The story revolves around former Detective Cam Ambrose, her daughter Sammy, and her best friend who she considers her brother Dimi. She leaves her home in New York hoping to escape the grief of her recently deceased husband, the news of his infidelity, and the ghosts who seem to be haunting her daughter.
As she learns more details about her husband's death she realizes he kept many secrets from her and she never truly knew him. it's up to Cam to decipher the cryptic messages he's left her, unravel the mystery of her husband's demise, and stop the hauntings happening to her daughter. This was an amazing book from start to finish! The pacing of the story was perfect and kept me intrigued the entire time. It was a great horror novel that kept me on my toes, and I found myself trying to figure everything out along with the characters.

I liked this one. Couldn’t put it down. But after I finished reading it, I realized that this book seemed more like a synopsis of a story rather than an actual story itself. I enjoyed the characters of Cam and Dimi and their dynamic, but I felt like there was a lot of backstory that wasn’t adequately explored, just mentioned in a matter-of-fact way. I felt the same way about the ending of the book. I looked forward to exploring this author's backlist! Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Flame Tree Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

I read Below by Lauren Hightower a year ago and really liked it. It started out more of a thriller but then became wacky creature horror. I expected more of that from Silent Key, but going in with those expectations threw me off.

Instead, Silent Key is more of a speculative thriller--mostly thriller but with paranormal entities, too. If I had gone in knowing that, I would have enjoyed it more. Instead, I was waiting for things to get truly bizarre for the first 30% and then they never do.

I also find the marketing around this book misleading. The cover shows an underwater scene and the publisher's blurb compares this book to other ocean-horror books. There is one scene in the ocean in this whole book.

What affected my rating the most, though, was the climax of this story. There is so much build-up to solving the problem the main character, Cam, is facing. And the way it is solved is...almost nothing? Witnessing something from the outside? I'm not even sure what really happened or how it solved the issue at all. I had gotten really into the book by this point, so it was a letdown.

Overall, I had fun with this one once I adjusted my mindset about what this book was. The payoff just wasn't here for me.

It's my second book by Lauren Hightower and definitely not the last. Silent Key skillfully combines a detective story with the supernatural and portrays a well-written familial bond. It's well-paced, intriguing, and twisty enough to make readers guessing. Well worth a shot.

I simply love discovering new to me authors and Laurel Hightower did not disappoint!!

Her writing and pacing is fantastic, the characters are well-written and interesting and as mentioned the plot and scary bits are perfectly paced.

If you're a ghost story fan, this one is for you!

3.5 stars rounded up.

Silent Key tells the story of a woman trying to protect her daughter from a supernatural world that she doesn't understand. It's a detective story, an unsolved mystery, a story about the bonds between family & friends, and a ghost story. 👻

There was plenty of creepy imagery within the book that left me feeling spooked and unsettled at times. I thought the writing was fantastic and the author does a great job of bringing the atmosphere to life as well. My favorite part of this book by far is the characters and the bonds they all shared with each other. From a shy, broken country boy veterinarian, to a funny five year old, and a softened Russian best friend - I loved them all. The relationships the characters had with each other really made the story great and I enjoyed seeing the way they all deeply cared for one another.

The ghost story/mystery itself however was not my favorite. Some aspects were a little confusing to me and I didn't really feel too invested in the plotline, but I do think it was developed well and came together nicely in the end.

Overall, Silent Key was a fun read that I found myself fully immersed in and I would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of a ghost story detective mystery!

Really enjoyed this one, thanks so much to Flame Tree for sending it along! Silent Key is a character-driven horror mystery, and it blends genres together really well. Loved Cam and her relationship with her daughter, her best friend Dimi, and her budding romance with Eric. The story gets off to a strong start and I loved seeing everything come together as Cam searches for answers about the deaths surrounding her and the ghosts that won't let her or her daughter go.

Laurel writes characters and dialogue very well. Everyone feels real and the world feels lived in. While there are a lot of characters and setting shifts, Laurel confidently keeps everything moving and wrangles these seemingly disparate plots to a satisfying conclusion. I always feel like, especially with horror, that I don't want to give too much away, so I won't add any spoilers here, but if you're a fan of ghosts, detectives, and don't mind a little bit of romance in your horror, you will enjoy this one.

