Although I receive most of my ARC titles from NetGalley, I also belong to another review site called BookSirens, which I often forget to look at. I found The Other Side of Silence by Dodie Bishop on BookSirens, and am so glad I did. I ended up really enjoying this novel and was surprised at how much I wanted to keep reading it. All in all, I give this book four and a half out of five stars and definitely recommend it as a romance and mystery. As a standalone book, The Other Side of Silence was the whole package for me.
Susannah Gresham, a renowned portraitist, has only recently arrived back at King Charles II’s court after an extended absence, during which she’s lost her ability to speak. She can’t even talk to her father, which pains her deeply as she’s spent the past three years communicating with him through a notepad. She wants to speak, but seems to be locked inside of herself and can only talk to her oldest friend, Sam. However, she’s forced to speak to famous jeweler Raphael Rossi, a friend of Sam’s, when Sam is arrested for murder and put in the Tower of London. While Sam has an alibi for the night of the murder, it’s impossible for him to reveal, so Susannah and Raphael must find the real killer before Sam is sentenced to a traitor’s death.
Honestly, I was not expecting much from this novel and, boy, was I wrong!! I thought the writing was excellent, the mystery well-done, the plot twists surprising, and the romance very fulfilling. The story was told from three different perspectives: Raphael’s, Susannah’s, and Noah’s (Noah being a shipping merchant who also has connections to Sam and eager to see him freed). I thought that all three voices were distinct and Bishop did a good job of manipulating the different perspectives to round out the plot.
For a mysterious romance novel – I am loath to call it a romantic mystery because I feel it is a 50-50 split – the mystery was well-rounded and matched the romantic aspect toe-for-toe. The three different perspectives throughout the book helped to make the mystery more concise as readers learned different information from each character and we didn’t have to read a ton of speculation. This isn’t a dig at speculation, I like it as much as the next person, but sometimes it can bog down a standalone novel. I found that this book moved along fantastically, which was a very pleasant surprise and made for really good reading.
I can’t talk about the plot twists without giving them away, but trust me in saying that they are excellent!
Oh, the romance in this novel was awesome. It was a little dirty (not overly much, but enough to know exactly what was going where), which I was totally into. I found Raphael to be a believable character, and I liked him for his flaws as well as his strengths. I was half-ready to marry him by the end! Susannah really emerged out of her shell with Raphael, and it was great to see. She was a fairly complex character, too, and her anxieties about her speech and herself were slowly melted away, revealing a tender person underneath. It was really heartwarming to see how the connection grew between her and Raphael. Sam also had a romance going on, which was engaging as well, but I can’t spoil it for you!
As a side note, I found all of the main characters in this novel to be really well-rounded and to have sets of fictionally believable characteristics. Bishop creates a cast of characters that are probably typical for their time but have enough of a background to make them interesting. She doesn’t focus a lot on the setting; the characters are the focus of this novel.
All in all, it’s been a long time since I’ve been this pumped about a book. I think a good portion came from underestimating it, which I highly encourage you not to do. As I was getting towards the end, I kept not wanting to get to the end! The Other Side of Silence is excellent as a standalone novel, but I hope that Bishop will consider making it the beginning of a series…maybe not one with Susannah and Raphael as the serial characters, but one that involves friends/neighbors/relatives/etc of the couple so readers can still keep tabs on them. I found that I got attached to all of the characters and would like to know that they’re doing alright. Have you read this novel? Did you like it as much as I did? Let me know in the comments!
**I didn’t find a website for Dodie Bishop, but she does have another book on BookSirens called Still Life. I don’t think I will read it because it’s classified as having a sad/bittersweet ending which I am just not into. But, if you do read or have read it, let me know your thoughts!