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3.43 AVERAGE
3.43 AVERAGE
The last chapter was disappointing. Kind of a crazy far fetched plot. I'd advise skipping.
I received an ARC of this book from The Reading Room. This is was tense, engaging suspense novel. Rosamund Lupton is an amazing writer and did an incredible job of making you feel like you were there in a dark Alaskan night with Yasmin and Ruby. It kept me guessing until the pursuer of Yasmin and Ruby was revealed. I would have liked a little more closer at the end - maybe a short epilogue to let you know how everything turned out. I highly recommend this book especially if you enjoy a good psychological, suspense novel.
I loved Rosamund Lupton's 2 prior books - Sister and Afterwards. They were both excellent mysteries/drama. I wasn't as enamored with this book, however. It was a good story about the relationship between the mother and daughter and enjoyed reading about the world of deaf people. I didn't feel it had much suspense and what the mother had to do to find her husband was not believable. I would still read her next book but not get it right away - would wait until it was out a while and the price dropped.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Such an interesting concept, and the execution was super creepy, but I hated the way that the ending unfolded
I received The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton from the program, Blogging for Books. I am super excited to publish my review!
Ruby is a 10 year old girl who just happens to be deaf. When her mom Yasmin hears the news that Ruby's father, Matt, might have died in an unfortunate fire in Anaktue in northern Alaska, they both make their way to Fairbanks. Yasmin finds it hard to believe Matt could be dead and she is determined to find him, no matter what it takes.
Yasmin begins asking anyone and everyone she see's if they know of anyway she can get a ride to Anaktue or at least the closest town, Deadhorse. She is finally able to hitch a ride from a kind truck driver, Adeeb Azizi.
They begin making their way across the frozen tundra, when Adeeb suddenly becomes ill and is unable to continue. Yasmin takes it upon herself to continue the journey...driving the truck herself.
With a major storm fast approaching, Yasmin and Ruby have to do all they can to safely (as safe as they can with ice packed roads) get as far as they possibly can before the storm hits. The reader is taken on an adventure with Ruby and Yasmin to find Ruby's father.
I really enjoyed this book. The story kept me hooked from the very beginning and I stayed up far into the night just to see what was going to happen next. Ruby was a wonderful character with a sweet and fun personality. Yasmin was a protective mother, which learned more about her daughter throughout the entire book and eventually began to level with Ruby about things she never thought she would. The whole story gave Yasmin the chance to truly get to know her daughter.
I will say that the writing style was a bit different than what I'm used to. Rosamund Lupton is an English writer and American English does vary from British English. For example, she would use "sat phone" for cell phone and even when she was writing from an American's point of view, she would use sat phone. It bothered me that she did not think about the simple things such as that, while the rest of her story had so much obvious research.
This was a great story of growth, love, passion, and hope. I recommend anyone with a love for their family to read this family's story.
Overall, I rate this book with 4 stars!
Ruby is a 10 year old girl who just happens to be deaf. When her mom Yasmin hears the news that Ruby's father, Matt, might have died in an unfortunate fire in Anaktue in northern Alaska, they both make their way to Fairbanks. Yasmin finds it hard to believe Matt could be dead and she is determined to find him, no matter what it takes.
Yasmin begins asking anyone and everyone she see's if they know of anyway she can get a ride to Anaktue or at least the closest town, Deadhorse. She is finally able to hitch a ride from a kind truck driver, Adeeb Azizi.
They begin making their way across the frozen tundra, when Adeeb suddenly becomes ill and is unable to continue. Yasmin takes it upon herself to continue the journey...driving the truck herself.
With a major storm fast approaching, Yasmin and Ruby have to do all they can to safely (as safe as they can with ice packed roads) get as far as they possibly can before the storm hits. The reader is taken on an adventure with Ruby and Yasmin to find Ruby's father.
