Allison Standish has one of those living horror moments when she finds her boyfriend and her lady boss - too close. Taking only her cat, Allison heads off to Lancaster County where she has recently inherited a house. She doesn't want a white elephant, a backward, no progress town building. But since she's quit her interior design job, where else can she go? WHERE SECRETS SLEEP follows her trip, a journey in more senses than one.

Amish country is picturesque and the three-storey Italianate architecture of this Blackburn House looks unusual but well-kept. Nick Whiting is just locking up his cabinet making shop at the back of the house. He mistakes the new owner for the prowler everyone's talking about, but that's soon sorted out. He just hopes his lease can be agreed so easily. Allison expected to sell, but a lawyer informs her that she has to run the building as a business for a year before the title is passed fully to her. This will turn her life upside down. A financial offer to her to leave has already been made by the next heir in line. Allison decides to take legal advice of her own, and to check out her quilting shop tenant.

Sarah Bitler is a lovely young woman who runs a shop to sell quilts made in the community. Allison finds that she is now a partner in Sarah's shop - she can appreciate the beauty of the quilts, but knows nothing about them or how business is conducted without computers. Is it going to be awkward having Nick around? He's made it clear he expects her to sell as soon as she's able. He's not the only one who wants rid of her. And who is the eerie prowler?

While the opening sets us up to feel sympathetic to Allison, I found myself liking her more as I read. Her father left her mother who raised her with independence and stubbornness. While Allison never wondered about his side of the family, now she is in his home town she starts to think more about them. All the people she meets are rounded characters, from the elderly bookshop owner to a six-year- old boy, and not everyone is welcoming. As a romantic suspense novel WHERE SECRETS SLEEP is understated and realistic, gradually building to a frisson of danger. Marta Perry has thoroughly reconstructed the handsome Blackburn House based on a real building, so we feel we have actually visited. I love all the details, from the postage-stamp quilting to the ginger cat. In fact I love WHERE SECRETS SLEEP - it's not your average romance.

Book Summary

In Amish country, not everything is as simple as it appears

After a terrible betrayal, Allison Standish flees Philadelphia for the small Amish village of Laurel Ridge to claim an unexpected inheritance. Allison intends to sell the mansion housing various shops on Main Street—until she meets Nick Whiting, a single father and tenant of Blackburn House, who challenges everything she believes about her estranged grandmother and the Amish community.

Strange stipulations in her grandmother's will soon bring distant relatives and seething townsfolk to Allison's door. As anonymous threats escalate, Nick grows protective of Allison, and she finds herself falling for the handsome carpenter- But then she discovers her grandmother's death may not have been accidental, and someone wants Allison gone. Permanently.

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