Don't Tell Your Cousin

by Veronica E. Kelly

A tale of a twisted and steamy love triangle involving two cousins and a married man, a grisly love affair full of deceit, mayhem, and shameful women. As the mountain of lies come tumbling down and the drama unfolds, Amanda is forced to hold a mirror to herself and come to terms with a reflection she struggles to accept.

Genres: Drama, Fiction

307 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 3, 2011

About the author

Veronica E. Kelly is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Fiction Writing. She enjoys writing, a craft she describes as "granting her permission to let her imagination run wild."

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always like to read books by young authors, so when this ebook was offered to me by the author, I decided to take it on.

The Good

1. It's an extremely faced paced read.

2. The characters were pretty interesting and I cared about them enough to keep on reading all the way through.


The Bad

1. It wasn't very well edited. This is a major pet peeve of mine especially with ebooks. There were a ton of misspellings, wrong forms of punctuation and grammatical mistakes.

2. There were long strands of dialogue that didn't make a whole lot of sense at times. I thought it would of been better done if there was more expository as well.

3. The drama...OMG! The characters were either fighting, fucking, or shopping, which wasn't very realistic even for chick lit fiction.

All in all, I honestly wanted to like this book more than I did, but I do think it's pretty awesome that Veronica Kelly put it out there (literally), as I'm sure there will be people out there who will enjoy this book more than I did.

[Titi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to read this book because I found out that the author is a young black 20 something woman like myself, who is pursuing her dream of writing. I was excited to read this book and I couldn't wait to give it a good review. Now that I am finished with this book I must admit that it was a page turner, but that was because the events that were taking place in the book were so outlandish that you had to read to the end to see what happened to the characters. The author did not write about the characters in such a way that you got attached to any of them. The main female characters in this book were all annoying in their own way. Amanda was the most annoying of all, but sadly there are many women out there like her. I do like the way that the author made you feel like you were right there in the action, but I did feel like the book was filled with tons of pointless dialouge and not enough description. The biggest thing that jumped out at me was all the grammatical errors. This has got to be my absolute pet peeve when it comes to reading published works. That is what proofreading and an editor is for. I also did not like the way the book ended. With all that said I have to end with, I feel that the author is off to an amazing start. She will only getter better in her writing and I can't wait to see where her next book will take us.

[Natasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one hot mess of lying, sex and betrayal! Just made you think, who can you really trust....really do gotta keep your enemies close. There were a few grammatical errors but not enough to take away from the story. It really did make me sick how the blame seemed to skip over these men but it also made me realize how true to life that is. I hope and pray I don't have anyone like Stephanie, Amanda or Tiffany close to me, cause they certainly had one bad trait in common. If you like drama and messiness you won't be disappointed reading this book.

[☺~Tina~☺ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book rates between a 2 or 3 for me. I gave it a 3 because it did hold my interest and took me only about 5 hours to read. But Amanda didn't learn a thing. I thought for a minute there at the end she had learned her lesson but no, she had to get in one more jab. There was a sex triangle with the cousins but there was no "steamy" love triangle and I kept reading and reading waiting for it to happen. I've read a few urban fiction books so you really have to kick the drama up for me.

[Emma (BelleBooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, a massive thank you to Veronica to giving me a review copy of this book!

This is not a typical read for me, so I didn't really know what to expect at first.

The story centres around two cousins, Amanda and Stephanie. Both their lives seem to be going well, they both have good jobs and their own friends and interests. But this happy little world is blown upside down with the arrival of one man, Mike.

Not only that but Mike is a married man, and the husband of Amanda's boss! As the drama unfolds and the cousins fight over him it soon leaves Amanda with no roof over her head and facing the prospect of living out of her car! Finally reaching rock bottom she realises her actions have consequences are tries to rectify her mistakes, although this remorse is a short lived when her best friend shows up with a certain home made movie to show her.

I did really enjoy this book, I loved the all the drama and girl fights in it! To me, it is a massive step outside my book comfort zone, but I am so glad I read this now.

[Jania · Rating 3 out of 5]

The storyline was pretty good. I would have enjoyed it more if there weren't so many grammatical errors. Would have given 4 stars. Can't take a writer seriously if they can't remember the rules of writing. Isn't grammar a HUGE part of writing?!

