Small Town Secrets. Katrina Jackson. 2018. 153 pages. [Source: Kindle Unlimited.]
I’m a sucker for small-town series, and Katrina Jackson has me completely sucked into Sea Port. I was first introduced to this quaint southern town in From Scratch. I fell further in love through Inheritance, and Small Town Secrets is another in a series of eyebrow-raising looks at the citizenry.
Small Town Secrets further introduces Sully, the owner of the town’s coffee shop. For the past year, she’s pined after Bria, who works in the town’s new bakery. Surprise, surprise – Bria has eyes for Sully, too. Much of the story follows them getting to know each other; they have a cute courtship, mostly devoid of drama. As Bria and Sully get to know each other, Sully is struggling with her closest friendship. She and Willie, the town mayor, have been drifting apart for nearly a year, inexplicably. The truth is that Sully has her own secret obsession with Bria, and is harboring a secret that’s getting harder to keep to herself.
Small Town Secrets captures the complexity of the relationships and politics of small-town life that Jackson has highlighted in her other books. I enjoyed this one because it really hones in on the way secrets “hidden in plain sight” can wreak the most havoc. The drama is more of a slow build-up that left me with a pit in my stomach as I read further into the book — I loved it. I found myself making assumptions about what would happen and was pleasantly surprised to be wrong. As for the romance — it was both sweet and sexy. I liked that Bria and Sully being lesbian wasn’t as big of a thing here. It was addressed with Bria’s mom, and I liked seeing her have a supportive parent. Admittedly, open-mindedness isn’t always a hallmark of small town ideology, so I was relieved.
To be clear – I definitely recommend Small Town Secrets. The new residents it introduces have a compelling story of their own, and the updates from characters from the previous two books are a special treat. With a good balance of romance, sex, and drama, it doesn’t disappoint.
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