Setting: France
Time Period: 1740

“The Secret Place” by Molly Bull is a story about the French Huguenots escaping France in 1740. When Rachel and Pierre miss their ship out of the country, a Catholic priest agrees to help them, but only if they marry. Rachel is still in love with Pierre’s brother who died during a house raid and doubts she can love his brother. Will they make it to Scotland? Or will Captain Valle capture them as enemies of the crown?

I’m a little torn about what to say… In ways, the plot was exciting and drew me in. There was one night I needed to go to bed and didn’t want to because I wanted to see what happened. On the other hand, the writing style got on my nerves. (LOL) If you’re familiar with the concept of “show not tell,” then you know what I mean when I say the whole book was “tell not show.” The conversations between the characters were not very engaging and showed no emotion at all. There were also places where the point of view would change from one character to another without any warning, which caused confusion at times. I kept with the book because it drew me in enough to want to know what happened, but the style in which it happened could have been better.

Conclusion: I liked “The Secret Place,” but not sure I would recommend it based on the poor writing style. The story was good and had a lot of travel and adventure. It’s not so bad if you’re willing to look past some of the amateur mistakes and look at the story as a whole, you might enjoy it too. But as I said before, I’m torn. The potential was so good, yet, some parts were so bad. I don’t mean to be negative, just wish to be honest about how I felt when reading.