Friday, August 22, 2014

Keep Quiet by Lisa Scottoline

Keep Quiet

Overview

New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award winning author Lisa Scottoline is loved by millions of readers for her suspenseful novels about family and justice. Scottoline delivers once again with Keep Quiet, an emotionally gripping and complex story about one man’s split-second decision to protect his son - and the devastating consequences that follow.

Jake Buckman’s relationship with his sixteen-year-old son Ryan is not an easy one, so at the urging of his loving wife, Pam, Jake goes alone to pick up Ryan at their suburban movie theater.  On the way home, Ryan asks to drive on a deserted road, and Jake sees it as a chance to make a connection. However, what starts as a father-son bonding opportunity instantly turns into a nightmare. Tragedy strikes, and with Ryan’s entire future hanging in the balance, Jake is forced to make a split-second decision that plunges them both into a world of guilt and lies. Without ever meaning to, Jake and Ryan find themselves living under the crushing weight of their secret, which threatens to tear their family to shreds and ruin them all.

Powerful and dramatic, Keep Quiet will have readers and book clubs debating what it means to be a parent and how far you can, and should, go to protect those you love.

My thoughts:
I got frustrated with this book right from the beginning, I can't imagine having made the decision Jake made in an attempt to protect his son from the repercussions of the event that took place.  Since the big issue happens very close to the beginning of the book, I had a hard time liking Jake's character.  I understand the desire to protect a child, any parent does, but at the same time we also need to teach them right and wrong and in hiding the incident I don't think Jake did a good job at all with that aspect of parenting.  It did show how one decision can have far reaching repercussions in your life and in the life of others.

Beyond my frustration with the decision and the hiding that was done afterwards, I enjoyed the rest of the story, as more details emerged about the relationships in the Buckman family, in Ryan's life at school and in the community.  The interweaving webs were well done and the way it was brought back into everyone's lives.  Still, if the truth had been told from the beginning much of the deceit and suffering could have been avoided.


Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781250010094
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • Publication date: 4/8/2014
  • Pages: 352

Meet the Author

Lisa Scottoline
LISA SCOTTOLINE is a New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of twenty-one novels.  She has 30 million copies of her books in print in the United States, and has been published in 35 countries. She has served as President of Mystery Writers of America, and her thrillers have been optioned for television and film. She also writes is a weekly humor column with her daughter, Francesca Serritella, for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and those critically acclaimed stories have been adapted into a series of memoirs, the first of which is entitled Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog. She lives in the Philadelphia area with an array of disobedient pets.

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