In Bokchito, Oklahoma, you know everyone and trust no one…Emily Matthews swore she’d never expose her son Jack to her dysfunctional family that sent her running from Bokchito at only seventeen. The sins of her past still haunt her, but when her brother lands in jail, she has no choice but to go back and face her old demons.

Miller Anderson has never forgotten about the girl who ran out of his life thirteen years ago…

And with the secret he’s keeping from Emily, he knows he most likely never will. But when his daughter Abby plays matchmaker to set him up with his lost love, he can’t resist the resurgence of emotion that has them reliving their high school glory days.

Evil has a way of waiting for what it wants…

Just when Emily and Miller discover their old flame hasn’t died, they learn another fire has been smoldering in Bokchito. Her family’s long line of sins, kindled with a generation-old grudge, ignites when Emily discovers the truth about Miller’s daughter and is forced to choose between protecting Miller’s secret and the one thing she can’t afford to lose…her son Jack.

Caught up in a game of lies and dirt road scandal, Emily must risk everything to save her son and preserve Miller’s good name, or let her family’s darkest secret ruin them both.

Everyone has their skeletons.  Some are little sins, some so much larger.  In a small town, even the smallest of sins is fodder for gossip.  Everyone is certain they know everything there is to know about their neighbor and yet we all have our secrets.  Emily’s family is chock full of secrets and skeletons, the closet bursting at the seams.  Sometimes an obsession with secrets truly drives a person over the edge.  Such is the case with Emily’s grandmother and mother.  Their obsession with cleansing Emily of imagined sins by whatever damaging and abusive means necessary led to her running away at seventeen on the night her best friend committed suicide.  She left behind the boy she loved and a younger brother.  They were the only ones she cared about.  But Emily knew it wasn’t safe to stay and she couldn’t drag Miller down with her into the insanity that was her family.  He had goals in his life and staying with Emily would ruin them all.  So she let him go and ran.  With no high school diploma, life wasn’t easy but she managed to get her GED and hold down a receptionist job until she married and became a mom.  Jack is her joy and perhaps her bane on some days.  When her husband couldn’t deal with an autistic child he left them for a new wife and a new family.  It’s been fourteen years and she’s never been back to the podunk town of Bokchito.  That is until she got a call that her brother was in jail for assaulting her father.  She could never have expected to run into Miller again or the many skeletons that would escape their closets when she did.

Miller has his secrets too.  He’s loved Emily since the third grade, even when he thought she was his best friend’s girl.  Then Emily became his girl in the secret of the night.  That is until the night his best friend Daniel committed suicide.  That same night Emily left after having promised she’d talk to him first.  He’s never forgotten his one love and he’s never forgiven her either.  Nor has he gotten over the guilt of betraying Daniel.  Now he’s a single father of a lovely thirteen-year-old Abby.  She is the light of his eyes.  She’s also not above a bit of manipulation when she decides that Miller and Emily make a nice couple.  Now Miller is seeing what drove Emily all those years ago to run.  The boy has become a man and his love is that of a man as well.  Then secrets start spilling and everything Miller holds dear is at risk.

Neither Miller or Emily expected their secrets to come to light.  Nor did they expect the deeper secrets that spill forth at the hands of evil when they find their children held hostage to a madman’s greed.  Secondhand Sinners is full of twists and turns.  The danger and action will keep you on edge as each new secret is exposed.  You’ll fall totally in love with Jack and Abby.  Having children with mental health disorders, I had a healthy appreciation of Emily and Miller and the challenges they faced.  Ms. Lynne penned a wonderful story and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

♥♥♥♥

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