Family secrets are fertile subject matter for both novels and thrillers, and Brenda Bellingham’s suspenseful Drowning in Secrets combines the two genres in a gripping story for young adults. Sixteen-year-old Chloe experiences nightmares and panic attacks, related to her own fear of water and her mother’s death by drowning when Chloe was five. Since she has no memories of her mother or her early childhood, she resolves, against her father’s wishes, to visit her mother’s twin sister and her grandmother who live on the lake in Salmon Arm, B.C.

In some ways the visit is a success: Chloe quickly becomes fond of her aunt Anna, and establishes rapport with shy good-looking Danny, whose family runs the local marina. Anna and others give Chloe some important information about her mother and her own past, but Chloe still senses that much is being concealed and her own irrational terrors threaten her relationship with Danny.

Bellingham plunges the reader into Chloe’s anxieties by opening with a vivid nightmare of being entangled underwater with her mother’s drowning body. Suspense builds as the reader is given just enough information to feel anxious even when Chloe is temporarily reassured, and Chloe’s shocking discoveries are surprising yet convincing. While Chloe’s fears are vividly presented, other characters are sketched in rather lightly, the love affair with Danny remains conventional, and the ending is somewhat perfunctory. Nevertheless, Bellingham has created an exciting story by tapping into the psychological and physical dangers inherent in family secrets – a subject fascinating since the tale of Oedipus.