A review by meloches
The Longest Silence by Debra Webb

3.0

The Longest Silence, a romantic suspense by Debra Webb, is the fourth novel in the Shades of Death series. I was initially a little bit worried that I would have trouble picking up the novel at the fourth in the series but was pleasantly surprised to find out that they all read as standalone! YAY!

This book was absolutely darker than some of the other romantic suspense novels I have read and I really appreciated that. Essentially, the novel follows Jo, who was abducted as a college student and later returned to her campus, battered and beaten. She has never spoke of the events that happened in the fourteen days she was held captive and has no intention of revealing anything until two more college freshmen go missing. Tony, jilted ex-FBI agent, is called when his niece is abducted. Soon, Jo and Tony find themselves working together to try and stop the person who has been torturing young girls for years.

I really liked the general direction of the plot and really found myself invested in the characters. Tony was incredibly likeable and I took a liking to him right away. I also really liked the way that Webb chose to lay out the plot. Told in alternating perspectives and alternating timelines, the reader is privy to the abduction story of the girls in captivity, the abduction story of Jo (in the past) and then the efforts of Tony and Jo as they weave their way into the criminal underground and try to uncover the whereabouts of the missing women.

I also didn’t find the romantic element to be too distracting from the plot; it felt like a nice addition.

However, the novel really dragged in the middle. It went from non-stop action at the beginning to become extremely repetitive and slow nearing the middle. The pace did pick up at the end of the novel but I felt like there were at least 50 pages I could have done without.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Longest Silence and I think I’ll be going back to read the other novels in this series!