Julie's Review: Keep Quiet

Author: Lisa Scottoline
Series: None
Publication Date: April 4, 2014
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Pages: 352
Obtained: purchased
Genre:  Mystery, Contemporary Fiction
Rating: 3.75/5
Bottom Line: Left me wanting a different outcome
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Library

Summary: Jake Whitmore is enjoying a rare bonding moment with his sixteen-year-old son, Kurt, when disaster strikes. They get in a terrible car accident that threatens to derail not only Kurts chances at college, but his entire future. Jake makes a split-second decision that saves his son from formal punishment, but plunges them both into a world of guilt, lies, and secrecy. Just when Jake thinks he has everything under control, a malevolent outsider comes forward with the power to expose Jakes secret and taunts him to the breaking point. Lisa Scottoline's Keep Quiet is the powerful and gut-wrenching tale of the unraveling—and the ultimate redemption of a family.

Review I've read Ms. Scottoline for a very long time and this is the first time I have set one of her books down and felt disappointed. I was hoping for a totally different outcome than the one give. I was hoping for it to be more of a moral lesson and a moral questioning. Did it make me think what I would do in the exact situation, yes of course. As with many of these morality situations, you never know until you are truly in that situation.

What also didn't help is that I didn't like any of the characters. I felt that Jake was too earnest in his need to gain his son's affection. Should he have let Ryan drive? Maybe not but who could have thought that the outcome of that decision would be what happened. As for Pam, dear lord was she a helicopter mom. She wanted to be Ryan's best friend and his mom. She had his whole schedule memorized and circled over him daily. I was surprised she wanted Jake invovled in his life at all.

I kept waiting for something more to happen. Things happened but not at a pace I would expect with this kind of book. The resolution made me mad. I thought, "that's it". What's the moral of the story? What are the consequences? For me, they seemed too light. Once the situation was resolved, their lives went seemingly back to normal. Did they change? Yes, they did but not like they could have if it had been written another way.

All that being said, it did keep me guessing what the twist was going to be and Ms. Scottoline does a great job of showing the emotions of the situation. You knew it was going to come to a head but you didn't know when or how.





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