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When one last job seemingly falls into her lap right before her exit from the life, Dora has a hard tie resisting it. The allure of the money and how she can put it towards her future is too much for her to pass up. Despite her promise she takes one last job, thinking that she'll never have to tell this little secret to anyone. I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing author Adele Parks for the Storytime in Paris podcast on the Paris Underground Radio podcast network, which features interviews with authors who have a French connection. I’ll drop anything for a new Adele Parks: she nails it every time"—Lucy Foley, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Apartment If you have ever read an Adele Parks book, you know that her plots are never as straight forward as they may seem. Once Last Secret is a compelling read, with so many twists and turns you will not know if you are coming or going! I loved it. When a book continues to surprise me, it is a good thing as I don't think that I am easily surprised anymore. Thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing, MIRA, HCC and Netgalley for the gifted e-ARC to read and review.
One Last Secret (Audio Download): Adele Parks, Kristin One Last Secret (Audio Download): Adele Parks, Kristin
The novel builds well, there is tension and suspense though disbelief suspenders are required on occasions but hey, it’s fiction! There are several twists and turns although one is easy to figure out but not entirely the reasons behind it. The end twist is good. This is told mostly from the first person account of Dora/Teodora, who is a high end escort/sex worker. She isn't ashamed of the way she earns money, but when a client gets too rough she decides it's time to leave the business. Dora can't resist but take one last job as a favor to a client, a weekend away at a luxury home, yet what happens there is not what she was expecting. Dora goes on one last girlfriend experience (without the sex) to a super secluded mansion in the south of France. She is gaslit, drugged, and raped while drugged. She does not figure out that her “naps” right after politely eating or drinking something forced on her mean she was drugged even though it happens multiple times. The guy who beat her up is an employee of her daughter’s father who has brought her out there to be murdered by that employee. Dora has always known her job was dangerous. As a high-end call girl, she doesn’t experience the same level of risk as her street worker counterparts, but clients tend to think of those in the sex trade as less than human and treat them accordingly. She’s experienced more than her share of petty abuse, but nothing had prepared her for the beating given by the allegedly carefully vetted new client her handler had connected her with. Dora leaves the expensive hotel where she met him battered and bloody and ready to get out of the game altogether. Dora is a sex worker. Or a ‘hooker’ or ‘whore’ - words that are littered throughout the text…not sure that was necessary. When she’s beaten by a dangerous client, she’s more than a little shaken and her millionaire boy best friend offers her an out.Well, I really want to scream at Dora as soon as she said yes to Daniel. And when they arrive at the château, she meets with Daniel’s eccentric friends who act like they see an exotic creature as soon as they say hi to her. And one of them is a very dangerous man! Dora absolutely knows who he is! After she is beat by a client her best friend Evan asks her to marry him and quit the business. She agrees. He just wants to keep her safe. He is also very much in love with her and they have not slept together. He knows her in a way that no one else does. But she still has a couple of secrets that she will take to her grave. I can't say that I blame her though. I don’t know how I exactly feel about this book! It really made me confused! It was smart but there are so missing pieces for me to enjoy it completely! I wasn’t really sure about this one at first but the more I read the better it got. Not at all what I normally read but once I got into it I really enjoyed it. Even though this high end escort/sex workers name is the same at my sweet deceased grandma I'm happy to say I did not picture her face at all.
One Last Secret by Adele Parks (Review by Kelly Glecoff) One Last Secret by Adele Parks (Review by Kelly Glecoff)
During her career Adele has lived in Italy, Botswana and London. Now she lives happily in Surrey, UK with her husband, son and cat. Dora has found a way to make a comfortable living. She gets to travel, enjoy the finer things in life and not worry about where her next meal is coming from. While the life of an escort may not sound appealing, it has it's definite perks with the right client base. I would argue the best way to approach One Last Secret is without much insight to the plot so that one can fully experience reading about the heart-racing events that Dora, a high-end escort, gets into during her one last job in the field at a glamorous chateau in the south of France. No more needs to be said on the plot as it’s better going in blind but my heart was racing for Dora and the life and death situation she gets herself into. Dora is an high classed escort who happens to fall into a doting relationship with her friend Evan.
Member Reviews
It was on the longer side and slow moving at times, but I was happy there were a few little zingers at the end. All in all, a pretty good story of revenge. I loved the start and sarcastic, straightforwardly blunt narration of Theodora/ Dora: thirty years old sex worker/ escort, honestly telling her work life, her clients, her only friend Evan, her struggles in her tough, survival tone. I liked her immediately! As the story developed, I could not believe some of the surprise revelations that Parks includes. At some points I was gasping in disbelief, finding myself re-reading some paragraphs in case I had missed something! There were some clever plot twists that come in the final chapters, so this is definitely a book you need to see through to the end to truly appreciate Parks thrilling narrative. The author's use of characterisation is, as I have come to expect, top notch and the portrayal of Dora is particularly impressive. This is perhaps just as well, as Dora is primarily responsible for conveying the narrative, although there are also brief interjections from the viewpoints of four other characters at various points. It wasn't long before I had found myself fully drawn into Dora's world and was feeling both sympathetic and empathetic towards her.
One Last Secret — Adele Parks One Last Secret — Adele Parks
Adele Parks does it again. I have read and loved her books before and this one is no exception. It's good.The story is told in the first person for the most part, which might have helped readers better understand some of Dora’s foolish choices but the author doesn’t use her narration to good effect. Rather than allowing us to sympathize with our heroine falling into trap after trap by giving us reasons for her to be that naïve, we instead are simply given a front-row seat to Dora behaving stupidly. This was disappointing since at the start of the novel, Dora is presented as a tough, savvy, worldly-wise woman who knows what’s what. Once she joins Daniel on his trip, she becomes an ingénue style of character, which really doesn’t fit with her previous persona. To put it mildly, a complicated mess. Dora finds herself playing cat and mouse in an elaborate revenge plot the type of which I am fairly certain you can only find in fiction. It’s hard to sympathize with Dora as she discovers herself in deep trouble because it is obvious from the very beginning that taking this trip with Daniel is a colossally dumb mistake. We start out with a lot of information about Dora's job. She gets roughed up by a client and decides to quit the biz after her best friend, Evan, proposes. I never really felt a connection between them and thought it odd that he even proposed to begin with. During an escape attempt, Dora learns that her captor, the father of her daughter, is also her fiancé’s father and that he hired everyone who was at the house to torture her. She manages to kill the employee during a second escape attempt but doesn’t get away because, when she opens the door to run away …
One Last Secret: From the Sunday Times Number One bestselling
A female sex worker decides to take one last job before retiring from the profession, but everything goes wrong. This book took too long to catch my attention. The beginning is a primer to sex work. I think it’s an honest one – and a respectful one – but the ABCs of sex work do not an exciting thriller make. The first part of the book started slow for me, but once Dora was in France, things took off and went down a path that was equally fun and frustrating read with an emphasis on the fun. Though I did keep wanting to shake her and yell "LEAVE THE HOUSE. JUST LEAVE," but of course that would have ruined the fun. Dora is a high-end call girl desperate to put the life behind her, but decides to take one last job with someone she trusts.
Maggie Boyd
I thought the world of escorting was written about brilliantly with real emotion on how the main characters managed to compartmentalise her feelings to get through her life. With a plot that is far from conventional, complete with an alluring main protagonist, a suspect outer cast and a flashy setting, One Last Secret will keep you guessing until the bitter end. An amazing read! Dora can’t resist taking one last job - escorting a regular to a French château and pretending to be his girlfriend. No sex allowed. Surely that’s fine?
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