I absolutely loved Want to Know a Secret. Frieda McFadden takes what looks like an ordinary, picture-perfect suburban life and slowly peels back the layers until you realise just how fragile — and how false — that perfection really is.
The story centres on April Masterson, a successful YouTube baking personality whose life appears enviable from the outside. She has a beautiful home, a growing online following, a husband, and a son — the full “curated happiness” package. But when she begins receiving anonymous messages suggesting that someone knows a damaging secret about her son, the glossy surface of her world starts to crack. What follows is a tense unraveling not just of April’s life, but of the people orbiting her — friends, neighbours, and family members who may not be as supportive as they seem.
What makes this book so compelling is how the perspective shifts allow us to see the quiet jealousy, resentment, and hidden motives simmering beneath polite suburban smiles. McFadden excels at showing how ordinary insecurities — about success, marriage, motherhood, status — can twist into obsession. The characters feel uncomfortably real. They are flawed, defensive, insecure, and sometimes selfish — and that’s exactly what makes them believable. No one is purely innocent. No one is entirely trustworthy.
April herself is particularly interesting. She’s ambitious and image-conscious, but also vulnerable in ways she tries desperately to conceal. Watching her struggle to maintain control while her carefully managed life spirals was both tense and emotionally engaging. The supporting characters are equally well developed, each carrying their own secrets that slowly weave into the central mystery.
The tension builds gradually, and then accelerates in classic McFadden fashion. Just when you think you’ve figured out who’s manipulating events, the story pivots. The twists aren’t random — they’re cleverly planted, and when the truth comes out, it reframes everything that came before it. I genuinely didn’t see the final revelations unfolding the way they did.
Overall, this is a sharp, addictive psychological thriller that explores envy, image, motherhood, and the dangerous power of secrets in a hyper-connected world. The plot kept me hooked, but it was the depth and realism of the characters that made it stand out. In true Frieda McFadden style, it’s unsettling, clever, and impossible to put down.
