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A review by scarlettg12
She Was the Quiet One by Michele Campbell
4.0
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC of this book! Release date - July 31, 2018
I actually liked this one a good bit more than I was expecting! I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting, but something about the cover made me feel like I was just going to feel average towards this one. But the writing style was great, the mystery kept me reading, and the characters felt realistic and I actually cared what happened to them.
The writing style and storytelling reminded me a lot of [a:Liane Moriarty|322069|Liane Moriarty|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1459827224p2/322069.jpg]. We are told at the very beginning that at a boarding school (that reminded me a lot of Chilton from Gilmore Girls), one twin is dead and the other is the prime suspect in her murder, although she claims she is innocent. But we aren't told which one is which. Then through both narrative and flash-forward interviews with the police, the story leading up to this tragic event is revealed.
I really liked this storytelling concept, because it kept me reading to find out whether Bel or Rose is the one dead. The twins really don't get along, and throughout both make threats toward the other, making you wonder if one twin really did kill the other. And once it is revealed who is dead and what events led up to her murder, I didn't want to put the book down.
If I have one complaint it's that for most of the first half of the book, we are kept in the dark about almost everything, who is dead, how it happened, the circumstances surrounding the murder. But then we get to part 2, when it is revealed who died, and then from that point on we are told basically everything. The number one suspect is then practically innocent in the reader's eyes because we know all the details, who the victim was meeting, the circumstances leading up to her death, what the supposed murderer did afterwards, so that the reader knows more than any other character - including the police, the suspect, and all the other characters except the victim and the murderer. I would have preferred a little more to be withheld until the end, a little more, hm I wonder if it was this person or this person who was the murderer. I would have liked to be kept in suspense along with the characters. There aren't any twists past part 2, except a little bit in the epilogue that was interesting but didn't have much to do with the storyline as a whole.
Overall though, this really didn't dampen my enjoyment and I'll just chalk it up to a different storytelling choice than I'm used to in these types of books. I really did still enjoy the second half despite the lack of mystery just to see how all the events would play out.
I'm definitely glad I gave this book a try and was pleasantly surprised by it! I'd like to check out other books by Michele Campbell for sure.
I actually liked this one a good bit more than I was expecting! I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting, but something about the cover made me feel like I was just going to feel average towards this one. But the writing style was great, the mystery kept me reading, and the characters felt realistic and I actually cared what happened to them.
The writing style and storytelling reminded me a lot of [a:Liane Moriarty|322069|Liane Moriarty|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1459827224p2/322069.jpg]. We are told at the very beginning that at a boarding school (that reminded me a lot of Chilton from Gilmore Girls), one twin is dead and the other is the prime suspect in her murder, although she claims she is innocent. But we aren't told which one is which. Then through both narrative and flash-forward interviews with the police, the story leading up to this tragic event is revealed.
I really liked this storytelling concept, because it kept me reading to find out whether Bel or Rose is the one dead. The twins really don't get along, and throughout both make threats toward the other, making you wonder if one twin really did kill the other. And once it is revealed who is dead and what events led up to her murder, I didn't want to put the book down.
If I have one complaint it's that for most of the first half of the book, we are kept in the dark about almost everything, who is dead, how it happened, the circumstances surrounding the murder. But then we get to part 2, when it is revealed who died, and then from that point on we are told basically everything. The number one suspect is then practically innocent in the reader's eyes because we know all the details, who the victim was meeting, the circumstances leading up to her death, what the supposed murderer did afterwards, so that the reader knows more than any other character - including the police, the suspect, and all the other characters except the victim and the murderer. I would have preferred a little more to be withheld until the end, a little more, hm I wonder if it was this person or this person who was the murderer. I would have liked to be kept in suspense along with the characters. There aren't any twists past part 2, except a little bit in the epilogue that was interesting but didn't have much to do with the storyline as a whole.
Overall though, this really didn't dampen my enjoyment and I'll just chalk it up to a different storytelling choice than I'm used to in these types of books. I really did still enjoy the second half despite the lack of mystery just to see how all the events would play out.
I'm definitely glad I gave this book a try and was pleasantly surprised by it! I'd like to check out other books by Michele Campbell for sure.