Little Secrets

I had read Jar of Hearts and liked how mean Hillier lets her characters be, so Little Secrets, first published in 2020, St Martin's Press edition running 352 pages, ISBN 9781250154248, sounded right. A rich woman in Seattle whose four year old son was kidnapped from a farmers market and never found hires a private investigator who discovers her husband is cheating, then decides to handle the mistress herself. It is domestic thriller with more grief than twists for the first half, then twists pile fast. I finished it in two sittings and felt wrung out in the way good thrillers leave you, a little guilty for enjoying people at their worst.

Marin Costello did everything right and still lost. Married to Derek, successful hair salon owner? Actually she runs a chain? They live well in Seattle, have a son Sebastian who vanishes on a Saturday morning while Marin looks at produce for seconds. The police search, the media covers, tips fail. A year later Marin still sets a plate, still checks locks, still cannot sleep through the night. Derek works, grieves differently, wants to try for another child. Marin cannot. She hires Sal, an ex cop PI, to find Sebastian when police stall, and Sal finds something else. Derek with a younger woman named Kenzie in an apartment Marin pays for without knowing.

Grief that looks like control

The early chapters work because Hillier writes grief as logistics. Marin organizes search anniversaries, keeps Sebastian's room exactly, tracks tips in spreadsheets, fights with Derek about whether to move. Friends bring casseroles then stop. Strangers send cruel messages. A support group helps and hurts. Marin's narration is close and angry. She loves Derek and resents him for sleeping, for laughing once at a joke, for wanting sex while their son is missing. That resentment feels true and ugly and human. She knows it is unfair and cannot stop.

Derek's chapters, when they come, show a man who copes by working and by seeking comfort where it is easy. His affair with Kenzie starts as attention and becomes escape. He tells himself it means nothing, pays rent, lies about late meetings. Hillier does not make him a monster. She makes him weak in a familiar way. He cannot sit in the house with Marin's silence, so he sits elsewhere. When Marin learns, her reaction is not only betrayal about sex. It is betrayal about grief. How could you feel good while our son is gone. That question drives the rest more than the kidnapping.

Kenzie could have been a type. Young, pretty, barista? Actually real estate? She wants Derek to leave, believes his promises, spends his money, posts carefully. Hillier gives her a hard childhood and real ambition, which complicates dislike. A scene where Kenzie shops for baby clothes she cannot afford while Derek watches made me pity her briefly before remembering she knows he is married. The book lets you hold both. She is both exploited and choosing. Derek tells both women stories that cannot both be true. Someone is being used more.

Sal the PI is the steady center. Ex Seattle PD, divorced, dry, good with paperwork and with stakeouts that require waiting without phone scrolling. He tells Marin the truth about Derek because she pays for truth, then tries to stop her from acting on it stupidly. Their dynamic, client who will not listen and investigator who cares too much, gives the book humor in dark places. Sal eating bad takeout while watching Kenzie's building, calling Marin to talk her out of confrontations, had me liking him more than any husband.

Handling the mistress

Marin decides Kenzie must go, not through divorce lawyers but directly. She follows, photographs, confronts in a bathroom, offers money, threatens. None of it works cleanly because Kenzie wants Derek, not cash, and Derek wants both. The confrontations escalate in ways that feel plausible for sleep deprived people with money. Marin keys a car she thinks is Kenzie's and gets the wrong one. She sends a letter she regrets. She shows up at Kenzie's work and causes a scene that costs Marin sympathy with police. Hillier lets her heroine be embarrassing. That risk pays. You understand why Marin cannot stop even as you wish she would hire lawyers instead.

Halfway through, the kidnapping case reopens through a new tip. A boy seen, a van, a woman who remembers a detail about Sebastian's jacket. Marin must split focus between finding her son and ending her husband's affair, and she chooses both badly at times. The police detective assigned, who has always been kind but limited by resources, warns her to step back. She does not. A search scene in woods outside Seattle had me holding my breath. Dogs, volunteers, Marin calling Sebastian's name until hoarse. Nothing found, again. The nothing is the point. Hope as injury.

For pacing, the middle affair chapters repeat. Another stakeout, another lie from Derek, another confrontation with Kenzie that ends without resolution. Two apartment watches in a row blurred for me. I skimmed one because the pattern, Marin waits, Derek lies, Kenzie posts, was clear. Then a short chapter where Sebastian's toothbrush falls behind the sink and Marin cries holding it snaps it back. Objects carry grief better than arguments. Hillier knows when to drop a small thing after big scenes.

The twists in the last hundred pages come fast and I will keep them vague. Someone connected to the kidnapping is closer than Marin thinks. Someone connected to the affair lies about more than love. Sal puts together paperwork that reframes both. One reveal about who took Sebastian genuinely surprised me, though hints were there about vans and jackets and who benefits from Marin distracted. A second reveal about Derek's money felt more convenient, requiring a character to have hidden accounts Marin never noticed despite running businesses. I bought it because stress blinds, but barely.

