Don't Make a Sound (Sawyer Brooks #1)
Published June 1st 2020 by Thomas & Mercer, Kindle Edition 285 pages
Plagued by traumatic childhood memories, crime reporter Sawyer Brooks still struggles to gain control of her rage, her paranoia, and her life. Now, after finally getting promoted at work, she is forced to return home and face her past.
River Rock is where she’d been abandoned by her two older sisters to suffer alone, and in silence, the unspeakable abuses of her family. It’s also where Sawyer’s best friend disappeared and two teenage girls were murdered. Three cold cases dead and buried with the rest of the town’s secrets.
When another girl is slain in a familiar grisly fashion, Sawyer is determined to put an end to the crimes. Pulled back into the horrors of her family history, Sawyer must reconcile with her estranged sisters, who both have shattering memories of their own. As Sawyer’s investigation leads to River Rock’s darkest corners, what will prove more dangerous—what she knows of the past or what she has yet to discover?
User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
3.5 stars
First of all, I think it is important to note this story involves sexual crimes. It's big element of the story so if that is a topic that you try to avoid reading about, I suggest you take a pass on this book. While I wouldn't say this goes into the most graphic detail I have ever read, it still was disturbing and a lot to mentally process. I read mysteries and thrillers all the time and I would put it in the compelling but tough read category.
Crime reporter Sawyer Brooks has tried to leave the past behind her but some things stay with you forever. She has never forgotten that her older sisters left her behind as they fled their hometown of River Rock, and she was left alone to endure horrific abuse. Two teenage girls were murdered in River Rock and their cases remain unsolved. Sawyer's childhood friend went missing and again, the case remains unsolved. While Sawyer has kept her distance from the town she grew up in, she is back hoping to find answers as to what happened to these girls. What will she discover?
The story held my interest as there certainly was lot going on and Sawyer was a solid lead character. The story does bounce around occasionally to other characters and in some cases I thought it worked well having different perspectives but in others it didn't feel necessary in order to advance the plot.
I feel the author might have been too ambitious in her storytelling as it becomes a bit much in terms of how much feels realistic when you add everything up together. I also thought the plot that kicks off the book started off promising but veered into bad Lifetime movie territory. In general, some elements of the story needed to be more fully fleshed out or abandoned completely. A few less characters might have also helped as it is never a good thing when you are near the end of a book and a character pops up and you struggle to remember who they are.
With that being said, I did like this book even though it wasn't a perfect read. In terms of the mystery elements, there was nothing really here that I found surprising but I also read the genre often and it's difficult to catch me completely off guard. I'm curious to see what is in store for Sawyer as this appears to be the first book in a series. If you can handle tough subject material, this is a decent pick.
Rating: really liked it
A solid story from victimization to female empowerment. 8 of 10 stars
Rating: really liked it
3.5 stars rounded up.
I have read all of Ragan’s books and loved them. While they are not literary or mind blowing in any other way, they are reliably compelling to read and hugely entertaining. So this is a new series featuring 27 year old Sawyer Brooks, a journalist with the Sacramento Independent paper and a survivor of horrific sexual abuse as a child. I have the ARC of the second book but grabbed this one to read first (yes, I’m one of those sticklers for reading in order 🙄). Yikes, it is full on, very dramatic, maybe even melodramatic.
Sawyer heads back to her home town of River Rock to attend the funeral of Gramma Sally who was closer to her than her parents. Her sisters Harper and Aria both plead with her not to go as River Rock has bad memories and bad vibes. Sawyer is also aware of a string of disappeared teenage girls in the past including her own childhood best friend, Rebecca. She pitches a story on the missing girls to her paper and her boss reluctantly agrees.
While she is in River Rock another teenage girl is murdered and Sawyer is determined to get to the bottom of it. But could this be her undoing? Cracks start to appear in her relationships with her family and friends she thought she knew. Meanwhile we also follow a group of 5 female vigilantes who are getting payback on some of the men who abused them in the past. Both strands of the story spiral out of control with shocking revelations. It was interesting and absorbing but also pretty dark stuff. I guessed some but not all of the plot twists. The lengths some people will go to protect a secret...
Was it overly dramatic- maybe, so I’m giving it 3.5 stars rounded up and I’m onto the next one now. Remember folks - this is fiction, anything can and does happen.
