How Quickly Life Can Change When You Keep Quiet
Keep Quiet is a fictional novel full of suspense written by Lisa Scottoline. She is the author of twenty-two novels and has won several awards across the United States for her writing. Her work has not only been published in the United States, but also in thirty-five other countries. Her main area of interest with writing is drama or thrillers. Some of her novels have even been considered for movies and television series.
Lisa Scottoline’s thriller, Keep Quiet is about a father, Jake Buckman, and his son, sixteen-year-old Ryan Buckman, whose lives forever change after two words, “keep quiet.” One night, Jake decides to pick up his son from the movie theater in hopes to further their not so close relationship, but little did he know that on this ride home, he would have to make one of the biggest and fastest decisions of their lives. Jake must choose between living with guilt and lies, and sending Ryan’s entire future down the drain. This unbearable secret begins to put their family, future, and lives at risk. Jake and his wife Pam both question what it means to be a parent and how far you can go to protect your child.
Although it was an easy read, this novel’s audience is directed toward adults. It is very suspenseful, almost scary, and written in a way that really draws the reader in. Some of the content I would not recommend to those under the age of fifteen or sixteen. It is very descriptive, making the reader feel as if they are there and experiencing what is happening to the characters. While reading it, I would feel what they were feeling and would get scared or nervous for them. It is a very scary situation that they are placed in and it could happen to anyone. I think what makes it feel so real is that the beginning of the book sets up the family as very normal people whom you would not expect such tragic to happen to. The reader is shown that terrible things can happen to anyone in the blink of an eye.
One shortcoming that I did notice in this book was the fact that the story is only told from or in the perspective of the main characters that are keeping the secret. It is hard not to empathize for the family even though what they are doing may be seriously wrong. It is almost as if the author is trying to prove that the family did the right thing in keeping this awful secret. Even still, I think it works with the plot because the reader is able to see how distraught the Buckman’s are after making this decision, what they are going through, and how they overcome it.
Keep Quiet was very well written and it showed that the plot was organized and planned out. I was unable to put it down because I was so interested in finding out what would happen next. There were several plot twists and it was not predictable like other romance or mystery novels. I highly recommend this book to other readers.