The Book:
No More Secrets by Kerry Lonsdale (No More #3)
Published March 14, 2023 by Lake Union Publishing
Date read: March 5, 2023
The Characters:
Lucas
Shiloh
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The “No More” Series by Kerry Lonsdale books in order:
No More Words
No More Lies
No More Secrets
The Plot (from Goodreads):
A young man seeks redemption from his past in the third novel from the No More trilogy by Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Kerry Lonsdale.
After serving six months in a juvenile detention center, Lucas Carson returns home irrevocably changed by what happened there. Traumatized, Lucas shuts himself out from everyone he loves, even his younger sister, Lily, who ran away from home when she was pregnant at sixteen. When Lily resurfaces years later, Lucas can’t cope with his guilt about not being there for her. He takes off, only to cross paths with Shiloh Bloom—fifteen, homeless, and, like Lucas, escaping the past.
All Lucas sees in her is the little sister he neglected. Believing this is his chance to absolve past mistakes, he takes Shiloh in. He gives her food and shelter. She gives him a purpose. Together they invent a background for her and form a bond. But the risk of discovery grows. Lucas’s sisters aren’t the only ones looking for him. So are Shiloh’s mother and the police. If Lucas wants to heal and have a future, he must stop running and face everything he’s left behind.
Lucas was hiding out in California City, working at an old lady’s sandwich shop while contemplating killing himself. He catches Shiloh stealing from the shop one day and decides to help her.
Lucas’s big secret was that he was raped while in prison. He shouldn’t have been in prison in the first place. He and some deadbeat friends were trying to buy beer at a convenience store. When they got carded, one of the friends pulled out a gun that Lucas didn’t know he had. Lucas grabbed for the gun to prevent the kid from shooting the clerk, and the gun went off. The other kids’ families hired lawyers that pinned the holdup on Lucas.
Shiloh had run away from home to get away from her mom’s boyfriend, who had tried to rape her. She was trying to get to LA to meet Lily, her idol as an animator. She met an older guy online who said she could stay with him when she got there, but she didn’t have any more money so she was stuck in a homeless encampment in California City.
Lucas took Shiloh in, but then a bounty hunter showed up. Lucas went to a bar to try to decide what to do, but Shiloh thought he abandoned her. She called the boyfriend to come pick her up–he suddenly was able to drive the 3 hours to her–and left town with him. Unsurprisingly, the 25-year-old boyfriend dropped her when he found out she was 15. Shiloh had stolen Lucas’s laptop so he was able to track her down with its tracking device.
The bounty hunter, Sophie, called the cops on Lucas for kidnapping Shiloh. He was arrested and Shiloh was returned to her mother, who promised she had gone off drugs and cleaned up her act. Eventually Shiloh was able to convince the police that Lucas had done nothing wrong, and he was released.
Lucas, Olivia, and Lily reunited at the lake house again. Lucas was finally able to tell his sisters what had happened to him, including that he had tried to kill himself before, and they all forgave each other. The bounty hunter was Lily’s friend, who Lily asked to find both Lucas and Charlotte. She had read the situation with Lucas and Shiloh wrong and let her own past color her judgment of him. She had also found Charlotte, though, and the siblings were able to have Charlotte arrested for the murder of Benton St. John (this was the plot from No More Lies).
The Ending:
In the epilogue, Lucas bought the shop and apartments from Ivy. Sophie decided to stay for a while because she and Lucas were thinking about starting a relationship, and Shiloh came to spend the summer with them. They also gave Irving, another man from the homeless encampment, a place to stay and a way to start working for Lucas.
The Review:
A big thank-you to Kerry Lonsdale for this gifted copy of the third book in the No More series. I have really enjoyed following the journey of the Carson siblings as they try to figure out how to live their lives in the aftermath of their parents’ abuse and neglect. Each book in the series follows a different sibling, but their stories all intertwine. More pieces of their past are revealed as we get each sibling’s perspective of their childhood.
No More Secrets was Lucas’s book. Those who have read all three books know a little bit about Lucas already, but he has kept lots of secrets from his sisters.
Lucas grows a lot as a person throughout the book. At the beginning, he is wondering if life is worth continuing, but by the end, he has found his place and his purpose again. I adored Lucas’s relationship with Shiloh. He sees her as his second chance to do right by someone in need, after not helping his sister when she needed it. Shiloh was wary of Lucas at first, but realized that he was the good kind of adult who was there to help her.
I enjoyed the closer that we got regarding plot points that were left open in the previous two books–no spoilers, but the series ended in a satisfying way.
This is definitely a series you have to read in order. Without the backstory of Olivia and Lily’s books, I imagine it would be hard to follow the plot points relating to their family history. I’m sad the series is over, but I will certainly be watching out for what Kerry Lonsdale writes next!
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