The Silent Ones: An absolutely gripping psychological thriller

The Silent Ones by K. L. Slater is described by the author as “An absolutely gripping psychological thriller.” The self-description serves as a subtitle, and the author fully delivers on the promise. I could spend a lot of time trying to count the twists in this novel, but the time is better spent in reading. This five-star thriller should assure a readership willing to pay for eight of the other books the author has written. There is one additional novel that will appeal to readers who are conversant with Italian. The Silent Ones sells on Amazon for USD 0.99; the remaining Slater novels sell for USD 3.99. No Slater books are available through Kindle Unlimited. The Silent Ones is so impressive I am sure I will pay a higher price than I usually do to read other K. L. Slater novels. The term “dysfunctional family” is used to describe aberrations in familial relationships on different levels. A story of sibling disputes might earn the description. With this novel, the family is dysfunctional through three generations. Maddy and Brianna act out a very substantial conflict about who has committed a possible crime. Their mothers, sisters Chloe and Juliet, have had conflicts from their childhood over the death of a sibling. The battle continues into their adult lives over the power roles in a shared business and mutual accusations over which daughter is responsible for the accident with Bessie. Ray and Joan are the parents of Chloe and Juliet. Joan completely dominates and emasculates Ray as the parents hide secrets from their daughters and emotionally favor Chloe over Juliet. Readers can decide how much this has further affected Chloe and Juliet’s raising of Maddy and Brianna. Secrets abound on all three levels with more than enough twists to fill the sixty-one chapter, three hundred two-page book. We first meet two cousins, Maddy and Brianna, who exhibit the central conflict for the story. Maddy is usually confident, unassuming, and kind. Brianna is dominant, prone to having temper tantrums, and is not above bending the truth. Could these be typical ten-year-old children? The two are looking for fun during the last days of summer vacation, and they decide to visit old lady Bessie Wilford, something they have done several times before. Bessie is advancing through stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, but during her lucid moments, she recounts interesting stories while serving cookies and lemonade. On their most recent visit, Bessie has an accident after waking suddenly and striking her head. Maddy and Brianna become alarmed in the presence of unconscious Bessie and run from the room. When Bessie is found unconscious, police bring Maddy and Brianna to a police facility for questioning. Things turn serious when Bessie dies. Someone will be charged with responsibility for Bessie’s death. Secrets are revealed by communicating in many forms, but primarily by talking. When police brought Maddy and Brianna into the station for interviews, the two refused to speak. Not one word. The two don’t even look at each other. Maddy and Brianna didn’t talk to the police, family therapist consultants, lawyers, their parents, or even each other. Their failure to communicate was a fascinating part of the novel for me as I have been involved in many interrogations. The cousins adopted the only effective resistance method to an interrogation, complete silence, but I found it difficult to believe two ten-year-old subjects held out so long. It was bad enough that parents/grandparents Ray and Joan had always favored Chloe as a child; this family relationship continued into adulthood. Chloe and Brianna lived with Joan after Chloe’s husband, Jason, abandoned her. Chloe, therefore, spoke more often to Mom and always got her version of events to Joan before Juliet. An uncomfortable feeling of resentment, but not jealousy, consumed Juliet. A business run jointly by the sisters was not going well. Juliet, founder and theoretically dominant partner in the firm, felt that Chloe was telling all her business problems to Joan while neglecting routine business tasks and even deceiving Juliet about business problems. Most readers will focus on Juliet as a likable, confused, and caring character. Juliet knows there are secrets but can’t figure out how to discover them. There are furtive looks between family members that will lead Juliet to believe husband Tom is having an affair. It is Juliet we watch as she tries to figure out whether daughter Maddy is responsible for a crime while at the same time trying to meet the contract deadlines of her struggling business. Dana, a family therapist and consultant to the police, will try to help Juliet and all members of the family in discovering the truth of the accident/crime as well as the hidden truths of the three-tiered family. Dana will also contribute secrets to the story as we learn about a past mistake that nearly disgraced Dana’s therapist career for good. Lots of twists and turns in this fast-paced novel make this a book to schedule for reading in one session. Between chapters forty and forty-one, I experienced a shock that had nothing to do with content but with the timeline. Not every reader will experience this. I was so caught up in the story that I felt a temporal jolt. It was a form of a twist in a story with many twists. In the genre of psychological thrillers, I highly recommend The Silent Ones and consider it an excellent choice for a book club discussion.

The storyline moves seamlessly between characters and timelines, weaving a web that feels just slightly off — and that nagging sense of unease is precisely where the magic lives. You know something isn’t right, but pinning it down? That’s half the fun. Complicated family dynamics, unresolved tensions, and characters who don’t quite sit right with you — it’s all simmering beneath the surface. The atmosphere builds slowly and deliberately until the tension is so thick you could cut it. And yet, for all its darkness, the narrative never feels pretentious or rushed. It’s layered and complex in the best possible way. What makes this one particularly affecting is how Slater handles its most disturbing premise — children as the alleged perpetrators of an unthinkable crime. We’ve all seen those headlines, the sensationalism, the noise. That’s all stripped away and it places you directly inside the nightmare, living it alongside the families themselves. It’s quietly devastating; yet incredibly intriguing. This leans more mystery than thriller, but don’t be fooled — the twists are there. Creeping, patient, and when they land, they land. And then keep coming. Clear your afternoon. You won’t be putting this one down.

Great book. I couldn't figure out who did the killing to put the blame on two little girls. The ending is perfect. Im happy to find out it was not the two sweet little girls. Families always have someone who is the black sheep, the underdog, and here that person, becomes strong. Love to see that.

