2.5**

From the book jacket: Juniper Baker was nineteen when her world was torn apart. As fireworks lit up the summer sky, her neighbors were brutally murdered right outside their barn, and Juniper’s younger brother became the prime suspect. She escaped, pledging never to return. Until now. Officially, she’s back in town to help a friend. But really, she’s here to repair her relationship with her teenage daughter, and to solve the infamous Murphy murders. As a dogged local true-crime podcaster starts sniffing around, the race to the truth puts past and present on a dangerous collision course.

My reactions:
Been there, read that. There’s all kinds of crazy going on in small town Jericho, Iowa. Juniper’s secrets are par for the course, as her parents, her brother and just about everyone else in town seems to harbor secrets. I get that authors use this device to help build suspense, but I just found it tiresome. Also, I am so tired of the ubiquitous dual timeline.

The whole teen romance and best-friend-now-enemy subplot was unnecessary. And I felt that Baart left enough loose threads to knit a sweater.

Still, it held my attention throughout. I had not figured out the culprits of either the long-ago murder, or the recent harassment before they were revealed. And I can see the appeal for a great many readers. So my final rating is just shy of “okay.” ( )

I've waited a day to review this so that I give it a fair shake. Everything we Didn't Say was my first read by Nicole Baart. Unfortunately, I 'read' this via audio; therefore, I needed some time to compartmentalize the reading vs. the writing. Suffice to say, I was not a fan of the narrator - Every. Word. Was. Spoken. In. Anger. I nearly gave up and put it on my DNF - ever, shelf; I'm glad I persevered. I liked the book.

While not a fast-moving or mind-bending thriller, Everything We Didn't Say was a well-written, entertaining novel that held my attention. Set in an obscure, sleepy town in Iowa, I could appreciate the know-it-all tone and the ho-humness of the life led there; I, too, grew up in such a town.

The book vacillates between the present (written in third-person) and 14-1/2 years ago (written in first-person; I liked that shift). Juniper Baker's brother is suspected of murdering the Baker's neighbors, June becomes pregnant by an unknown, hands her child over to her mother, and runs away to live her own life (we can all guess who the father is). Finally, all the pieces come together through a very slow burn, and the dangling mini-mysteries are solved; much to my chagrin, happily ever after.

Perhaps it's my age, and maybe it's the experiences I have had, or, likely, I have read too many books with HEAs, but what I wouldn't give for a good, old-fashioned, reality ending of: He's actually the killer, your childhood lover really just used you for sex and wants nothing to do with you or the baby, and the daughter whom you abandoned at birth to your mother, still abhors you. The End. ( )

Baart explores the complexity and repercussions of family secrets in this book that travels between the past and the present to solve a double murder. Compelling, but would've liked a bit more fleshing out of the motives at the end. ( )

I must have read a different book than everyone that gave this 5 stars!
Reads like a YA book. In the first 60 pages you can easily figure out:
Who how the story will end
Who the father is of June’s kid
Most of the misdirection regarding who the killer is and isn’t.
Then you get 200 pages of boring fluff that goes nowhere and means nothing.
The past 40 or so pages has the reveal but by then it was just an explanation of what I already figured out. ( )

At first this book felt a little mass-market and if it was going to deliver a cheap thrill. Then it got kind of good - I had a lot of questions about Juniper and why she left Jericho and her daughter behind, and I was really interested in her story and what really happened when she was a teenager. However I was quickly able to make some really good guesses about what happened - who Willa's father was, etc. There was one twist I didn't quite expect but the foreshadowing was all there as well.

It's a good thrill and a quick read once you get past the first 30 pages or so. ( )