I believe this is Laurel Hightower's first published full length novel, but you wouldn't guess that from reading it. I found her characters and dialogue to be very believable and emotionally gripping. I didn't find this to be exceptionably suspenseful or eerie, but I was never bored and enjoyed the story. This book was described as "a supernatural mystery with elements of Nick Cutter’s The Deep, Peter Benchley’s Jaws and Stephen King’s Firestarter." I don't feel this book is anything like any of those books, but I guess there may be some shared elements. Thanks to NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for the ARC.

Big thank you to Flame Tree Press & Laurel Hightower for this ARC from NetGalley.

I didn’t connect with our FMC or her family at all during this book except when the “love interest” was involved. He seemed to be the only one with actual emotions and development going on outside the haunting issue.

The whole Cold War / Russian submarine plot was something I wasn’t expecting and truly wasn’t my favourite. I thought I was reading the second book in a series for a few moments because we had so much info without context.

Kept waiting for hauntings & ghosts that made sense or at least had better build up but they just popped up out of nowhere and the context wasn’t there. I was expecting more horror (other than bodily descriptions) but it leaned waaayyy more mystery for me.

Silent Key is a full length novel by Laurel Hightower. It follows a former detective named Cam who has recently lost her husband. But when she realizes that there are secrets her husband kept from her, Cam has to learn about a world of supernatural hauntings while protecting her young daughter who has a mysterious gift.

This book was equal parts good and bad to me. I have read from this author before and loved her novellas so I was very excited to read a novel by her. I think this book suffers from just having too much going on which makes it very confusing. There were parts of this that didn’t make sense as to why they existed in the book. I’m not a fan of police procedural books and this has those vibes. Also Dimi, as a character, felt a little weird.

I did love all the creepy parts of this and Sammy, the daughter, was such a well done character. I’m really picky about children in books because they never feel authentic but I enjoyed this. I also really liked Morgan as a character.

I feel like if Dimi and all the Russian stuff was taken out of this book and it was half the length, it would have been a lot stronger for me. It is a pretty quick read so I think a lot of people will enjoy it.

Thank you to Netgalley for this eARC. I’m still trying to gather all of my feelings for this book. I ended up really enjoying it, although I do have some issues. I feel like you just get thrown into this without any background into what’s happening. The whole Russian thing and Dimi was just confusing to me and even though I liked Dimi I didn’t really care about any of that. Even though this is only 305 pages it felt very long winded at times. I could’ve been wrapped up sooner I feel like. ******Maybe SPOILER alert but I actually loved the romance in here. How can you not fall in love with Eric Morgan*****
I loved the descriptions of the ghosts and the scenes of the hauntings. They really were terrifying! That part was great. Great supernatural book and the ending…could there be a sequel? I know this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but it was spooky and creepy and romantic at times. I enjoyed it. I’m giving it 3.5/4 stars.

Laurel Hightower can’t miss. Her work hits like a truck and she doesn’t pull any punches. She’s the writer I always hope I’ll be one day.

Silent Key
by Laurel Hightower

There are things I loved about this book and some things that just confused me. Hightower is so good at developing a strong, flawed, loving and feisty female MC. I still think about Chris from Crossroads and Addy from Below, both strong, sympathetic characters and both books are terrifying reads.

Cam is a newly widowed and newly unemployed young mother, trying to start a new life Texas with her 5year daughter Sammy, who sees dead people. Cam is accompanied by her “brother,” Dimi, a close friend made while Cam was undercover, investigating the Russian mob as NYC police.

Hightower excels at building tension and frightening situations. Her descriptive powers are top-notch. When Cam is trapped in her nightmares, I could not turn away. It was wonderfully scary!

But…

The whole “brother” thing was weird. He was a close friend. Or maybe a “cousin.” But deciding someone you worked undercover with for 8 years is your brother is strange to me. Cam’s dead husband Tony also cheated on her for years with a woman called Aliyah. Tony, Aliyah and Sammy had a secret friendship because they all saw the dead. I found Aliyah a completely unnecessary character. Her appearance did nothing to propel the story. I actually did not understand Tony and his haunting at all. Even by the end of the book, I couldn’t figure out his motivations or his purpose in driving the story. “Tony tried to pick up the box from the lawyer.” Why? “Tony was wrong.” About what? “Tony was a good husband and father.” But he came off as a selfish, manipulative, shifty, cheating, lying, cardboard cutout of a character.

Maybe the story was just over-populated. It confused and diluted the narrative. I appreciated the mystery, the terror, the mother/daughter dynamic, the budding love story and more. But, as a whole, the book was muddled and unsatisfying.