FYi its "head over heels" not hills

There =\= their

[Bennita · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a lot of potential, I just think the projection need a little work. There were too many arguments between Tiffany and Amanda. I almost felt like they were enemies instead of best friends. Amanda made so many bad decisions which compounded and ruined her life. Her decisions brought a lot of drama and conflict and boosted the story. Reggie was the only character I liked. Stephanie was self-centered and Tiffany was very immature, all good things when creating tension in a story. The ending was very abrupt and a little awkward but overall, this was a good story.

[Kellee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Climaxed too early and got boring very quickly after that. A lot of errors.

[Dee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book a great deal more than what I did, so I'm pretty disappointed.
The gist of the story is...
Amanda and Stephanie are cousins who live together. Stephanie is dating a married man (Mike) who happens to be the husband of Amanda's boss. Amanda, who is somewhat of a goodie two-shoes, doesn't approve of what Stephanie is doing and voices her opinion to Stephanie in no uncertain terms. Now, this is where things got weird for me. Amanda meets Mike in person and finds herself attracted to him. No big deal. That happens all the time in real life. But, from that point on, Amanda seems to lose her mind and becomes an altogether different person! In a very far fetched sequence of events where Mike's wife, Amanda's boss, pretty much hands her husband over to Amanda on a silver platter, Amanda has sex with Mike in his backseat after knowing him for all of 15 minutes.

The whole set up was totally unbeliveable, but I wasn't too bothered by it at the time. I figured some interesting drama would unfold which would allow me to look past the elements of the story that were bothering me. Unfortunately, that didn't end up being the case IMO. Although, finding out how Stephanie hurt Amanda in the past made Amanda's actions make a little more sense. Even still, none of the characters in this story were very likeable.

I have no respect for women that sleep with married men so I had a hard time empathizing with the main characters. I may have been able to suspend my belief system for the sake of a good book had the wife been more of a witch, but she wasn't. I felt bad for her even though she was a fool too. As for Mike, he was a complete jerk. I kept waiting for him to get what was coming to him, so I was really let down when that didn't happen. It was really disgusting to me how he kept sleeping with all of those women unprotected. Yuck! I couldn't believe it when Amanda slept with him again. Especially after the way he treated her right after the first time.

There were many times throughout the book when I thought "What is wrong with these women?" I know there are women in this world who act like Amanda, Stephanie, and her so called "friend" Tiffany, but I thank God I don't personally know anyone who behaves like them! The book ended abruptly, with no real ending and absolutely no closure. Disappointing.

[LiteraryMarie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two cousins. A married man. A steamy affair. Sound like a twisted love square? It is.

Stephanie and Amanda are cousins living under the same roof. When Amanda sees a picture of her cousin's lover on her boss's desk, she realizes he is a married man and immediately informs her cousin Stephanie. Through a chain of drama-filled events, somehow Amanda ends up involved with the same married man. Hence, the love square. Soon Amanda feels the consequences of her actions.

Have you ever read a book and just wanted to shake the shat out of a character? Well that is how I felt about Amanda. She just didn't get it. I was also disappointed in the ending for a couple reasons. First, Amanda never really learned her lesson. Second, it seemed incomplete leaving me with the impression it was unfinished. Hopefully new author Veronica E. Kelly purposely left it open-ended for a sequel. If you like drama, this is the book for you.

Note: I'd actually rate it a 2.5 but Goodreads doesn't offer half ratings.

[Tasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Betrayal and Loss

This is an easy read about two cousins who love one another and, unfortunately, tend to move in the same circle. When one night of misbehavior by one of the cousins starts a trail of destruction in the lives of those around her, it's impossible to see exactly WHO is the victim?!! Is it Stephanie, who opts to love a married man? Is it Tiffany, who flirted heavily and wanted desperately to add this married man to her growing list of conquests? Is Amanda, who works for the man's wife and had sex with him in a drunken moment of impulse a victim? What about Melanie, the wife, who sends her handsome husband off with two drunk ladies, telling him to take them home, in spite of her prior knowledge of his infidelity? Everyone has a story, and everyone has justification for her own. Will anyone accept responsibility? Is forgiveness and healing to be found?

The answers are all here. This is a pretty good read. It's redundant and drawn out near the end, but the storyline is well done overall.