I really enjoyed this book. The story kept me hooked from the very beginning and I stayed up far into the night just to see what was going to happen next. Ruby was a wonderful character with a sweet and fun personality. Yasmin was a protective mother, which learned more about her daughter throughout the entire book and eventually began to level with Ruby about things she never thought she would. The whole story gave Yasmin the chance to truly get to know her daughter.
I will say that the writing style was a bit different than what I'm used to. Rosamund Lupton is an English writer and American English does vary from British English. For example, she would use "sat phone" for cell phone and even when she was writing from an American's point of view, she would use sat phone. It bothered me that she did not think about the simple things such as that, while the rest of her story had so much obvious research.
This was a great story of growth, love, passion, and hope. I recommend anyone with a love for their family to read this family's story.
Overall, I rate this book with 4 stars!
Talented novelist takes a bit of a big swing here and whiffs. The idea is pretty good. Astrophysicist Yasmin drags her ten year old daughter Ruby, who is deaf, to Alaska after hearing her husband and Ruby's father Chris, a wildlife photographer, was killed in a fire that took out a small Inupiaq town way the hell up north. Their marriage was on shaky ground under suspicion that Chris fell for an Inupiaq woman. Some instinct tells her that her husband is still alive, so she finagles a ride on a truck to get to this village just as a major storm is blowing in. Circumstances I will not completely reveal leave Yasmin driving the truck herself while being tailed by another rig as she desperately tries to reach her husband who, again, everyone presumes is dead.
This is a tough plot because three quarters of the book is Yasmin and Ruby in a cab of a truck. Lupton tries to break it up by flashing back to Chris and Yasmin's courtship but it is pretty claustrophobic. Not many people can really build tension on this premise, except for maybe Stephen King and possibly Emma Donoghue (who wrote a positive blurb for this book). It's a heavy lift and Lupton doesn't succeed.
The other issue is Ruby's voice. Lupton is trying to get into the mind and mimic the language of a ten year old girl and doesn't quite get there. For example, she overuses slang like Supercoolio
She is on surer ground with the adults. Yasmin feels realer. And she does manage to beautifully describe the Alaskan landscape.
Lupton is a good novelist and you can feel that throughout. She manages to create a solid relationship between Yasmin and Ruby, the main conflict being Yasmin trying to get Ruby to talk and not use a device that she can type her words into and absolutely not use a laptop, which she fears distorts the real world situations that Ruby will find herself in as an adult.
The mystery itself (how did the town get torched and who is trying to stop them from getting there) is fairly predictable to figure out. It is more a framework to hang the characters conflicts and development on.
It is not a bad novel at all. It just feels like a talented writer spinning her wheels.
This is a tough plot because three quarters of the book is Yasmin and Ruby in a cab of a truck. Lupton tries to break it up by flashing back to Chris and Yasmin's courtship but it is pretty claustrophobic. Not many people can really build tension on this premise, except for maybe Stephen King and possibly Emma Donoghue (who wrote a positive blurb for this book). It's a heavy lift and Lupton doesn't succeed.
The other issue is Ruby's voice. Lupton is trying to get into the mind and mimic the language of a ten year old girl and doesn't quite get there. For example, she overuses slang like Supercoolio
She is on surer ground with the adults. Yasmin feels realer. And she does manage to beautifully describe the Alaskan landscape.
Lupton is a good novelist and you can feel that throughout. She manages to create a solid relationship between Yasmin and Ruby, the main conflict being Yasmin trying to get Ruby to talk and not use a device that she can type her words into and absolutely not use a laptop, which she fears distorts the real world situations that Ruby will find herself in as an adult.
The mystery itself (how did the town get torched and who is trying to stop them from getting there) is fairly predictable to figure out. It is more a framework to hang the characters conflicts and development on.
It is not a bad novel at all. It just feels like a talented writer spinning her wheels.
So good, so gripping I stayed up until 2am to finish it. Result: so tired this morning.
Having read and enjoyed Lupton’s previous novels, Sister and Afterwards, I was excited to read her new release. Though the book is suspenseful, I found too much suspension of disbelief is required and that definitely dampened my enjoyment.