There were many parts of this book that I really liked, especially at the beginning and middle where it seemed each mother might be an unreliable narrator. But then at the end it suddenly seems like the author ran out of time or steam. Suddenly there's a very long, involved confession, that reminded me of old Perry Mason episodes, where the person responsible would suddenly divulge all the details on the stand, apparently with no worry as to the consequences. It seemed very unrealistic, and a huge shortcut. After going through all of the twists and turns and different narratives, to just have it spilled out in the end in a long, unrealistic monologue that ultimately feels a bit weak, was disappointing. Still it was entertaining and suspenseful with some surprises along the way. Just wish it had been longer (or the first 3/4 more tightly edited) so the ending could have been longer and more carefully crafted.

Slow start..it picked up but the story was repetitive and a bit unrealistic but overall a good read.

This is actually my first book by K. L. Slater and I really enjoyed it, although it was much different than my normal crime/thriller reads. I didn't read the reviews prior to deciding I wanted to read it. I was a little shocked by some of the lower ratings on Goodreads when I did read them, although I understood several of the points made. It isn't a fast-paced crime thriller and I'm not sure I could classify it as a dark psychological read. It is a complex read with multiple characters and lots of information to follow and sink in as you're led through a family drama. Two mothers examining their current and past lives as they struggle to understand why their daughters have been accused of a horrible crime they couldn't possibly have committed. I loved the role of Dana who had her own past issues to deal with, a mixed up love life, and a strong desire to find the secrets the family was hiding. My heart went out to Julie and her young son as the town turned against them more than willing to believe her daughter was a monster. It's difficult to say more without giving away spoilers, and I'd much rather you enjoyed the book yourself and found the answers to the questions that it will raise in your mind. A very entertaining read and one I can easily recommend to those who enjoy something out of the norm. I'll definitely be reading more of Ms. Slater's work.

Talk about a dysfunctional family. I You feel like you have a dysfunctional family, read this book. It will make you feel better about your own family. I don't want to write much about the storyline because I don't want to spoil anything. This book has so many twists and turns it makes you feel like you have whiplash, but in a good way. I read this book in one day, could not out it down. And the ending, holy cow. Thrilling ride from beginning to end. Highly, highly recommended this book and author. I haven't read a bad book by K. L. Slater. Now stop reading reviews and go read the book. You won't be disappointed, I promise.

The author gives her readers a fascinating puzzle within an even more complex puzzle—quite possibly within another hidden puzzle—and so on. This “psychological thriller” is a brilliant example of using an opaque narrative surface to slowly reveal deeper and deeper narrative levels in just the intense way a psychological mystery novel should be. Yet better than many other examples of the genre. The central characters are two sisters who have an ambivalent and tense relationship at the same time as their same-age daughters are close. Within the first two chapters of the novel, the village police unit are obliged to detain these ten year-old daughters on suspicion of beating an older family friend and neighbor. Moreover, the woman they are suspected of attacking has died of her injuries. Neither girl will speak about what they did or did not do when they were at the now dead older woman’s house or about anything else. Their mothers, long pitted against each other by their own formerly beautiful and consistently manipulative mother, are caught within a a tacit and strangling family set of unconscious rules. The family web has extended to the husband of the younger sister as well as to their children and to that same sister’s best friend. The father of the two sisters, grandfather of their daughters, has always taken the role of powerful enabler to his all-powerful and destructive emotionally damaged wife. The older sister, who is divorced, has been used to aid in the family project of placing all guilt, small and large, on the younger one. As the detective in charge of interviewing the young girls resists a too quick judgment, and as the well-known family therapist starts to pick apart the family history of secrets and lies involving the young girls’ mothers and grandparents, we add the sisters’ younger brother, who died young, as another family member and piece of the puzzles within puzzles. While the young girls, suspected of being heinous young killers, aren’t talking, their parents’ lives are coming apart. Soon their grandparents lives are about to be torn apart. Which one of the silent girls is guilty? Or is it both of them?

The twists and turns this book took had me on edge! I couldn’t read fast enough on this one! It was interesting reading some of the lingo differences as I’m in Canada but I throughly enjoyed this read!

Nice story!!!! The writer makes some good turn

Zunächst unglaubliche Situation, aber es wird immer mehr kompliziert. Eine Familie mit so vielen Geheimnissen und so vielen Lügen. Das Ende ist jedoch total unvorhersehbar.

I rarely write reviews for thrillers, because I read them for entertainment and frankly a lot of these books are very similar. I also dislike the fact that many of them get put in the category of 'psychological thrillers', while there isn't much psychological depth to the characters. But for this thriller by K.L. Slater, hitherto unknown to me, I gladly make an exception, because this is an excellent thriller and truly deserve the adjective 'psychological'. Although the story line is quite simple, a lot of family skeletons fall out of the closet as the investigation into the death of an old lady progresses. The dynamics between the different members of the family, parents, siblings and children, were fascinating and the author did a great job of making them all believable. In my humble opinion the author also strikes a perfect balance between unveiling the secrets behind the drama and keeping the story plausible. She expertly drops little clues along the way that force you to keep on reading. The final denouement is a bit farfetched, but it's very clever as well. I shall definitely read more of K.L. Slater 'psychological' thrillers! 👏

Phew, I am a mystery and suspense fan but this is a totally different ball game! absolutely fantastic, lots of twists and turns that are not expected and far from predictable. I was totally engrossed after the first chapter (which is a must for me, I don’t give lousy starts a second chance!), this is so well written and keeps you in suspense at each revelation, just when you think you have grasped it all, another shocking revelation is on its way.