In this conclusion to the Stillwater trilogy, the truth comes out into the open and Madeline has to face it head on, whether she likes it or not. Dead Right brings the story line and suspense up a notch when Madeline decides to outsource a private investigator to help her solve the mystery behind her father’s disappearance.

To be totally honest, a case like this SHOULD be left in the hands of an outsider, if only because too many people are too biased about the rest of the people in this small town. You would never get a fair investigation or a fair trial--things would turn out to be like ye olden days of “Burn that witch! She’s the one that did it!” just because someone looked at you wrong.

While, we, as the readers know the entire situation--it has been explained twice before in the first two books of the trilogy--Madeline, as well as the rest of the small town of Stillwater has still been kept in the dark. The gossips and rumors and accusations are still being flung around, but due to the fact that there is no body nor any substantial evidence, no arrests have ever been made and the public can only continue to gossip and speculate.

The book starts out with the discovery of Reverend Lee Barker’s missing Cadillac found in the quarry. And along with the vehicle, new evidence comes to light that finally has Madeline questioning everything she’s ever believed in about her entire life after her father had gone missing.

Bringing in Hunter Solozano, a private detective from California, it seems that a good investigator outside of the entire Stillwater drama stage is able to determine something that others with secrets or biases would never be able to do: find the truth and bring it to attention.

If it’s one thing that Brenda Novak seems to do well (and this is from simply reading this particular trilogy alone), it’s suspense. As I have mentioned in previous reviews of the first two Stillwater books, I continuously had an urgent sense of “How does this all conclude?” and “I need to know what happens!” going on. And no matter what was going on in my head, I just couldn’t seem to put the book down for anything. So once again, I have managed to finish a book within one fairly long reading session with few pauses to attend to nature.

I might have already known the truth behind the circumstances, and the author takes no pains to hide any information; but just the mere suspense of watching Madeline uncover each truth, and watching the rest of the Montgomery’s hold their breaths in constant nervous anticipation for the truth to be brought into the open was enough anxiousness to my nerves to make me want to keep reading.

I continue to be conflicted about Madeline, as a character. I never really cared much for her in the first two books, and while the third book brings a lot more of her feelings and her anxieties into the forefront, I still found it hard to relate with her. I feel like I should be more understanding about her losses and more sympathetic to everything she’s gone through (her mother’s suicide, her father’s disappearance, being stuck in the middle between a town of lynch mob and her beloved, singled-out step-family). But I just couldn’t seem to give a rat’s care about her problems.

And I wonder if it isn’t because I already know the entire backstory behind what happened.

I know it can’t be easy to live your life losing all the people you love and not knowing the reasons why. Which is why I don’t begrudge Madeline her constant need to ask questions and to find out the truth.

But I also can’t seem to put myself in her shoes; and instead I keep seeing the situation from an outsider’s point of view who is more biased towards the Montgomery family (even though they did break several laws). The Montgomery’s have spent their lives being looked down on and never truly accepted on top of the tragedy that occurred so many years ago. When Reverend Barker disappears, the whole town of Stillwater descends upon the family with two very different reactions towards the stepfamily and towards Madeline.

Towards the Montgomery family, everything they do is suspect and wrong and unforgivable. It doesn’t matter that the whole incident was an accident brought on by the reverend himself, the town would have wanted blood and would have burned all the Montgomerys alive given the go ahead. It probably wouldn’t have even mattered to the town that the reverend was a disgusting waste of space child molester; they probably would have blamed the Montgomerys for that as well.

Madeline, however, has been coddled her entire life by the town who has already accepted her with no questions. She is “Poor Madeline who lost her mother and father at a young age and is being duped by the nasty, vile Montgomery’s who don’t deserve the life they were given in Stillwater.” The entire town has always been sympathetic towards her; and judging from a particular scene from the first book, Dead Silence, are ready to forgive her for any and all mistakes she has made. When she and Grace both break into Jed’s auto shop office and Madeline gets caught, she’s simply given a slap on the hand and told not to do it again. If Grace hadn’t gotten away or had been discovered as well, the town would have lynched her.

