Synopsis:
From bestselling author S. T. Ashman comes a thriller about a mother who refuses to let her daughter take the fall for a crime that doesn’t make sense… even if the truth is worse than prison.
She survived the night. The truth didn’t.
Nicole gets the call at 4 a.m. Her daughter Lacey was found in the woods beside her friend’s dead husband. He was stabbed forty-four times. Lacey is barely alive. Covered in his blood. And completely mute.
She hasn’t said a word since. Not to the police. Not to her husband. Not even to Nicole.
Nicole had Lacey at seventeen and swore her daughter would have a good life. Now Lacey is sitting in a cell, and Nicole’s three grandchildren are left behind with a father who is losing it.
But Nicole knows her daughter. She isn’t a cold-blooded murderer. Guilt didn’t silence her. Fear did. Whatever happened in those woods scared Lacey more than prison.
So Nicole starts digging. But some secrets don’t save people. They destroy them.
Trigger Warnings: Please contact author for trigger/content warning list.
Shop The Book: Her Silence
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This book was so clever. I wish I could go back and read it again even though I just finished it. The character development, the plot twists, the secrets, the fear, the suspense, it was all so completely captivating. I could not stop thinking about this book and its characters.
If someone you loved was accused of something unthinkable and could not speak to defend themselves, would you believe them, or would the silence itself make you doubt?
The Story
Nicole gets the call at 4 a.m. Her daughter Lacey was found in the woods beside her friend’s dead husband. He was stabbed forty-four times. Lacey is barely alive, covered in his blood, and completely mute. She has not said a word since. Not to the police, not to her husband, not even to Nicole. Nicole had Lacey at seventeen and swore her daughter would have a good life. Now Lacey sits in a cell and Nicole’s grandchildren are left with a father who is losing it. But Nicole knows her daughter. She is not a cold-blooded murderer. Guilt did not silence her. Fear did. So Nicole starts digging. But some secrets do not save people. They destroy them.
Reading Experience
This was such a unique reading experience. There are a couple of different POVs, but the majority of the book is told from Nicole’s perspective, Lacey’s mother. In the beginning we hear briefly from Lacey herself before the traumatizing event that left her silent. After that, we don’t hear from her again as she has been traumatized into silence. It is genuinely unsettling watching everything happen to her and around her without ever getting her story, her thoughts, or a chance for her to fight for herself. As readers we just have to assume things, take secondhand accounts on faith, decide for ourselves who to believe and who to suspect. Every single moment of this book is unreliable because the only person who truly knows what happened is Lacey, and we can’t hear from her.
Writing Style
What stood out most to me is that we experience everything that happened to Lacey without ever experiencing it from her own perspective. We get everyone else’s secondhand interactions and opinions about her instead. It is such a unique way to structure a story, one where readers have nothing solid to build an opinion on, just hearsay and gut feelings and whichever characters you find yourself trusting most. It genuinely messes with your mind a little. I wanted so badly to root for Lacey, to believe she was completely innocent, to root for Nicole and for this family not to be torn apart by this murder. But there was always this nagging thought in the back of my mind. We do not actually know what happened. Lacey has not spoken since that night. We do not know for certain whether she is innocent or guilty. We just have to guess, which puts the reader in the seat similar to that of a jury.
Characters
Lacey is our main character, though we only ever come to know her through the people who love her. She experiences this traumatic event, is found covered in blood beside her murdered friend, and becomes so traumatized she is left mute. Everything we learn about her comes filtered through her family’s relationships with her. A loving, nurturing mother. A doting, loyal wife. A daughter with a close bond to her own mother.
Nicole is Lacey’s mother and she will do anything for her only daughter. She knows her daughter’s heart completely and she knows Lacey would never have anything to do with this murder. Watching her fight through heartbreak, through a traumatized daughter who cannot speak, through a judicial system treating her cruelly, is where the strength and ferocity of a mother’s love comes fully alive on the page. As a mother myself, I resonated with every bit of it.
And then there is Dylan, Lacey’s teenage son, who was my absolute favorite character in this book. He has every reason in the world to spiral. His mother has essentially been lost to him, sitting with a blank stare, no longer speaking or reacting to anything. His family is being dragged through the mud, scorned by neighbors, chased by reporters on their front lawn. His father, Lacey’s husband, cannot handle any of it and turns to alcohol and infidelity instead of showing up for his kids. Dylan had every opportunity to become a self-centered, angsty, broken teenager. He does not. His character is strong and moral and brave, and he only grows stronger as the story goes on. I was so impressed with how the author wrote him. He holds this family together, takes care of his younger siblings, supports his grandmother, and becomes the calm, steady rock in the middle of complete chaos. I loved him for it.
Heartbeat
The heartbeat of this story is family and relationships, and how far a mother is willing to go for her child, how far a child is willing to go for his mother or grandmother, and how deep those bonds can run. When you have a deeply connected, deeply bonded family, that foundation can feel unshakable no matter what they are put through. Every single moment of this book was horrendous and heartbreaking and sometimes genuinely hard to read, but having that underlying thread of family showing up for family the whole way through was a really comforting heartbeat underneath all the darkness.
Final Thoughts
This is a very gritty and very raw story, with real depictions of abuse and some graphic content. The author has said to contact her directly for the full trigger and content warning list, and there absolutely are things to be aware of going in. I would recommend this book to readers who can stomach the dark realities of trauma, both physical and emotional, that truly do happen to people, in exchange for a genuinely cleverly written thriller.
ARC provided via Books and Bloom PR. All thoughts are my own.
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S. T. Ashman is an American-German writer born in Germany, calling the beautiful U.S. Seacoast her home. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and worked in the criminal justice system as a psychotherapist. That role gifted her with unique insight into the human psyche, both the beautiful and the deeply shadowed. In another life, she’d be a trench coat-wearing, mystery-solving female version of Columbo. A history and crime documentary lover to the core, she weaves mystery and history into action-packed fiction that keeps readers turning pages late into the night. While she explores different genres, her books have one thing in common: people are always shocked by the twists.
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