Game of Secrets by Dawn Tripp

From Goodreads: Jane Weld was eleven years old when her father, Luce, disappeared in 1957. His skiff was found drifting near a marsh, empty except for his hunting coat and a box of shotgun shells. No one in their small New England town knew for sure what happened until, three years later, Luce’s skull rolled out of a gravel pit, a bullet hole in the temple. Rumors sprang up that he had been murdered by the jealous husband of his mistress, Ada Varick. 
 
Now, half a century later, Jane is still searching for the truth of her father’s death, a mystery made more urgent by the unexpected romance that her willful daughter, Marne, has struck up with one of Ada’s sons. As the love affair intensifies, Jane and Ada meet for their weekly Friday game of Scrabble, a pastime that soon transforms into a cat-and-mouse game of words long left unspoken, and dark secrets best left untold.

Game of Secrets is a compelling read with powerful characters that will keep you up late burning the midnight oil to unravel what really happened. Told over time over Jane and Ray's weekly scrabble games, the past begins to unfold so Jane can learn what really happened to her father all of those years ago.

There is a lot going on in this small book! You almost have to have an index card to keep track of the relationships, but if you can - then it's a definite home-run.  Tightly plotted with dark secrets slowly unraveled and remarkable characters will keep you thoroughly absorbed an afternoon.  

Winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, Dawn Tripp's fiction has earned praise from critics for her "thrilling" storytelling (People Magazine), her "haunting, ethereal" prose (Booklist), and her "marvelous characters" (Orlando Sentinel). She is the author of the novels, Moon Tide, The Season of Open Water, and Game of Secrets, a Boston Globebestseller. Her essays have appeared on NPR and online at Psychology Today. She teaches workshops on structuring the arc of a novel out of fragments of fact and fiction. Shegraduated from Harvard College and lives in Massachusetts with her husband, sons, and 80-pound German Shepherd.  http://www.dawntripp.com

*I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.