Secrets to be Feared

Some Secrets Should Stay Buried

When a ten-year-old and her friends took a late-night stroll through the woods in 1968, they never imagined witnessing a man dragging a corpse. Forced into silence with a chilling vow, the girls buried a dark secret that would stay hidden for fifty-five years—until someone decides it's time to pay for the past.

In 2023, Nerissa Feldpausch moves in with her grandmother in Hastings, Michigan, hoping for a quiet life and a chance to reconnect with family. But when a threatening letter shows up on the doorstep and members of Gran’s old high school class begin to turn up dead, Nerissa is pulled into a decades-old mystery.

With the help of her cousins, a deputy boyfriend, and a loyal library friend, Nerissa hunts for the truth—about a missing man known only as “Slasher,” about who’s behind the new wave of murders, and about the night that changed her grandmother’s life forever. But Hastings holds more than just secrets. It holds people who are willing to kill to keep them.

Jessica Brimer’s Secrets to Be Feared is a gripping, layered thriller about loyalty, legacy, and what happens when the past refuses to stay buried.

Start reading Secrets to Be Feared and uncover the truth hidden beneath decades of silence.

Excerpt from the book

Fifty-five years later

September 2023

My truck’s headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the black pavement ahead. My heart thunders. The narrator’s voice comes through the speakers, enthralling and intense. A fight scene. Not just any fight. An ambush from a trusted, beloved sister. I grip tighter on the steering wheel, striving to keep my focus on driving while images dance in my mind. Not an easy task, yet I don’t want to hit pause.

I can almost feel the guard’s phantom hands hauling the female protagonist toward the dungeons, while her loyal friends fight for their lives. At this moment, I am both observer and participant, suspended between reality and fantasy. The boundaries blur, and I am lost in the whirlwind of emotions, entangled in the narrative’s grip.

The narrator speaks with urgency and devastation, making me experience the raw fear with the main character, as though my world is shattering around me and I’m unable to escape the bonds clasped around our wrists. I shift in my seat, becoming angry along with the protagonist. Then, the unknown looms.

I have to remind myself not to push too hard on the gas pedal, despite how a strange part of me thinks that if I do, both the protagonist and I can escape.

The narrator switches into a different voice. I fist-bump the air, recognizing the dialogue’s tone she reserves only for the love interest. I appreciate how the speaker brings out the cockiness in such an intense moment before he decimates the guards. I also admire how she returns to the compelling voice as a new fight scene unfolds. My heart melts, mirroring the protagonist’s struggles, as she and her partner fight together toward freedom.

Instead of picturing the story’s love interest as the author does, I picture that Michigan boy I’d seen many summers ago. Older now, of course. His black hair is thicker, he’s taller and stronger, and he’s fierce like the one portrayed in the audiobook.

As the story continues, the lover confesses his feelings as they flee into the watery tunnels, and I’m reminded I’m single and in Michigan, not in a fantasy world. I’d moved to Hastings three months earlier. Other than my coworkers, I only know my family and their friends. I hold on to the hope that someday I’ll find that boy with black hair again, or someone like him, who will love me with the same tenderness as the fictional hero does. In the meantime, I daydream about what it’ll be like having a man who loves me unconditionally.

Another minute goes by and the chapter ends. I reach for my phone and, by muscle memory, pause the audiobook. Then I inhale a long and slow deep breath.

“Damn. I hope I can be as good as her,” I say.

Good as in the narrator’s skillset, not in how the protagonist’s lover rescues her—though that would be nice; I’m a sucker for a classic romance. I reflect on the narrator’s voice while driving and brush away thoughts of a shocking treachery and swords clashing. It’s the writer’s job to capture the story and have readers bond with the characters. But it’s the narrator who brings them to life with their voice.