Yasmin and her ten-year-old daughter Ruby arrive in Alaska where they plan to meet Matt for Christmas. Matt, Yasmin’s husband and Ruby’s father, is a wildlife filmmaker. When they arrive in Fairbanks, they learn that there was an explosion and fire at Anaktue where Matt was living; everyone was killed. Yasmin is even given Matt’s wedding ring which was found at the scene of the disaster. Yasmin refuses to believe Matt is dead and sets off with Ruby, who was born with total hearing loss, to find him. She commandeers an 18-wheeler and heads north in total darkness, encountering a blizzard with hurricane force winds while being followed by a threatening tanker truck.
There are several unrealistic events. It is unlikely that a wildlife photographer would go north of the Arctic Circle in the middle of winter to take photos when 24 hours of darkness is the norm. Then Yasmin is able to drive an 18-wheel, 40-ton truck with no previous experience other than watching a truck driver: he “navigated around hairpin bends and down hills more like ski runs than a road, Yasmin focusing on the drive axles and the air-actuated clutch and how power flowed to the tires without any differential action, giving each wheel all the torque the road permitted.” It is emphasized that she is an astrophysicist who has some knowledge of “the engineering part of physics,” as if this is supposed to explain her adeptness. At home, she drives “a Toyota Auris, which is quite small” but she manages to drive a truck carrying a pre-fab house hundreds of miles - though putting her foot on the pedal is “a stretch even with the seat as far forward as it would go.” A foot of snow falls in two hours, but between the poor visibility and the blizzard conditions she manages to drive the highest mountain pass in Alaska? Because “she understood the mechanics of driving the truck,” she manages the gear stick with ease, knows when she has to chip ice and snow off the tires, and puts on tire chains with a minimum of difficulty? She knows there is sufficient “diesel to reach Deadhorse” but she doesn’t refuel there and continues on? And a supposedly intelligent woman would take her much-loved daughter on such a dangerous journey?
There are some unanswered questions. What happened to the taxi plane Matt was supposed to take? A survivor in the region of Anaktue would not see a search-and-rescue plane? People would not be aware of 22 fracking wells about 40 miles downriver, even though it takes “five million gallons” of water “to frack a single well”?
The novel is narrated from two perspectives: Yasmin’s in the third person and Ruby’s in first person. It is Ruby’s viewpoint that is interesting. She provides a unique voice. At one point she talks about a 507-year-old mollusk that was discovered; she says, “A Tudor mollusk! Some things are just catch-your-breath amazing.” Unfortunately, Ruby seems very precocious for her age at some times but then she uses such childish slang like “super-coolio” over and over again.
What I enjoyed about the book is Yasmin’s character change. She comes to learn about herself. For instance, she comes to realize that she changed after the birth of her daughter, so much so that “she’d lost the idea of herself” and “had been missing herself as she used to be.” She realizes she is the reason for the distance that has developed with Matt. She also learns more about her daughter. She is constantly asking Ruby to speak using her “mouth-voice” which Ruby does not like doing. Only later does Yasmin understand Ruby’s fear that when she talks, she disappears: “’When I sign or type I see the same words as the person I’m talking to. . . . But if I speak with my mouth, then only the hearing person hears my words. I don’t.’”
There is considerable suspense during the trip along the ice road. In the last quarter of the novel, however, the tension disappears. The tone becomes didactic so the book ceases to be a mystery and becomes an environmental treatise.
The novel succeeds in conveying the oppressive cold and darkness, but there are too many instances of unrealistic plotting. A drop-dead gorgeous astrophysicist becomes an ice road trucker? We can understand her motivation - that she “couldn’t bear for Ruby to suffer the appalling bereavement of losing a parent, the terrible violence of that grief” - but would she really behave so irresponsibly as to put her daughter’s life at risk? I can’t get past the lack of realism, though other readers more able to suspend disbelief will undoubtedly enjoy the suspense.
