Deadly Little Secrets by Laurie Faria Stolarz

"Some secrets shouldn't be kept...
Until three months ago, everything in sixteen-year-old Camelia’s life had been fairly ordinary: decent grades, an okay relationship with her parents, and a pretty cool part-time job at the art studio downtown.  But when a mysterious boy named Ben starts junior year at her high school, Camelia’s life becomes anything but ordinary.
Rumored to be somehow responsible for his ex-girlfriend’s accidental death, Ben is immediately ostracized by everyone on campus. Except for Camelia. She’s reluctant to believe he's trouble, even when her friends try to convince her otherwise.  Instead, she’s inexplicably drawn to Ben…and to his touch.  But soon, Camelia is receiving eerie phone calls and strange packages with threatening notes. Ben insists she is in danger, and that he can help—but can he be trusted? She knows he's hiding something... but he's not the only one with a secret."

First off, yay for random library books! I've been wanting this since I saw it on NetGalley a while back but was denied. It hurt my soul when I got that email. Anyways, I finally got my chance to get it as a library ebook and was so stoked to read it this past weekend.

Okay yes, it does have slight undertone of Twilight, but the beginning of this series does stand on its own. I loved the organization of this book because we kind of got a back and forth point of view between our main character, Camelia, and our stalker. I actually wished it had more journal entries from the stalker, but they stopped mid-story sadly. I liked those because it was written in a diary format, and it just added to the creep factor of getting into the stalkers head.

The secondary characters in the book were also pretty cool. I loved Wes and Kimmie's banter as friends, but I didn't feel their characters were delve into much. Though I know there are more books, that was one of the big issues I had with the story; I never felt that I knew any of the characters well. Even the main characters of Camelia and Ben were barely described in my opinion. Their interaction with each other was also odd to me. They liked one another, but I never really felt their connection. I think if the story were a bit more developed on relationships it would've helped.

I also felt the story involving the main characters parents could've either been setup a bit more or just left for another book. It honestly didn't even seem like Camelia really cared about the family issues. Yeah I get she was having a crisis of her own as well, but I think a mother having a near mental breakdown would hit her a bit more than it did.

What I will give Stolarz props for though, is her writing style. It was engaging yet fast-paced and definitely kept me from being bored as I tried to figure out who the stalker was. I love things that are like puzzles, so this book was right up my alley. Every time I chose a suspect I kept second guessing myself with what few clues I had. Though I figured it out kind of early(I watch WAY too many episodes of Criminal Minds), I still wanted to finish the book to see what would happen and see if I was right. The ending was a bit quick for my liking, but with more books out it wasn't a huge issue to me.

I wouldn't say this is a must-read book, but it was enjoyable. So if you're looking for a quick read that you won't want to put down this is a great book! I can't wait to get my hands on the next one in the series to see where the story goes.