Relative Silence
by Carrie Stuart Parks
read by Piper Jones

My rating: 1.5 / 5
Genre: Christian suspense

After surviving a public shooting thanks to the actions of a stranger, Piper Boone’s life starts to get even more complicated as a neighbor goes missing, family secrets are unearthed, and a past tragedy comes back to haunt her. Tucker Landry, the man who saved Piper’s life, is recovering from his own injury during the shooting and can’t help but want to do his own investigating into the shooter, Piper’s past tragedy, and other family secrets that seem to all be connected in some way.

So much of this book fell short for me, left me confused and questioning, or even flat-out bugged me. Some things happened or were mentioned that seemed to be clues to the mystery but turned out to be red herrings; this is fine for a mystery or suspense novel, but some of these red herrings were never given an alternate explanation, even things that were frankly pretty big deals. So while red herrings are common and expected, red herrings that leave major loose ends dangling just smack of lazy writing.

Piper is a character I could not connect with; she’s so naive, even to the point of being obtuse. Tucker’s backstory is compelling, and I appreciated what he brings to the book. I would have liked for the mysterious Clan Firinn he works for to be expanded on, but instead, we get this weird thing about stones that is never explained and literally left me at the end of the book saying (out loud), “Wha? Huh?” A little research tells me that Clan Firinn is involved in other books by Parks, but it appears to be as enigmatic and meagerly used in those books as here. Considering how I felt about this book, this does not lead me to want to read any of those other books to learn more about the organization. I also didn’t care for Piper’s views about God that were never really clarified or corrected.

There are several details from the story that lessened my enjoyment, but I’m not going to list them all. I’ll just end by saying that I do not care for the 1st person/3rd person narration style employed here (1st person for Piper’s POV parts, 3rd person for Tucker’s), as it is always jarring to me. And the audiobook narrator is one of the worst I’ve heard. All of this together makes this a book I really can’t recommend to anyone.

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