In NO ONE CAN KNOW by Kate Alice Marshall, Emma's life completely unravels in no time at all, and she finds herself headed back somewhere she never would have imagined.

In her late 20s, Emma and her husband, Nathan, are on the verge of buying their first home. Emma is happy to be unexpectedly pregnant after a devastating crash with a drunk driver left her laid up for months. But just as she's about to tell Nathan the exciting news, he reveals an unwelcome surprise of his own. He actually lost his job weeks earlier, even before they had put the bulk of their savings into earnest money for an offer on a new house. Now they can't get that money back, and they have no chance of making mortgage payments --- let alone a down payment --- without Nathan's income, especially since Emma's web design business has been practically nonexistent since her accident.

"[T]he novel rewards careful readers with a suspenseful narrative about reinvention, forgiveness and knowing when to keep the truth to oneself."

There is one solution to their predicament, but it's not one that Emma ever would have chosen freely. She does own another house…or rather, she owns it jointly with her older sister, Juliette, and younger sister, Daphne. There's just one catch (okay, there might be more than one): she hasn't been back to that house since her parents were murdered there 14 years earlier.

At the time, Emma, along with the boy whom people suggested she was seeing at the time, became the primary suspect in the slaying of her parents, who were emotionally abusive to her and her siblings. When she was a teenager and discovered her parents’ bodies and her sisters' very incriminating appearances, Emma was convinced that either Daphne or Juliette had committed the murder. So she took it upon herself to cover up what she assumed was the evidence --- only to have the police's attention turn to her instead. She was never charged with a crime, but she fled Arden Hills as soon as she could. Ever since, she has lost touch not only with other townspeople but with her sisters as well.

Now Emma and Nathan return to a place that remains deeply suspicious. Even more than a decade later, Emma's childhood home is beset by vandals, especially once she and Nathan move in. But, it turns out, neither Daphne nor Juliette (who now goes by JJ) are far away. When new suspicions arise, all three sisters must examine their memories and finally come to terms with what happened all those years ago.

NO ONE CAN KNOW unfolds gradually but suspensefully, with chapters that alternate among the sisters' perspectives and between the past and the present. Readers get glimpses not only into the aftermath of the double murder but also into the months and years of unhappiness leading up to it. It becomes clear that not everyone has the complete story, and even those who knew what happened might not be telling the whole truth. The book’s suspense accumulates slowly, with a new death accelerating the plot somewhat at the story’s midpoint. By the time readers reach the final several chapters, they'll think they've arrived at the answers to all of their questions --- but they're likely still wrong.

At times the intricacy of the storytelling and the many layers of untruths can be disconcerting, but the novel rewards careful readers with a suspenseful narrative about reinvention, forgiveness and knowing when to keep the truth to oneself.