The Silent Ones by K.L. Slater

"We're all caught up in our own little worlds of denial and dread."

The unimaginable happens when two 10 year-old cousins are detained after an assault on an elderly woman, Bessie Wilford, whom they'd been visiting. The parents of Maddy are Juliet and Tom Fletcher and single mom, Chloe Voce's daughter's name is Brianna. Juliet and Chloe are sisters and have grown to adulthood in a quite dysfunctional family. When Maddy and Brianna are interviewed, neither of them will say a word. A child therapist, Dana Sewell, is brought in to help with getting the two cousins to talk. The townspeople and press are going wild with vitriol and disgust as the news goes out about the attack by these two ten-year-olds. Juliet and Chloe each try to support their daughters but the whole incident is bringing the entire family to the breaking point. Secrets and lies are revealed and the truth comes out with a shocking betrayal. NO SPOILERS.

This is domestic drama at heart and moves at a fairly slow pace with some flashbacks to the childhood of Juliet and Chloe where we learn a little about their family unit including Mum and Dad. It won't surprise anyone that there were problems there that would ultimately lead to what's meant to be a shocking revelation. I did not like any of the characters in this novel as they all had some issues and behaved in ways that I found irritating or repugnant. I believe we're supposed to feel some empathy for Juliet, but she was annoying in making excuses for herself and her self pity. I felt that the cousins were just a sidebar in a plot that should have featured them a bit more as they were very one-dimensional in the narrative. I think I was expecting more of a crime thriller plot because of the "murder" -- even though it's clearly marketed as a psychological thriller. I've read previous novels by this author that I liked more, and I'll read future books by K.L. Slater -- it's just that sometimes I find the synopsis misleading or it doesn't give me an accurate expectation for what the book is about. I guess I thought I was going to read a book about child killers...my mistake.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the e-book ARC to read and review.

This is a standalone and is not part of any series.
Genre -- family drama, psychological