Ellice Littlejohn is a corporate attorney for a family-owned transportation company in Atlanta. That’s what her friends and coworkers know about her. There is a lot more that they don’t know, from her upbringing as the daughter of an alcoholic, of how she managed to escape the small town she grew up in, or how she helps out her little brother when he’s not in jail. Most people who know her don’t even know she has a brother. She’s not embarrassed, exactly, just a master of compartmentalizing the areas of her life.
Her company, Houghton, has protestors outside every day, men and women of color who say that the company won’t hire anyone who isn’t white. Ellice is proof that it’s not true, as she’s a black woman, but when she looks around the company, she doesn’t see very many others who look like her. But she’s used to that. It’s been like that for her since she got a scholarship to boarding school, never going back to Chillicothe.
But when she goes into work one morning for an early morning meeting with her boss Michael, she finds him dead in his office. She panics, leaving the executive floor and heading back down to her office. While at first it’s thought that he took his own life, it doesn’t take the police long to decide it was actually murder. And when the company’s CEO Nate taps Ellice to take Michael’s job, to become the new general counsel at Houghton, she takes the job.
While the company is happy to move forward again, Ellice has some misgivings. She can’t find any paperwork on an important deal, and she can’t access any of Michael’s emails about it. Then she is given evidence of some financial improprieties. And she finds out that Michael had been speaking to an attorney who was known for working with white-collar criminals. Ellice starts to think that the company was doing something questionable or even illegal and that Michael had been trying to find out if he could be held liable for any of it.
Then when the police come to her with photos of someone entering the building the day before Michael’s murder, entering with the security badge she had misplaced, that’s when Ellice thinks she may be in over her head. Because she doesn’t let on to the police that she knows who is in the photos, but it’s clear to her that it’s her little brother Sam. And if Sam is somehow tangled up in Houghton’s crimes, then Ellice may not be able to help him.
But as she continues to get stonewalled trying to get information, she finds that there are those on the executive floor who know her better than she realized. As her secrets come out one by one, from the affair she’d been having with Michael to things that happened when she was a young teenager living in Chillicothe, she starts to wonder if her brother isn’t the only one she needs to be worried about. Has this new job put her in danger too? Does she need to find herself an attorney like Michael was trying to do, or will she be the next one on the executive floor who faces a bullet?
All Her Little Secrets is a powerful thriller about a woman uncovering corporate secrets. Author Wanda M. Morris has crafted a story of secrets and lies, blackmail and murder, that will keep you turning the pages to find out the ending. But it’s also an incredibly moving story about a woman of color and the challenges that she faces in the life she has chosen for herself. And if that’s not enough for you to pick up this book, there is also the layer of the effects of a traumatic childhood and how those scars are carried over into adult life.
Heart-breaking and nuanced, All Her Little Secrets will rip you apart a few times before reminding you that humanity can be good too, that there are special people who help others heal instead of breaking them down. For me, I took one look at the cover and immediately wanted to read this book. And I’m so glad I did. But there are some dark scenes in there that will haunt me, even as I remember how much strength these characters showed in surviving and thriving and living on their own terms.
Egalleys for All Her Little Secrets were provided by William Morrow through NetGalley, with many thanks.
