{"id":434,"date":"2022-07-16T11:34:58","date_gmt":"2022-07-16T15:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/samiamreadingandreviewing.wordpress.com\/?p=434"},"modified":"2025-06-24T21:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T21:03:08","slug":"our-little-life-dodie-bishop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/?p=434","title":{"rendered":"Our Little Life – Dodie Bishop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I said in my review of The Other Side of Silence<\/em> (the first in the Silence and Shadows<\/em>, see review here<\/a>) that I\u2019d like to see a series stem from the book, and Bishop has fulfilled my wish! Great excitement was had when I saw Our Little Life<\/em> available for review on BookSirens. I have to say, I wasn\u2019t sure where Bishop could go after the dramatic events of the first novel, but luckily she has more imagination than I! I loved<\/em><\/strong> this book, found it a great addition to the series, and happily give it five out of five stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susannah and Raphael are newly married and are enjoying their honeymoon period, living with Penny who now has full knowledge of her parentage. However, their happiness is shortly shattered as, a few months later, Penny is kidnapped and exported as human cargo. Devastated and distraught, Raphael and Susannah follow Penny\u2019s trail to Jamaica, where they reunite with Sam, Noah, and Hal, who are more than willing to help with the search. As the months pass with no word, tensions and depression mount, but no one gives up. Finally, they hear that Penny has been purchased by a Sugar Baron as a daughter. With their objective in sight, things turn threatening, and the group finds that there might be more to Penny\u2019s kidnapping than they originally thought.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dodie Bishop is an author to watch<\/strong>!! This only seems to be her third book (unless she writes under a different nom de plume), yet she sounds so experienced. I find the Silence and Shadows<\/em> series the total package: romance, check; suspense, check; twists, check; likable characters, check! If you\u2019ve ever read anything of Tracy Grant (Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch series), I find Bishop\u2019s writing similar in that a distinct (and difficult) balance is struck between the tension of the novel and the sentimentality of the characters. I find that Bishop adds a little more explicit romance to her books, which I never complain about.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with The Other Side of Silence<\/em>, I loved this book. I really enjoyed the character development of Susannah, Raphael, Noah, Sam, and Hal. Each had a part to play in this novel and each had a learning and growth experience. It was a tense book for the characters, but they worked together well towards their goal of finding Penny. There were bonding moments between the mystery, drama, and romance, and the introduction of a couple of new characters. Bishop winds it all together so seamlessly and produces an excellent book.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure what else I can add to this review, other than that you should definitely try The Other Side of Silence <\/em>if you want to get into this series. You could read Our Little Life<\/em> on its own, but I think it\u2019s worth reading how Susannah and Raphael met and how much Susannah has transformed since the first book. It\u2019s also an excellent story, so you won\u2019t be losing anything! It\u2019s a rare day when I give a five-star rating, and the fact that both Bishop\u2019s Silence and Shadows<\/em> series have them means that if you\u2019re in the market for a mystery-thriller-romance, you won\u2019t want to pass it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I said in my review of The Other Side of Silence (the first in the Silence and Shadows, see review here) that I\u2019d like to see a series stem from the book, and Bishop has fulfilled my wish! Great excitement was had when I saw Our Little Life available for review on BookSirens. I haveContinue reading “Our Little Life – Dodie Bishop”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":436,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[48,52,53,57,105,165,169,172,173,192,297,298,336,344,352],"class_list":["post-434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-blog","tag-book-review","tag-book-review-blog","tag-booksirens","tag-dodie-bishop","tag-historical-mystery","tag-historical-romance","tag-historical-thriller","tag-historical-thriller-romance","tag-jamaica","tag-next-chapter","tag-next-chapter-publishing","tag-recommended-reading","tag-review","tag-romantic-suspense","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/our-little-life.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":623,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions\/623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}