out…but I was surprised! Great writing!
If you’re interested in a book with childhood camp memories, jealousy, family secrets, unrequited love, and a mystery thrown in, then this is the book you need. Keeping 7 POVs separated and intriguing is a feat in itself, but to keep them fresh and sustainable for the whole book is fantastic. My ‘only’ complaint was the ‘timeline table’ had to be reduced in a font almost too small to read on my e-reader and each time I had to switch from readable font to the timeline font to see what had changed. Little annoyance, but tolerable.
While I was reading I became sure of only one thing: The victim was innocent. The mystery of who was guilty kept changing and when I thought I had figured it out, well, I didn’t. Great writing and I will look forward to reading more of Ms. McKenzie’s books. Thanks
Complex who done it.
The many various characters and the back and forth were a bit hard on this old lady brain. But boy, was the struggle Worth It!
The more I think about this book, the more I like it. This is a cleverly written and carefully nuanced book about a family with secrets, and one young woman who paid the price for the secrets.
The MacAllister family runs a summer camp, and 20 years ago, there was a terrible tragedy. Now, gathered together to memorialize their parents, the family needs to come to grips with the tragedy, testing their long-held beliefs about the tragedy. A lot is at stake, including the future of the camp.
This family struggles to understand what happened 20 years ago, but in deciphering the mystery, they come face to face with secrets that have been held close for many years – and many of those secrets were founded on something that wasn’t true at all.
The suspense level is high in this book, and while you know that the actual perpetrator is one of the people in the family, your suspicions constantly get proven wrong. This will keep you guessing to the end. There are several surprises in the book – and character development changes your mind more than once about a particular character.
Very well done!
#IllNeverTell #CatherineMcKenzie
The MacAllister siblings grew up at Camp Macaw, the typical summer camp with cabins that surround a lake, stories re-told over and over, sports, games and art workshops. What wasn’t typical was the summer that Amanda, a popular counselor and friend of the siblings, washed ashore dead in a rowboat. The police never found the killer. When the siblings’ parents die and the will is read, they discover that the only way they will inherit the camp is to solve the mystery of Amanda’s death. However, what once was an unsolvable murder mystery is now shrouded in closely guarded family secrets as well. None of these siblings is who they appear to be.
I’ve come to love domestic noir especially when it is done well and I’ll Never Tell does, in fact, handle this genre very well. There are six points of view – yes six – which could get muddled and confusing but McKenzie deftly moves back and forth between the chapters and personalities so that never once does the reader lose focus on who is who. The book also jumps back in time through Amanda’s point of view but this also adds to the dimension of the story rather than detracts. We are able to put into perspective the tales that the siblings are weaving from the actual facts as they happened. This does not, however, give the reader a clear cut view of the actual killer. There are so many twists and possibilities that I was clueless until the very end. Literally, it could have been any of them, or all.
I’ll Never Tell is a well written “whodunnit” and a great mystery, perfect for any season but even better for summer because of its setting. I highly recommend it and will be pursuing other McKenzie books for myself.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank You for a copy!
I’ll Never Tell is a “who-dun-it” domestic mystery that kept me guessing until the very end. Just when you think you figured out the killer, another loop is thrown in making for a captivating read!
Catherine McKenzie, as always, does a well written story, a great plot and an interesting assortment of dysfunctional characters that were so real, they somehow seemed like some of the people I know!
This is a must read book! 4 stars
What happened to Amanda Holmes?
What better setting could there be for summer reading than a book set in summer camp? In author Catherine McKenzie’s skillful hands, none.
Twenty years ago, Amanda was found in a rowboat at the MacAllister family’s Camp Macaw. She had been brutally beaten, but the crime stumped the police. No one was ever arrested or charged.
the elder MacAllisters have died tragically and suddenly, and now their children are returning to the place where they grew up. Their parents’ will must be read and the siblings need to decide what to do with the property now that their parents — primarily, their father — are no longer around to run it. With real estate prices soaring and son Ryan facing financial ruin following the malfeasance of his business partner, a sale is the option he plans to lobby for. He has a wife forcing the issue, as well as three daughters he adores and needs to provide for. Ryan was the attractive, charming boy that the girls at camp, including Amanda, developed crushes on. Margaux, her childless marriage in trouble, is on the fence, but Mary adamantly believes that Camp Macaw should continue providing unforgettable summers to campers. Twins Kate and Liddie have opinions as opposite as their personalities. Sean Booth has lived at the camp year-round for most of his life, employed by the MacAllisters as a groundskeeper. For him, the camp is home and, although he believes he has nothing to say about its fate, he is adamantly in favor of keeping it open. He has nowhere else to go, an emotional attachment to the camp, and was extremely loyal to the MacAllisters who provided him security in his troubled childhood.
Mr. MacAllister’s will provides a highly unorthodox stipulation. No disposition can be decided on until the siblings and Sean solve, at long last, determination who attacked Amanda.
Thus, the five siblings and Sean are thrown together at Camp Macaw, facing two challenges: Find out what really happened on that summer nights so many years ago and then reach a consensus as to the camp’s fate.
In any other writer’s hands, the ambitious premise of I’ll Never Tell might have been doomed. But McKenzie growth as a novelist has been on display with each successive book, including her most recent, The Good Liar, and I’ll Never Tell is a tautly-constructed, engrossing mystery told from the perspectives each sibling, along with Sean and Amanda, who describes exactly what happened to her on that fateful night. Additionally, two other characters loom large in the story: Mr. MacAllister and the camp itself. Despite the number of narrative threads, the story is easy to follow, thanks to the clarity of McKenzie’s writing, and the depth and development of her characters through insight into their thought processes and feelings. A map of the camp is provided, along with a chart showing the location of each character at specific times on the night in question also help.
Plausibly, each sibling, along with Sean, is a suspect. McKenzie provides them each with a believable motive, as well as the opportunity, to have been with Amanda. Moreover, each is keeping secrets from the others, for a variety of reasons, and motives to wanting to sell the camp or maintain it that are not immediately apparent to the others. McKenzie keeps the action moving at a swift pace, revealing the truth incrementally, until it is all revealed in a stunning climax to the story that is sure to take most readers by complete surprise.
I’ll Never Tell is a smartly conceived, expertly-executed thriller that may just be McKenzie’s best novel yet. (And a perfect summer beach read.)
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader’s Copy of the book.
I’ll Never Tell was engrossing and suspenseful! It is a story full of drama and so many secrets. The MacAllister family of five children spent every summer at their family’s summer camp. But twenty years ago, something terrible happened at camp that changed their lives forever. When their parents pass away, they are forced to face what happened and try to piece together what really happened that long ago summer.
The author did a good job of giving us characters we can relate to and describing places and events that we can relate to. This was a who done it that you might think you’ve figured out, but you haven’t. You don’t know who it was until the end and you don’t figure it out ahead of time. I like that in a book.
This book was very easy to read and I enjoyed it from the beginning to the end.
I really enjoyed this book! It had so many different ways it could have gone and I had never dreamt the ending that you wrote. Great job, thanks for this awesome book!
First time in reading this author she captures me with a gripping tale. It just so happens intrigue starts it but then you are taken down another path that spins a web around you. Then the two come together with it being a huge puzzle that have pieces that you watch it come together with delicious suspense and mystery to feed you along the way. Thanks to how delightful this was to unravel if given the chance would read this author again.