The Secrets You Hide by Kate Helm

          Georgia Sage is a courtroom artist and she has a deep dark secret, a secret that makes her believe she can see evil in others.  You see, Georgia is not who she pretends to be and her past is one of trauma and heartbreak and it has never let her go.  Courtrooms at once  terrify and enthrall her and maybe this is what has informed her decision to become a courtroom artist and have a "past" with a glittering defence lawyer.  When she starts seeing children that nobody else can she is afraid she is spiralling in to madness but this doesn't stop her investigating a crime from her first foray in to the profession - determined to prove what really happened she puts herself at risk but nothing is what it first seems in creepy Ashdean.

Sounds pretty good when summed up like that doesn't it.  Unfortunately, the book doesn't really live up to it's early promise.  From the first few chapters you are sure you are going to devour this book and be sucked in to Georgia's deteriorating world.  Unfortunately, there is no tautness to the writing and you can feel the threads slipping between your fingers and your interest waning as we dally down another alleyway of distraction.

For me there was little real depth to the characters in the book and I found them to be more caricatures than anything.  In the case of some, like Jim and Ollie I can sort of understand it as we see them from Georgia's perspective only and she almost worships both men in different ways so their flaws are, by necessity, hidden.  Unfortunately this also spreads to Georgia and she never really came to life on the page for me.

The plot itself meanders around and I understand the need to have a respite from murder and horror but somehow I found myself getting dragged out of the story by the minutiae of a train journey, or the description of a hotel room.  The hallucinations that Georgia begins to suffer from are well described, I'm just not sure why they relate to the case she has decided to investigate - especially when one of them she has no prior knowledge of as being involved.  Although they appear to have a rational explanation there is still that lingering doubt in my mind that she would have seen someone she had no knowledge of.

There are some good ideas here and some are explored very well.  Unfortunately it is let down by the overall execution of the idea.  Maybe some stronger editing could have tightened it all up and removed some, of what I found to be, needless filler.

I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM READERS FIRST IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.