Burning Secrets

~Michelle Dunne

Sometimes the demons you fear the most aren’t the ones inside you, but the ones standing right in front of you.

Burning Secrets by Michelle Dunne is a slow-burn psychological thriller that traps you inside a nightmare you can’t wake from. Deeply rooted in familial trauma, it begins quietly, almost deceptively so, before tightening its grip and pulling you into a suffocating spiral of paranoia, grief, and psychological unrest that becomes impossible to put down.

Siblings James and Sadie Kingston survived the horror of losing their parents at a young age. What police ruled a murder-suicide shattered Sadie’s grasp on reality, leaving her teetering on the edge of sanity for years afterward. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and PTSD following a stay in a psychiatric hospital, Sadie begins seeing demons in people – not metaphorical demons, but physical auras she believes cling to those around her. Each is color-coded according to its level of danger. The brightest and most terrifying color surrounds her brother James: red, representing uncontrollable rage. Yet James is also a highly respected Garda officer and Sadie’s steadfast caretaker, devoting his life to protecting the sister everyone else believes is broken.

As Sadie struggles to maintain some semblance of stability, she follows the routines James has carefully constructed for her: taking her medication, volunteering at the community food kitchen. But what isn’t part of his plan is her attempting to warn others about the dangers she believes surround them. At the kitchen, she finds brief moments of comfort and connection among people society often overlooks. But when Ian – her newest potato-peeling companion – suddenly disappears, the fragile balance she’s built begins to collapse. No matter who she turns to or what she says, every concern is dismissed as another symptom of her mental illness.

Feeling abandoned by the justice system and ignored by those around her, Sadie becomes convinced she must take matters into her own hands to protect others. But is she truly seeing evil hidden beneath the surface of ordinary people? Or has her trauma transformed her into the very danger everyone fears?

The character work here is exceptional – and difficult to discuss without revealing too much. Sadie is written as both deeply unreliable and painfully sincere. Her PTSD, nightmares, violent episodes, and fractured perception of reality are portrayed with raw authenticity that makes her both unsettling and heartbreakingly human. James is equally compelling: overprotective, grief-stricken, and burdened by responsibility, yet still viewed as an honorable Garda officer and pillar of the community. Even in his moments of vulnerability, there’s an emotional realism that makes him impossible to dismiss as either wholly good or wholly suspect. Every character reflects a different response to Sadie’s diagnoses – pity, fear, frustration, exhaustion, love – and beneath it all lies a quiet, stubborn humanity as each struggles with their own moral choices.

Dunne fully commits to the slow-burn structure, layering the novel with psychological depth and emotional texture as she carefully builds its foundation. Once the story accelerates, the tension detonates with startling force. The pacing in the final stretch becomes frantic and almost claustrophobic, amplifying both the emotional and physical stakes until the story reaches its devastating conclusion. And even then, the unease lingers long after the final page.

For everything that unfolds, the atmosphere is never reliant on gore or shock value. Instead, Dunne crafts an intimate psychological horror through manipulation, uncertainty, and misdirection. The tension remains tight and controlled throughout, while the dialogue carries an authentic Irish cadence that adds texture without overwhelming the narrative. By the final act, trauma itself becomes the engine driving the plot, rendered with lean yet cinematic detail that makes every revelation hit even harder.

Burning Secrets is the kind of slow-burn thriller that begins as a haunting exploration of trauma and mental illness before evolving into a searing portrait of family loyalty, moral blindness, and the devastating consequences of unresolved grief. It’s the type of story that demands a second read, not because you missed something, but because the emotional and psychological layers shift once you know the truth hiding beneath the surface.

Available for Pre-Order now on Amazon, releasing June 3, 2026.

Thank you to Michelle Dunne, Bloodhound Books, and NetGalley for the opportunity to Alpha/Beta/ARC Burning Secrets. As always, all opinions and reviews are of my own volition. I have not been promised any compensation by the author or publisher for a fair and honest review.

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