What lands and what strains

Hillier's strength is letting women be unlikeable without losing them. Marin is rich, controlling, vengeful, and grieving. She says cruel things to friends trying to help. She uses money to solve problems that need patience. She also gets up every day into a house missing a child and keeps searching when police moved on. That endurance earns back sympathy she spends with bad decisions. Kenzie is needy, manipulative, young, and also a person who was promised a future by an older married man. You can dislike her actions while seeing how Derek shaped them.

The Seattle setting helps. Rain that never quite stops, farmers markets, ferries, tech money next to old neighborhoods, police stretched thin. Marin's salon chain gives her access to gossip and cash. Derek's business gives him excuses to travel. Sal knows which motels take cash and which cameras work. Those practical details make the thriller mechanics believable. When Marin needs an address, Sal does not hack magically. He waits, follows, asks a clerk who owes him. That slowness feels real.

For criticism, the book needs fewer coincidences. Marin runs into Kenzie twice in public in one week in a big city. Sal happens to know the detective on the kidnapping case from academy days. A crucial photo exists because someone forgot to delete. Each alone is fine. Together they pile. Also, Derek's business fraud subplot, which ties to the kidnapping motive, gets explained in a rush near the end with documents Sal summarizes. I wanted one more scene showing rather than telling how money moved. As is, the motive makes sense but feels told.

Still, at 352 pages it flies. Short chapters, many ending on a text or a doorbell. I read the last 150 pages standing in my kitchen because I could not sit. The final choice Marin makes about Kenzie and about Derek, after learning who took Sebastian and why, is darker than I expected for domestic thriller. She does not forgive neatly. She decides what she can live with and acts. That moral murk, plus a last page about Sebastian's room that made me cry, elevates it above affair revenge.

For who this is for. If you like Shari Lapena but want more anger, try it. If you want cozy mystery, look elsewhere. Children in danger, infidelity, violence here are blunt. If you are a parent, some scenes will be hard, especially the market opening and the woods search. I am not a parent and still had to put it down twice. I closed it thinking about how Marin counts seconds at markets now, the exact time she looked away, and how that counting never stops. Hillier wants you to sit with that math and with what people do when counting turns to action.

Sal as a man who mothers without mothering deserves a last note. He brings Marin soup she does not eat, fixes her gate without billing, tells her when she smells like lack of sleep. His divorce taught him that care without control is hard. With Marin he practices. He does not tell her to stop searching. He tells her to eat before searching. He does not tell her to leave Derek. He shows her bank statements and lets her decide. That restraint, learned from failing his own marriage by working too much, makes him the book's moral center without speeches. When he finally says Marin must choose between revenge and search because she cannot do both well, she hears it because he earned the right by waiting through stakeouts without judgment. Few thriller sidekicks get that much humanity. Hillier gives it in small bills, not lump sums.

Derek's business as cover deserves unpacking because Hillier uses work to hide affair mechanics in plain sight. He runs a company with travel, dinners, late calls, all plausible reasons to vanish. Marin, who runs salons with appointments and receipts, knows schedules should add up and hers do not when she checks his. A scene where she calls his office and his assistant covers too smoothly tells her more than any text. Assistants who like you warn. Assistants who fear your husband lie. Marin hears the fear and understands Derek has made his workplace afraid too. That abuse of small power mirrors the kidnapping inquiry where Marin must ask strangers for help without authority. In both cases she learns who answers when money is not offered. Sal answers. A retired nurse who watched the market answers. Derek's assistant does not. Those silences map loyalty better than confessions.

Kenzie's apartment as set also reveals class. Derek pays for modern furniture Marin would call cold, stocks wine Marin would not buy, leaves shirts Marin folds at home. Kenzie arranges photos to look like a wife without being one. When Marin visits uninvited, she notices dust on shelves Kenzie never uses and fresh groceries for Derek's visits. The details hurt because they show performance of domesticity without daily grind. Marin, who folds real laundry for a missing child, sees the difference instantly. She does not trash the place, though she wants to. She opens the fridge, closes it, leaves. That restraint costs more than smashing and shows growth from earlier keying mistakes. She is learning to gather evidence rather than vent, which Sal has begged for chapters.

Seattle rain as pressure deserves a final note because Hillier uses weather the way others use music. It rains during stakeouts, fogs windshields at the wrong moment, soaks Marin's shoes when she follows Kenzie on foot. She buys cheap umbrellas that invert. Sal keeps towels in his car for clients who cry. Those wet details keep grief physical. You cannot think clearly when cold and damp. Marin makes her worst decisions soaked, best decisions after hot showers she cannot afford to linger in because the meter runs. That linkage, comfort as clarity, runs under the thriller mechanics. When she finally sleeps through a night dry and warm at Sal's safe suggestion, she wakes able to read paperwork she stared at for weeks. Rest as investigation tool is not glamorous, but it is true.