Note: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
Please check out my reader's blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
Yasmin and her ten-year-old daughter Ruby arrive in Alaska where they plan to meet Matt for Christmas. Matt, Yasmin’s husband and Ruby’s father, is a wildlife filmmaker. When they arrive in Fairbanks, they learn that there was an explosion and fire at Anaktue where Matt was living; everyone was killed. Yasmin is even given Matt’s wedding ring which was found at the scene of the disaster. Yasmin refuses to believe Matt is dead and sets off with Ruby, who was born with total hearing loss, to find him. She commandeers an 18-wheeler and heads north in total darkness, encountering a blizzard with hurricane force winds while being followed by a threatening tanker truck.
There are several unrealistic events. It is unlikely that a wildlife photographer would go north of the Arctic Circle in the middle of winter to take photos when 24 hours of darkness is the norm. Then Yasmin is able to drive an 18-wheel, 40-ton truck with no previous experience other than watching a truck driver: he “navigated around hairpin bends and down hills more like ski runs than a road, Yasmin focusing on the drive axles and the air-actuated clutch and how power flowed to the tires without any differential action, giving each wheel all the torque the road permitted.” It is emphasized that she is an astrophysicist who has some knowledge of “the engineering part of physics,” as if this is supposed to explain her adeptness. At home, she drives “a Toyota Auris, which is quite small” but she manages to drive a truck carrying a pre-fab house hundreds of miles - though putting her foot on the pedal is “a stretch even with the seat as far forward as it would go.” A foot of snow falls in two hours, but between the poor visibility and the blizzard conditions she manages to drive the highest mountain pass in Alaska? Because “she understood the mechanics of driving the truck,” she manages the gear stick with ease, knows when she has to chip ice and snow off the tires, and puts on tire chains with a minimum of difficulty? She knows there is sufficient “diesel to reach Deadhorse” but she doesn’t refuel there and continues on? And a supposedly intelligent woman would take her much-loved daughter on such a dangerous journey?
There are some unanswered questions. What happened to the taxi plane Matt was supposed to take? A survivor in the region of Anaktue would not see a search-and-rescue plane? People would not be aware of 22 fracking wells about 40 miles downriver, even though it takes “five million gallons” of water “to frack a single well”?
The novel is narrated from two perspectives: Yasmin’s in the third person and Ruby’s in first person. It is Ruby’s viewpoint that is interesting. She provides a unique voice. At one point she talks about a 507-year-old mollusk that was discovered; she says, “A Tudor mollusk! Some things are just catch-your-breath amazing.” Unfortunately, Ruby seems very precocious for her age at some times but then she uses such childish slang like “super-coolio” over and over again.
What I enjoyed about the book is Yasmin’s character change. She comes to learn about herself. For instance, she comes to realize that she changed after the birth of her daughter, so much so that “she’d lost the idea of herself” and “had been missing herself as she used to be.” She realizes she is the reason for the distance that has developed with Matt. She also learns more about her daughter. She is constantly asking Ruby to speak using her “mouth-voice” which Ruby does not like doing. Only later does Yasmin understand Ruby’s fear that when she talks, she disappears: “’When I sign or type I see the same words as the person I’m talking to. . . . But if I speak with my mouth, then only the hearing person hears my words. I don’t.’”
There is considerable suspense during the trip along the ice road. In the last quarter of the novel, however, the tension disappears. The tone becomes didactic so the book ceases to be a mystery and becomes an environmental treatise.
The novel succeeds in conveying the oppressive cold and darkness, but there are too many instances of unrealistic plotting. A drop-dead gorgeous astrophysicist becomes an ice road trucker? We can understand her motivation - that she “couldn’t bear for Ruby to suffer the appalling bereavement of losing a parent, the terrible violence of that grief” - but would she really behave so irresponsibly as to put her daughter’s life at risk? I can’t get past the lack of realism, though other readers more able to suspend disbelief will undoubtedly enjoy the suspense.
Note: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
Please check out my reader's blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).