Rating: really liked it
You can find my full review here: https://allthebookblognamesaretaken.b...
++++++++++++++
Oh my goodness. What a cluster fuck this was. It was going pretty decently until the main character went home. It was really obvious which sister was part of the revenge group, and common sense and the process of elimination made it obvious who had killed the girls and was obsessed with Sawyer. Way too many subplots. Things that were intended to be red herrings, weren’t. Glad I didn’t pay for this one.
Rating: really liked it
A dark and gritty start to a new series by T.R. Ragan. Sawyer Brooks, a crime reporter, returns home for her grandmother's funeral. Sawyer and her family have a sad and twisted past. This book combines Sawyer's personal story, the stories of her sisters, and a series of murders in her hometown. Fast-paced, exciting, and twisted. I look forward to reading more of this series.
Rating: really liked it
They are a group of five; they call themselves The Crew. There's Malice and then there's Lily, Bug. Cleo and Psycho. Years of abuse, mental, physical, sexual brought them together. Their belief is that the only way to get justice is to see criminals punished. They have taken back control of their lives by teaching sexual predators a lesson or two.They have no intention of committing murder ... once the target is properly secured and "aware" of the harm they have done, they are released back into society.
But not all plans succeed.
They are a true sisterhood, committed to their newfound cause ... and they are plotting their first target.
Sawyer Brooks is a crime reporter, still trying to regain control of her life, her rage, her paranoia. As part of a work promotion, and to attend to her grandmother's funeral, she is returning to her hometown. Facing her past is no picnic. She'll have to see her cold, distant parents, and the sisters who abandoned her with her uncle when she was a child.
There were two murders in her town years ago ... almost unheard of at the time. Two teenaged girls were murdered and Sawyer's best friend disappeared. Three cold cases dead and buried with the rest of the town's secrets.
BOOK BLURB: When another girl is slain in a familiar grisly fashion, Sawyer is determined to put an end to the crimes. Pulled back into the horrors of her family history, Sawyer must reconcile with her estranged sisters, who both have shattering memories of their own.
What will prove most dangerous .... what she knows of the past ... or what she has yet to discover?
This author is in my top 10 favorite list ... and she never disappoints. Intricately woven plots... deftly drawn characters ... and she handles the hard issues with a delicate hand. This is a true page-turner and I am excited to read the next book featuring Sawyer Brooks.
Rating: really liked it
This book features reporter Sawyer Brooks who had a horrific childhood, not just because of the abuse she faced by a family member and his friends, but by having parents that didn’t look out for her back then and couldn’t be less supportive of her now. She has two sisters, one of whom faced the same abuse.
While Sawyer is covering the crime beat, she hears of yet another girl who has been murdered in her small town of River Rock. She wants to uncover what happened there, and this means peeling back her own family history.
There are sort of three separate story lines happening here. In one of them, a group of women meet online to discuss ways to get back and the men who tortured and raped them. You can see that this is a tough read when that’s the subject matter on every single page.
Some of the stuff with police procedure doesn’t ring true to me and having parents that awful is hard to believe, even though I’ve seen those crime documentaries that blow my mind what parents do to their kids.
This is just not a fun read, although portions of it are extremely action-packed, leaving the reader edgy, wondering how the character/characters will get herself/themselves out of difficult situations.
Rating: really liked it
There was alot of emotion reading this book,firstly as loved reading all her other books this book just took along time to get into this book wasn't sure about the characters maybe as a new series plus the delicate storyline of child abuse even it didn't give you harrowing details it a subject I avoid reading.it ended up a good storyline it starts Sawyer who's a journalist becomes a crime reporter goes back to her childhood town as her grandma dies as goes to her funeral but theres unsolved murders and family secrets that come to light.lookimg forward to book two.
Rating: really liked it
I didn't think it was possible to squeeze so much darkness into one book, but that's exactly what T.R. Ragan did with Don't Make a Sound. This book is gritty, disturbing, and chilling and I loved it so much.
Don't Make a Sound is book one of the Sawyer Brooks series and it sure starts out with a bang. There are a few different mysteries and I was really intrigued by all of them. There are also other viewpoints that the synopsis doesn't mention, and I have to say they were a pleasant surprise. There is a vigilante feel to parts of the book that I adored, and the pace was steady because of the different viewpoints, although most of the beginning is just Sawyer. There are some badass women in this novel and that was one of my absolute favorite things about it.
