Review: Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz

Title: Deadly Little Secret (A Touch Novel)

Author: Laurie Faria Stolarz

Published: December 2008

Hardcover: 288 pages

Reading Level: YA

My copy: Rec'd on trade from swaptree.com

My rating: 4 out of 5 wicked stars

Blurb (from Goodreads):

Some secrets shouldn't be kept...

Up until three months ago, everything in sixteen-year-old Camelia's life had been fairly ordinary: decent grades; an okay relationship with her parents; and a pretty cool part-time job at the art studio downtown. But when Ben, the mysterious new guy, starts junior year at her high school, Camelia's life becomes anything but ordinary.

Rumored to be somehow responsible for his ex-girlfriend's accidental death, Ben is immediately ostracized by everyone on campus. Except for Camelia. She's reluctant to believe the rumors, even when her friends try to convince her otherwise. She's inexplicably drawn to Ben...and to his touch. But soon, Camelia is receiving eerie phone calls and strange packages with threatening notes. Ben insists she is in danger, and that he can help--but can he be trusted? She knows he's hiding something... but he's not the only one with a secret.

From the best-selling author of Blue is for Nightmares comes a story of paranormal romance that's sure to be a thrilling and chilling teen favorite.

My thoughts:

I really enjoyed this books and it was a pretty quick book to read.  The main character, Camelia, is a likable and very inquisitive girl. When she is saved from being hit by a car by a strange, cute guy (Ben) that shows up later at her high school and goes out of his way to avoid her, she wants to know what is going on.  The side characters and Camelia's best friends, Kimmie and Wes, were pretty funny.  Kimmie always has something witty to say about everything, I enjoyed her character.

With Ben and Camelia's relationship, at first I reminded me of Twilight how the guy avoids the girl, the girl is always trying to figure out why he is doing this, and come to find out, girl affects guy in a way he is not totally comfortable with.  This didn't necessarily take away from the story for me, but it was similar and I thought I should point it out.  I did find this book eerie in many ways with Camelia's stalker sneaking into her house and leaving things for her to find.  Pretty creepy, I couldnt put the book down until I found out who was doing all this crazy stalker stuff, there were quite a few suspects!

Deadly Little Secrets in the first in the series, followed by Deadly Little Lies which was released November 2009.  With the cliffhanger ending of Deadly Little Secrets, I am glad I had Deadly Little Lies to pick up and start reading!  According to the author's website, the 3rd in the series Deadly Little Game will be released Fall 2010.