DOMESTIC SECRETS

They may be besties, but two suburban single mothers are most unlikely friends.

Widowed Rachel Whalen owns a beauty shop. Her eldest son, Kyle James, is a student attending Green State on a football scholarship. KJ, who’s had too many concussions, may have to decide between his passion for football and the possibility of brain damage. Rachel’s younger son, Jared, has been a loner. Bullied in school, even suicidal, he’s just starting to come out of his shell. Rachel has long supported the spirits of her beautiful, flighty friend Ariel Alexander. She’s been like a mother to Ariel’s four children, especially when Ariel’s supportive second husband died, leaving her so depressed that her oldest daughter, Cassie, had to take over the family’s care. Even though Cassie, a college student, deeply resents her mother’s narcissism, she loves her siblings, especially her beautiful, popular sister Remy, who’s the same age as Jared. Ariel, once the star of a popular television show, now makes a living as a voice coach whose students are drawn mostly from the high school’s Gleetime Company. She continues to have inappropriate and destructive relationships with men, including Stosh, a Hollywood producer she split from after a violent argument. While Rachel struggles to help her sons financially and psychologically, Ariel, still longing for a return to stardom, ignores her children as much as possible. Then a terrible tragedy drives the two friends apart, leading both Rachel and the police to seek the truth.

Noonan (Take Another Look, 2015, etc.) delivers another page-turning romantic thriller whose deeply flawed characters draw you into a web of family secrets.