A Deadly Curtain Call
“I was five years old the night stars fell from the sky. They tore loose somehow and came down like rain.”
So starts this young adult murder mystery wrapped inside a theatrical performance surrounded by the paranormal. In SECRETS SO DEEP, author Ginny Myers Sain takes readers into the world of acting, writing, and creative genius all while the characters try to stay alive.
Seventeen-year-old Avril Vincent has been to the theater camp at Whisper Cove before. She was five when she and her mother, Nicole Kendrick, faced tragedy on the water. Avril survived, but her mother did not.
Avril can’t remember anything about her mother; it was like the sea washed everything away when she drowned. She applied to attend the four-week “theater intensive” so she could somehow have more of a connection to her mother. That’s the last place her mother was alive.
Nicole was best friends with Whisper Cove’s theatrical legend, Willa Culver. But 12 years ago, Willa hadn’t yet written her blockbuster play, Midnight Music. Then Whisper Cove was about to go bankrupt, so Nicole tried to help her friend make money by performing in a play there.
Willa’s son Cole is a handsome but dark and brooding teenager. He and Avril feel an instant connection when they see each other. It’s as if they shared a past and knew each other intimately.
As the days and weeks pass, and the cast rehearses Midnight Music, odd things happen. The fog rolls in and skews everything at the cove. Avril hears whispering in the darkness and sometimes finds herself in a place she doesn’t remember walking to. Cole tells her that all the women who lived in the old whaling village on the site drowned themselves and their children when their men didn’t come back from sea. Their spirits haunt Whisper Cove.
And it appears to Avril that her mother’s spirit also haunts the property. But there’s something even more dangerous lurking at Whisper Cove, and Avril and Cole are determined to find out what it is and what happened to Avril’s mother years ago.
Read the rest of my review and interview with Sain in The Big Thrill.
