Name: No One Will Know
Author: Rose Carlyle

Rose Carlyle’s No One Will Know has a lot more twists than your average domestic mystery suspense thriller. Read about what did and did not work for me.

Publication: Text Publishing, October 2024.

Genre: Thriller, Drama, Mystery, Crime

No One Will Know Publisher Synopsis

Eve Sylvester is young and broke and needs a job fast. After years of foster homes, backpacking and a sailing trip across the Pacific Ocean, she has lost contact with friends and family. She is alone, desperate—and pregnant.

Then she meets Julia and Christopher Hygate, a charming and glamorous couple, who seem to have the perfect life: loads of money and a breathtakingly beautiful mansion on a remote Tasmanian island. They make her a lucrative offer. Eve can move into their empty summerhouse and take up a very easy job.

Eve thinks she’s fallen on her feet—she has found a home, and her child will grow up in the aptly named Paradise Bay. But some things about the job don’t add up. Why must Eve stay out of sight? Why have the Hygates employed an ex-con to run their yacht-charter business? And what about the mysterious boats sailing in and out of the Hygates’ private marina? Has Eve made a deal with the devil? It’s too late to ask questions. Eve is already in far too deep.

Set against the stunning backdrop of a windswept island and its mysterious lighthouse, No One Will Know is a propulsive, seductive novel of suspense that reveals the terrible consequences of greed, staggering lies and fatal mistakes.

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My Review

I had heard great things about Rose Carlyle’s first novel, The Girl in the Mirror, so I was eager to read her latest release.

No One Will Know excelled for me in terms of location. Carlyle evocatively depicts both the sparkle and shadows of the remote, windswept Paradise Bay, illustrating well that paradise or prison can all too often simply be a matter of perception.

But I have come to realise that domestic suspense thrillers are a fraught genre for me. On the one hand, I want at least one great twist. And, if the author can pull off more than one twist, that is even better. Suspense alone is just not enough for me. On the other hand, I have a really hard time swallowing hard-to-believe character actions. This is where I struggled with No One Will Know.

From very early on, I found myself questioning the decisions made by our lead character, Eve. Sure, she was desperate, but she seemed world-wise? I just found it hard to suspend my disbelief as often as I was being asked to in the first half of the novel. This, in turn, weakened my engagement with this character.

What kept me reading

So, it was not a character connection that kept me reading to this novel’s conclusion…. it was merely curiosity. My thinking was that if you need your lead to do this many somersaults and backflips early on, the big reveal at the end must be more complex than expected. And on that score, Rose Carlyle delivered.

Reading for the puzzle alone, I found the latter half of No One Will Know more compelling. The drama, action, and several reveals began dropping thick and fast. There are still ill-advised decisions made, but our attention is quickly diverted to mortal peril.

I loved Rose Carlyle’s disclosed inspiration for No One Will Know, and absolutely connected with the broader theme of this novel… that there can be no fiercer adversary than a mother’s capacity for love and sacrifice for her child. Unfortunately, for me, this novel’s execution just fell short in key places.