I really love Sawyer as a character, and I am so glad there is going to be more of her. I also liked that
Don't Make a Sound didn't end on a cliffhanger. I honestly don't know what I would have done if it had, but it also left me wanting more which is great. I loved Ragan's writing style and I thought it was reminiscent of Karin Slaughter who is the queen of the gritty thriller in my eyes.
Lastly, I feel the need to repeat the fact that
Don't Make a Sound is gritty with a capital G. It won't be for the faint of heart and if you can't read about sex crimes you need to stay far, far away. But if you love dark and disturbing thrillers that are full of surprises then I'm just going to say you need to read this book NOW. I'm so excited that Ragan has a backlist that I can check out and you can guarantee I will be doing that ASAP!
Thank you to McCartin/Daniels PR and the publisher for providing me with an advance review copy of this book! All opinions and thoughts are my own.
Rating: really liked it
After reading and enjoying other books by this author, I jumped at the chance to get it as an Amazon Prime Reads selection. Now I've finished it, and I have to say it just didn't push the right buttons for me. It's heavy-handed in the focus on sexual abuse (often graphically described), psychologically damaged victims and some of the sickest characters I've ever had the displeasure to meet. It's not that it isn't well-written, I hasten to add - it was for me just too much of a bad thing.
There are two plots going on here, both tinged (make that doused) with violence and revenge. A group calling themselves The Crew meet on the Dark Web, plotting to make sexual predators "pay" for what they've done. No killing or maiming allowed, they claim; they simply want to impress upon them that payback is a you-know-what. The other story focuses on Sawyer Brooks, a 29-year-old journalist who longs to be on the crime scene beat. She and her two sisters, Aria and Harper, are themselves victims of extensive and horrific sexual abuse - and dealing with it in very different ways (Harper is a neat freak, Sawyer avoids emotional or physical attachments and Aria simply refuses to go there). Not only are all three seriously psychologically damaged by abuse, but in large part because of those experiences, they have tended to not play well with each other.
Things get heated when Sawyer gets her wish to partner up with the nationally recognized crime reporter at their Sacramento newspaper and her beloved grandmother dies. Since she's going home to nearby River Rock for the funeral, she convinces her new boss to let her report on the years-ago murders of two young girls and another - Sawyer's best friend - who went missing but was never found. Meanwhile, The Crew keep busy chasing down and showing the predators who abused them the error of their ways (oh golly, what could possibly go wrong with that scenario)?
For Sawyer, going home puts her right back in the eye of her storm - visiting the parents who at best ignored their daughters and the prison release of one of their abusers. On top of that, no one - including the police - are happy that old rocks are being overturned for all the world to read about in Sawyer's story. There are a few twists here and there, although they're for the most part predictable. Still, it's an action-packed adventure, albeit not what I'd call a totally satisfying one.
Rating: really liked it
Surprisingly badI kept feeling like I was reading through someone's first draft of a book that would require numerous edits. Scattered, thin character development, and a lot of jumping to conclusions. I hadn't heard of this author before, so this almost assuredly "one and done" for me.
Rating: really liked it
Truly TerribleI don't want to be mean but this is just about the worst book I've ever read. The mistakes are so numerous that I thought it must be a first book with no editor. I'd enumerate but I don't want to waste even one more minute on it .
Rating: really liked it
Goodness gracious this was absolutely awful. Overly dramatic, completely unrealistic, amateurish and pretentious. Oh and dumb. It was just dumb. Oh and a main character that’s a better detective than every detective in the city and a smarter cop than any cop in the town and can fight men five times her size. Oh whatEVER. Ugh. Save yourself a few hours and skip this loser book. Next review I’ll tell you how I really feel, but this will have to do for now.
Rating: really liked it
3.5 starsLots of triggers, so beware. I waffled between 3 - 4 stars because I couldn't put this one down. Lots of plot threads. Some were wrapped up but lots hanging. I will read the 2nd book. I hope Sawyer lets Derek in, eventually. I like the gradual building of their relationship.
Rating: really liked it
A dark & twisted revenge thriller & Kindle Unlimited title. The writing & narration were mediocre but I still found myself thoroughly entertained. This is book one in a new series. If you’re concerned about triggers be aware that pretty much every possible one is in this book.
