ComingSoon is debuting an exclusive first-look excerpt from Seven for a Secret, Disney-Hyperion’s upcoming YA mystery thriller novel from Mary E. Roach.
What is Secret for a Seven about?
Seven for a Secret comes from fan-favorite author Mary E. Roach and follows the story of the mysterious disappearance of eight girls from Sister’s Place, a group home in Avan Island, Maryland.
“Nev is the girl who returned. The girl who survived. She’s done her best to leave what happened in the forest on Avan Island behind her, but now, five years later, the men in charge of Sister’s Place, the men who brushed the missing girls off as ‘runaways,’ are turning up dead. And Nev realizes that confronting the town that was all too happy to forget her may be her only chance to get answers about what happened to her sisters,” says the official description.
“As Nev is pulled deeper into Avan’s secrets—and as more bodies pile up—she must unravel the mysteries locked in her own mind as she hunts down a killer who is willing to do anything to make sure the past stays buried. Lost sisters, female rage, and the determination to survive drive Nev on her propulsive journey to find answers and peace—and maybe revenge.”
Roach is a former early childhood teacher who now writes across genres and age categories, most recently thrillers for the young adult audience and romances for the adult audience. Her debut YA mystery, Better Left Buried, is out now.
Seven for a Secret will be available for sale starting September 30, 2025. Check out an exclusive excerpt from the book below:
Roan stares at me with a mixture of concern and—something else, something I can’t read. She nods at the other reporter, a man wearing a Johnstown Tribune press badge, and he steps back, giving us some space. She picks her phone up again, brushing dust from the screen protector, before she hangs up with whoever she was talking to.
“Nev.”
“I came to pay my respects,” I add, when she doesn’t say anything more than that. Just my name.
Roan releases a soft sigh, something weary, as if she is used to this from me, even after five years of not knowing the person I became. “Are you okay?”
“Great.”
We stare at each other for a long moment.
“They’re sending me to Avan Island,” Roan says after a long beat.“I . . . I write stories like this one now. For a newspaper. I’m, uh, a journalist?”
This isn’t news to me, of course. I watched her graduate college on Instagram and post the few-and-far-between pictures of herself, those haunting dark eyes staring back at me, never quite smiling, in every picture of her.
“Stories like this one,” I repeat. “A dead man is worth a story?”
Roan shifts slightly. “My boss saw the news and assigned me this story. But I suggested there might be more to explore—a connection. Because Charles was the one who investigated—five years ago. Everything that happened.”
She doesn’t say runaways.
Even now, even after nobody listened to us five years ago, Roan doesn’t call us runaways.
“Why?” I blurt. It’s not that I don’t think Roan’s a good journalist; of course she is. But she has to be the most junior reporter, even in her small independent company, unless—
“Avan only speaks to its own,” Roan says. “You know that. Johnstown Tribune is sending someone, but they don’t have anyone on staff from Avan, so the reporter they’re sending—Merrick, he’s a friend of mine—asked if we can do some collaboration on this story.”
I stiffen. “Is he going to dig into what happened five years ago, too?” I ask.
Roan shakes her head. “No, he’s going because he—and his boss— thinks there’s something to this. But, Nev, why now? Why are you really here?”
“I wanted to understand,” I answer finally. I don’t know how to explain more than that—how to say the words churning in my gut.
The names. The girls. The loss.
The boy who started all of it.
“I wanted to see Chuck.”
“Nev, you don’t need . . . you don’t need to see the body. You can’t be serious.”
“Dead serious,” I tell her. “Dead as good ol’ Chuck.”
“And did they let you go down there? To see him?” She shakes her head with disbelief. “They wouldn’t even let me, and I’m a whole adult.”She’s not that much of an adult, though, at only twenty-two, fresh- faced enough that she must still get carded anywhere she goes, even if I can see the weary look behind her eyes.
“You’re press,” I say. “I just told them I wanted to say goodbye to a friend.”
Roan sighs. “Nev, I don’t know what you’re playing at, but you need to go back home, okay? You’ve seen enough. You’re not part of this.”
You’re not part of this.
But I am. I am. I am.
I want to tear at my hair, but it is too short now, too short to be grabbed and dragged, too short for me to have something to tear at now.I am a part of this.
So was the man on the table.“Chuck,” I say, just as Dr. Goodwin pushes open the front door and exits, still in his lab coat. “Chuck was part of this.”
“Roan.” Dr. Goodwin nods to her. “What are you doing hanging around this case? I would have thought you’d had your fill of Avan Island, after all those runaways.”
How many times can he say runaway in a single morning?
I turn away from him. “Chuck,” I repeat.
“Excuse me?” Roan says finally, weariness heavy in her voice. “That was his name,” I say. “Chuck.”“Charles,” Dr. Goodwin corrects. “Charles Aisley.”
No.
Charles Aisley was the only detective in town, served on the board of the Hunting and Fishing League and on the board of the group home. Charles Aisley was an elder in the church, too. The church, because it was the sort of small town that only had one.The memories come and go without a shred of context. I have his face, or what it looked like before it was purpled and bloated by the river, his voice, a vivid flash of him sitting at the table with the other board members on Avan Island. The rest of the memories are disconnected from each other, floating in and out. Charles Aisley was only one of many faces in the dark.
But now he is not Charles Aisley.
Now he is Chuck, a corpse on a table, a question mark, a body, an object, a nothing.
