As is the case with most thriller/suspense novels that I read, my review will be relatively short, since I believe it's always best to go into these types of books knowing as little as possible. I will admit that I was a little put off at first from reading this book, as I read in the summary that the story revolves around a murder mystery at a boarding school and quite honestly, this past year, I had already read more than 1 book with this same setup. However, I decided to give it a go and am glad I did, as this one turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Most books with this type of theme usually have a narrative that focuses primarily on the students at the school and the various trouble they get into, with the teachers and/or faculty usually only briefly mentioned as side characters -- this one was different in that two of the central characters the narrative revolved around were actually teachers at the school and their roles in advancing the plot were equally as important as the students. With that said though, I didn't particularly like any of the characters and actually found myself getting increasingly frustrated with some of them as the story moved along, but that didn't prevent me from enjoying the overall story, which was quite compellingly written. The narrative format, alternating between the viewpoints of various characters interspersed with witness testimony from the police interrogation, actually worked really well in this instance – I liked that the testimony was worked cleverly into the plot in a way that helped build up suspense but without giving anything away.
Overall, I enjoyed this one, as the story was engaging and kept me turning the pages, despite the fact that I had already figured out most of the "mystery" early on. Perhaps I am getting better at figuring these things out now, but I felt that, while it definitely had its suspenseful moments, this was not the type of story that was filled with so many twists and turns that it ended up feeling like a roller coaster ride. The only real twist was in the Epilogue, which I thought was cleverly done in that it was unexpected, though not necessarily shocking. My only real complaint is the ending, which felt a bit rushed to me and was also a little too predictable, to the point of feeling anti-climactic, but luckily it didn't detract too much from the rest of the story, at least not for me.
She Was the Quiet One is the second suspense / thriller attempt by new author Michele Campbell. I haven't yet read her first book It's Always the Husband, which came out last year, but I have that one on my TBR and do intend to read it one of these days. While I can't comment on how Campbell's sophomore effort measures up to her first, I will say that this one was encouraging enough to get me interested in reading more from this author.
Received ARC from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley
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