Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for my advanced reader copy of No One Needs to Know by Lindsay Cameron. This book is available May 9, 2023, but authors love when you pre-order!

The Story

When an anonymous neighborhood forum gets hacked, the darkest secrets of New York’s wealthiest residents come to light—including some worth killing for—in this gripping suspense novel from the author of Just One Look.

It was all confidential. Right up to the moment when it wasn’t.

UrbanMyth: It was lauded as an alternative to the performative, show-your-best-self platforms—an anonymous discussion board grouped by zip code. The residents of Manhattan’s exclusive Upper East Side disclosed it all, things they would never share with their friends or their spouses: secret bank accounts, steamy affairs, tidbits of juicy gossip. These are the same parents who would go to astonishing lengths to ensure their children gain admission to the most prestigious boarding schools and universities. So when a “hacktivist” group breaks into the forum and exposes the real identity behind each poster, the repercussions resound down Park Avenue with a force none could have anticipated.

And someone will end up dead.

Will it be Heather, the outsider who would do anything to get her daughter into the elite’s good graces and into even better schools? Norah, the high-powered suit failing to balance work and the emotional responsibilities of motherhood? Or Poppy, perfect on the outside but hiding more than her share of secrets?

Each of them has something to hide. Each of them will do anything to keep their secrets hidden. And each of them just might kill to protect their own.

My Thoughts

I’ll be up front: I gave No One Needs to Know three stars on Goodreads. It was a solid three stars, not anything else rounded anywhere else.

I loved the concept of UrbanMyth. It reminded me of the Whisper app (if anyone remembers that), where people could essentially post secrets and others could comment and such. The concept as a whole is super cool if you’re a fly on the wall, just watching other people’s drama unfold.

However, it was a solid 50% of the book before this “hacktivist” released the information, so it wasn’t even that crucial of a piece to the story. It played into the investigation a bit, but even that wasn’t THAT important overall.

Then, we get to the end of the story, and it was one of the most boring endings! It was one of those that came out of left field, like the author wasn’t really sure how the book was going to end. I don’t like those endings.

Lindsay Cameron has written a couple other books, and I would be curious to read them. I think there is promise there, but this book just didn’t do it for me.

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