In the second book, Dead Giveaway, if the town didn’t hold Madeline at a double standard from others just because she’s the reverend’s daughter, she wouldn’t have gotten away so easily with hiring someone to threaten another and almost costing Clay his life. No one held her accountable for any wrong doings she committed, even if she felt guilty about it herself.

And so despite seeing more into the mind of Madeline Barker, I still found it relatively conflicting to determine how much I care about her. There were a lot of moments when she recounts childhood memories and where she does her monologuing that gave me the impression that, either she’s subconsciously selfish and egocentric and doesn’t realize it, or she just doesn’t look at the big picture very well.

For instance, flashbacks clearly show how her mother was going through a terrible depression; Madeline remembers a childhood where she would listen to her father speak disappointedly about how her mother wasn’t good enough because she was being weak. And Madeline would agree with him; even now as an adult, thinking back on the situation, she still agrees with him that her mother was weak and undeserving. It pained me to wonder why Madeline never questioned the fact that, rather than berating her mother for being depressed and weak, maybe someone should have been trying to help her mother get through her depression. It struck me as highly selfish and saddening that, despite how much it showed that her mother really loved her, Madeline continuously took her father’s side and refused to see that he could have been wrong.

Other things struck me as Madeline being highly selfish. Despite knowing that continued attention on the case of her father’s disappearance would continue to bring trouble and stress to her step-family (of whom she claimed to love fiercely), she still manages to put them on the spot, over and over again. And any blind person can see that her siblings are forever putting her needs ahead of theirs, even while trying to hide that big, ugly secret that could ruin their relationship.

And so it was hard for me to sympathize with Madeline a good 50% of the time.

Enter Hunter Solozano.

I liked him almost immediately. The moment he arrives in Stillwater and starts challenging Madeline, I liked him. He’s an outsider and therefore doesn’t know the recent history of Stillwater and its people. He’s got an unbiased and more open-minded opinion about investigation. He doesn’t immediately revere people on pedestals, nor does he immediately sentence a likely suspect. And he’s got a clear vision of what’s really going on around the small town.

I’d like to think that because of Hunter, the storyline following Madeline as the main female protagonist was easier to follow because Hunter doesn’t coddle Madeline (at least not at first).

He tells her the truths as he sees them, picks up on facts about the people of Stillwater that Stillwater’s own people cannot see past their biases, and pushes Madeline to understand and accept the truth.

In a way, he was good for Madeline. She needed to step outside of her rose-colored world. She continuously pushed to find the truth all these years, but when the truth turned out uglier and less ideal than she had hoped, she immediately started throwing a tantrum about it like a child. So she needed someone in her life who could tell her to harden up her emotions and take the world like a grown-up.


The overall storyline for the entire Stillwater trilogy wasn’t entirely fascinating nor the most story-worthy. But the execution of the entire series was written fabulously. Even though I still had conflicting feelings about Madeline, it didn’t deter me from enjoying the book. Even though I already knew what the outcome was for the story, it didn’t make the journey any less exciting. Even though the characters weren’t completely unique or outstanding, they were good people and they stood out in their own ways.

Overall, I really DID enjoy the entire series, even if it really wasn’t much to write home about. Sometimes there are books that you just happen to enjoy despite all its faults and this particular trilogy just happened to work for me.

I’m gonna be honest about this: There has got to be something alluring about these Brenda Novak Stillwater books that is managing to keep me hooked. It took every ounce of discipline I had to put the book down after two hours of straight reading before going to sleep. 50% into the book, I finally caved, knowing that I needed to at least get enough sleep if I didn’t want to go into work sleepy or cranky.

