Daughter of Deep Silence by Carrie Ryan

Published: May 2015

Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Reader

Pages: 375

Copy Provided by: Bought

Summary: By Goodreads

Summary:

I’m the daughter of murdered parents.
I’m the friend of a dead girl.
I’m the lover of my enemy.
And I will have my revenge.

In the wake of the devastating destruction of the luxury yacht Persephone, just three souls remain to tell its story—and two of them are lying. Only Frances Mace knows the terrifying truth, and she’ll stop at nothing to avenge the murders of everyone she held dear. Even if it means taking down the boy she loves and possibly losing herself in the process.

Sharp and incisive, Daughter of Deep Silence by bestselling author Carrie Ryan is a deliciously smart revenge thriller that examines perceptions of identity, love, and the lengths to which one girl is willing to go when she thinks she has nothing to lose. 

Review:

Generally, I love NetGalley....except when we only get a sneak peek of a title and are left to WAIT for the release date.  Miss Ryan sure knows how to pique a reader's interest.  We jump right into the story of the sole survivor from a ship that had been hijacked. She has experienced an extremely traumatizing event as all passengers were systematically shot and killed before the ship was set on fire and then destroyed.  But then two other survivors step forward and they tell a completely different story.  Why would they lie about this?

And this is where NetGalley left me. Waiting...for a couple weeks until the release of the book.  Thank goodness I am so slow at reading that I read the teaser with ONLY 2 weeks until the release.  I can't imagine the torture of waiting longer than that.  As it was, I would forego sleep AND some of my favorite TV shows to finish reading the book in less than two days.  Yes, my faithful followers.  It was THAT good.  

Oh how I've missed Carrie Ryan's writing style.  This author sucks you in and paints her settings, her scenarios, her characters with such detail that they morph off the page and into your imagination.  She can make you feel so much compassion for her characters whether they be flesh-eating zombies or a revenge-driven disaster victim.  I feel like Ms. Ryan is the Master of Metaphors.

Frances/Libby is startlingly scary. She is so obsessed with this one piece of her life.  So much like Emily in the TV series - Revenge.  Years have been dedicated to plotting, planning, acting and reacting.  I have recently read Katie Finn's Broken Hearts and Revenge series (keep your eyes out for the review) and Hallie REALLY needs to take a lesson or two from Frances.

Sidenotes

Chapter 24 - Frances talks about Libby and their experience in the lifeboat and it made my eyes well up with tears. How they went through all of these different stages of dehydration and then the last moments as Libby started to give up on life.  Unfortunately, it was also only an hour later when Frances was rescued.  If Libby had just hung on a little longer, she could have been saved as well.

There were a few things that I didn't feel were consistent in this story. Questions I had that didn't seem to have answers but I didn't want to stop and question the validity of the story. I just wanted it to keep going until I got to the end.  But here are my loose ends - 

How long was the cruise ship for and how did they get so close so quickly? Frances talks about falling in love but did she have time to get so close to the senator's son?  What did the senator think of Frances? I thought that Libby fit in more with the rich crowd than Frances did so if the senator's son was getting involved with her, I'm sure the senator would have had met her.

About 3/4 of the way through the book, I started to have doubts about one of the main characters and his motives. It is awful but I started to doubt Shepherd's innocence. If Libby is out of the way, wouldn't he and his brother inherit the estate and all of its holdings?

All in all, as the story unfolded, I stopped wondering about my questionable loose ends and started falling in love with the book. The ending of the book was awesome. I LOVED it.  I especially loved the last page except for one thing - DOES HE???   Read this. If  you are going to read one book this summer, let it be Daughter of Deep Silence. It was so satisfying and I am so happy that she wrote it as a stand-alone title.