[Ky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hate that the good guy got played. But I liked this story overall. It was super realistic and the characters were believable. The women went through so much with each other while the dude, Mike, just did whatever the hell he wanted to do. You can't really blame him though. Amanda and Stephanie need to work on themselves and clean up their relationship before getting involved with another man. Tiffany is just a basket case and got a lot of growing up to do. Reggie seemed like a really good guy and I was hoping Amanda came to her senses and worked things out with him. It seems like there's a sequel on the way, so I'm hoping that they patch things up. Show the brother some love, Amanda.

[MsTiptress · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not what I thought it would be. The only thing that kept me from throwing it away and reading it further was because of the back stabbing women Amanda, Stephanie and Tiffany. I seen horrible friendships but these girls are toxic to each other. The story just seemed so one dimensional.Everything revolved around this one incident nothing new happened. Tiffany.. gosh, what can I say about her. I believe I disliked her the most. I struggled to finish this story. I just lost total interest in it...

[Tonya Keitt Kalule · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was definitely a page-turner. It started slow to me, or maybe I just couldn't get into it at first, but when I decided to give it a chance since it was the author's first book, it got a great deal better and I didn't want to put it down. It is definitely a chic book and one that I think many women can relate to.

I read the Kindle version. Good job Veronica and I am looking forward to the next one.

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the entire book! The authors writing contained lots of humor, drama, and suspense. I couldn't put the book down because it kept my interest in wanting to know what would occur next. The author was very consistent with the charaters personailty types. For example, Mike was a jerk thru the entire book! This is a great novel that I believe many of us can relate to on some level. I am looking forward to the sequel!

[Konvik · Rating 5 out of 5]

The women in this book were something else! Amanda and Tiffany must have some really deep issues lurking at the surface. Stephanie for the most part kept it together, but she was no angel. In the end, a dude will only do what you allow him to do. They should've carried themselves like ladies. I liked how realistic this book was, things like this happen often. I heard there was a sequel coming soon. I want to see what happens next.

[Brooklyn Donne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I read a few reviews saying Tiff was the most trifling, but I bet to differ. They all were trifling but Amanda took the cake. She was fine at first then all of a sudden was self centered, rude, bitter, bitchy and jealous. I don't know how Reggie hung on as long as he did!!!!!! I shall read part two...

[Kiesha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meet Amanda and Stephanie who are cousins. Who are in love with the same man. This story is a tangible tale of a love triangle. That is full of drama, deceitfulness, and havoc. I was intrigued by the plot. I couldn’t put the book down. If you enjoy soap operas this is the book for you. I am hoping that there is a sequel to this book.

[Tj · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think that Ms. Kelly is ready! She is a young sharp writer and she knows what the readers are looking for. This is her very first piece (to the public) and yet, only the beginning. As I have been forunate enough to be able to read other writes of Ms. Kelly, all I can say is hold onto your socks because she's prepared to blow them away! Great Job V....

[Alicia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an ok read that I felt had potential. It started out really slow for me, but it did pick up in the middle. The women I felt were just all over the place playing the fool for the same man. Although it went downhill in the end I saw the potential in this author so I won't give up reading her works just yet.

[Charmain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book. Read in two hours. Definitley a page Turner. I know if I was Stephanie I would've left Mike asa alone as soon as I found out he was married. Amanda really played herself out of pocket all around the board...

[Amber Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hope everything works out for Amanda. Can't wait to read the sequel. Thanks for the recommendation Veronica. Congratulations and good luck with all of your future endeavors. I look forward to reading more from you.

[Tstampley · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Don't tell your cousin", was by far one of the most entertaining books I have read in a very long time. I love the drama and lust depicted throught out the book. It is definitely a page turner and I look forward to more great reads by this author.

[Whitney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really entertaining read. These chicks were something else. There was drama on top of drama! Where do I even begin with Tiffany??? Stephanie and Amanda, damn! The things some women do. All I know is, I'm looking forward to part two!

[Debra Odom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining. Easy to read. I expected something spectacular to happen at the end, it didn't. Whoever edited this book did not do a good job: there were a number of errors. All-in-all I enjoyed the book.

[June · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave it two stars simply because it kept my interest enough for me to finish the read and had my blood boiling. I could not believe the antics of these characters. Over the top drama...

[Thelma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't wait for the Sequel to Don't tell Your Cousin!

[Queen Readers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was great can't wait to read part 2

[Varrsity · Rating 2 out of 5]

Readable.

[Kelley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh!! If I had a gun I would've used it on myself. This book was so boring.