Is it the storyline? The premise of the book itself doesn’t leave much mystery or surprise to be anticipated. We know what the mystery is and we have an inkling about the conclusion, even if we don’t know what will actually happen. (Well, okay, after reading several romantic suspense novels, I’m not going to deny that everything hinges on a Happily Ever After closing each book whether or not it’s an ongoing series, so we have a vague idea of how things will come out--with sunshine and rainbows and happy days.) But I suspect that I now understand that “suspense” isn’t always dependent on “OMG! Who did it?” or “Ooh, what’s going to happen to our heroes?” or even “Ack! What happens next?”

The suspense in the Stillwater trilogy (thus far) is really more a mixture of “How is the conclusion going to happen?” and “How are we going to get there?” and “How will life turn out for the Montgomerys and everyone else in Stillwater?”

Anwyay… in all honesty, it takes quite of bit of care for the characters for me to start asking those questions regardless of the fact that the plot seems quite straight-forward and there probably won’t be much in terms of surprise twists. Because things are still going to happen to the characters of Stillwater and, Gosh Darnit! I wanna know how everything plays out!

So maybe I do care for the characters enough to want to know all of their fates in the end as well as how the entire scandal will handle itself by the last book.

How do the Montgomery’s manage to have their Happily Ever After? How will things turn out for the family? Will the town accept the truth? Will the siblings be able to move on? Will Mom ever learn to stop being so naive about life and face the facts of the world? Will the people of this small town forever be ignorant, judgemental, snobby jerks? Will Irene Montgomery ever grow a backbone and stop causing trouble for her kids? Can love conquer all…?

We know certain particular facts:

1) The reverend was a terrible monster of a human being who did terrible things to young girls, including his stepdaughter.

2) The Montgomerys are keeping the secret of the night the reverend died because they’re afraid of the repercussions because the town hates them already and would just end up victim-blaming rather than being sympathetic.

3) No matter what, someone still died and truths are being hidden.


So yeah, despite a lot of flashes of rage during the reading of this book (mostly because a lot of the characters got on my nerves), it didn’t escape my notice that I really do want to know how everything wraps up in the end.

In Dead Giveaway Clay Montgomery comes closer to being imprisoned for the death of Reverend Barker, despite the fact that there is no evidence to prove that the reverend is dead nor that Clay killed him. And since we had already learned in the first book that the death was an accident and it had been Mommy Dearest who’d landed the executing blow, we know that Clay wasn’t the one who killed the reverend. But it doesn’t help that someone died and all the Montgomerys were instrumental in covering up that death.

In a nutshell, not much really happens in this story aside from a lot of fingers being pointed, and a lot of anger being channeled, and a lot of angsty romance being presented, and a lot of judgement being thrown around by people who have no idea how to be compassionate. And really… that’s it. There’s little to add onto as a continuation of Dead Silence except for the fact that this is just a long drawn out drama with the same events occurring over and over again as the base platform for three romances to happen.

I’m not really complaining, but I’m also not really all that excited about it all. I just want to know how everything ends.

And I’m also ready to be rid of a lot of the Stillwater townspeople. They piss me off a great deal. As I’d mentioned about the first book, I cared very little for most of the characters in the book and in this series in general. Clay is, thus far, one of the few I actually like. Allie’s not so bad either… and if only Grace would grow more of a backbone.

Irene got on my last nerve since all she ever did was cry and complain and cause trouble despite knowing how crucial it was for her to stay out of trouble. Madeline… I don’t know. I understand her need to find out what happened to her father, but her persistence sometimes bordered on a child’s obsession. But then again, she doesn’t know what the reader knows and so she wouldn’t understand why her constant persistence in investigating her father’s disappearance comes across as troublesome.

I’m half-looking forward to finishing the series in Madeline’s perspective--mainly to see how she ends up handling the truth of her father. But I haven’t grown to like her through the first two books and find her kind of annoying, so I’m hoping that the last book will give me a chance to get to know her better.

This book took me approximately 8 hours to complete. How do I know this? Because I had started reading it at 2:30 A.M., fully intending on simply getting it started and then getting some sleep so that I could get a head start on my day since I had a rare-two-night-off opportunity that wasn't my usual weekend off. I don’t remember what I’d had planned for the day, because now the day keeps slipping from my thoughts, but… well…

So much for “Let’s read for a couple hours then get to sleep.”

I stopped reading about two and a half hours later to get something to drink and then get to sleep and was hit with a case of insomnia. About an hour after unsuccessfully trying to sleep, I picked up the book and continued reading. At 11:30 A.M., I finished the book even though I kept telling myself to put it down every half hour. The book itself kept telling me, “Let’s read another chapter,” and then “You’ve only got a hundred pages left… give or take.”

And thus, the book was finished.

And sadly, for the life of me, I’m not a hundred percent sure what it was that kept me so entranced in this book, but all of that effort deserves a star, doesn’t it?

I’m not saying this was a terrible book, nor am I saying that this was an excellent book either. I just managed to get drawn into a well-written book with a mystery-thriller-romance-suspense angle after being bored out of my mind with other books previously.

Because, to be honest, Dead Silence wasn’t much in the mystery department or the suspense the department. The story was fairly predictable and there were no surprise twists to speak of. Even the romance department might have been a bit lukewarm. But the atmosphere and the story progression was pretty stellar--I could practically feel the moody small town creepies oozing out of the book while trying to keep up with all the action. So the narration was good as well.

The characters are kind of flat and the only guy I found interesting was Clay Montgomery… which is interesting considering he’s the most aloof guy with monosyllabic lines and little presence. But I still found him more intriguing than the rest of the characters. Except maybe the boys, Heath and Teddy--they were pretty adorable. I mean, on paper the other characters sound great… to an extent. Grace is complex on the inside, but pretty standard on the outside. Kennedy was the typical stock-standard male protagonist inside and out; his only conflict was that he was a douchebag during his teens--I’m sure we can forgive everyone for being young and stupid at some point in their lives.

The rest of Grace’s family got on my nerves (her mother, Irene, and her stepsister, Madeline), because in spite of everything, they still live in such a rose colored world that I’m not sure whether to be jealous or rolling my eyes.

I’m actually much more interested in Molly Montgomery, the youngest sister who managed to get away and have a more thorough life; wondered if she’d ever have to return to Stillwater and watch her perfect life crumble away in light of the scandal surrounding her family. We only get to know her through phone calls to Grace, but I liked her nonetheless.

But alas!

Book number two follows Clay (which I’m cool with and intrigued about), and book number three follows Madeline (which I’m kind of lukewarm about). I will read the rest of the series anyway for the sake of closure, though since the end of Dead Silence seemed to leave much to be desired with its open-ended-ness… that I have a feeling was done on purpose…

And that upsets me a little bit.

I spent around three hours before going to sleep reading Bitterblue only to realize that, 50% into the book and I'm not even quite sure I care about what's actually happening to the characters.  The only thing keeping me reading it would be the strange "puzzles" that Queen Bitterblue herself keeps bringing up over and over again.  And as much as I hate to admit it, I'm curious enough to read the rest of the book just to figure out what the deal is with all the strange people in the Monsean kingdom.

Also, I don't recall Katsa and Po being quite so annoying from Graceling, but no doubt, I'm not very fond of either of them right now.  In fact, there isn't one character in this book I actually care for, really.  They all feel so detached in a strange way.

Nonetheless, I'm going to start a new book so I can take a break from Bitterblue.

As for Darkfall...  I had started reading Bitterblue so that I could take a break from The Healing Wars series.  And unfortunately, it seemed kind of counter-productive for me to go back to Darkfall in order to take a break from the book I had chosen to distract myself from Darkfall in the first place.

Anyway...

A good romantic suspense novel always hits the right spot.  And after finishing up my planning for my next big Reading Challenge project, I simply decided to chose a book from that list.  Also because I bought the entire series from a used book store since the books aren't available at my local library in any format at all.

It's probably about time I got started on making a dent in my TBR Bookshelf... a very small dent, but the beginnings of a dent, nonetheless.