Thank you @NetGalley and @flametreepress for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Thank you NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!

A few months after the mysterious death of her husband, Detective Cam Ambrose takes her five year old daughter to a ranch inherited to her by her late uncle. As Cam tries to process her grief, she learns about a whole supernatural world that her husband was part of- and was likely the cause of his death.

I don’t typically like ghost and haunted house stories, but this book really did something different for the genre that I think worked. The haunting was disorienting, atmospheric, and had such effective horror. There was an aspect of radiation sickness, that really freaks me out, and I think Laurel Hightower did an amazing job depicting the horror.

The pacing was a bit slow at first, it took me a little longer to get invested in the story. Once I reached 70% of the way through, I was racing to the end because I was determined to unravel the mystery. This book felt pretty long at times, but I think the length helped Laurel Hightower develop her characters and their relationships more. Everyone in this story felt real and with secrets of their own. It made me wonder who Cam could trust. I will say there were a lot of characters- it was a little overwhelming for me to keep track of them all. I don’t personally like to annotate, but it might be useful to you if you’re someone that likes to try and solve the mystery before it’s revealed!

If you like unique haunted house stories, a large cast of characters, and a dash of crime thriller, then The Silent Key comes out October 10th!

A really great and intriguing read. I loved the characters and the story. Will look out for more from this author.

I was hooked from the idea of this novel, it had everything that I was hoping for in this universe. I loved the supernatural elements with the mystery elements, it does a great job in keeping it suspenseful and I loved the idea of a deep sea supernatural horror. The characters had everything that I was looking for and worked with the novel. I enjoyed the way Laurel Hightower wrote this.

Silent Key by Laurel Hightower is a tale of grief, change, and ghosts, where running away isn’t an option.

Let’s dive in!

My Thoughts on Silent Key by Laurel Hightower –

Relocating to a small town after the death of her husband, former Detective Cam Ambrose feels like she is running from her husband’s ghosts when she finds that she has more questions than answers about his death. Little does she know, these ghosts are real and much more dangerous than she thinks.

With each step toward her healing process, more is thrown at Cam, threatening to break her at any moment. Luckily, she has two great supporters that she finds herself fully confiding in as she can’t tell the truth about what is going on to the cops; one is a man she calls her brother, Dimi, and another is her new neighbor, Eric Morgan.

But will these three be able to put the ghosts to rest before another life is claimed?

I absolutely loved this tale! Each of the characters were so wonderfully developed, I felt like I was sitting in the room with them, anticipating what was to come next and trying to solve the puzzle. I loved seeing how each of them interacted with one another and how their relationships were both tested and grew throughout the story.

The scene where Cam’s daughter, Sammy, sees Eric’s “library” was too cute! The quick bond between Cam and Eric added a really fun layer as well as some light in the darkness.

The mystery element of the tale was tense. I had so much fun with each twist and each new bit of information that was uncovered.

And of course, we had the horror. There was an overall level of dread that started growing from very early on, but there were also plenty of bursts of full-blown terror! There was one scene that occurred in a bedroom that gave me a wicked jump scare! I can’t wait for readers to experience that!

My Favorite Passages from Silent Key –
I spent the next twenty minutes forgetting every trouble I’d ever had, hugging dogs that stood on hind legs to lick me, rolling in the dirt with a boxer-pit mix, and loving on an enormous fella with soft gray fur, the kind they call blue.

“What I do know is, it ain’t a good idea for you to start by distrusting yourself. Whatever you end up doing, believe what you saw. Chances are it’s real as hell.”

You could buy anything online, and I’d have paid every cent of Tony’s life insurance to make us safe. But there was no equipment in the world that could have helped us that night.

“Yeah, well. I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last.”
He leaned in and took both my hands between his. “I reckon not, but this is your hurt. Other people hurtin’ don’t make it any less.”

When I’d said, as I had so many times throughout her life, that there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her, no battle I wouldn’t fight, I’d never imagined how often that fight would require emotional bravery instead of physical. But that was the nature of parenting – kids rarely need you to run into an actual burning building. Instead you have to be their advocate, and do the things that truly scare you.

Then I saw it. Fingertips, gray and mottled, clinging to the very edge of the outside sill. I stared at them while time spun out, my breath leaving my lungs and refusing to return to my brain tried to tell my eyes they were full of shit.

Funny how responding with your emotions never does any good.

My Final Thoughts on Silent Key –
Part police procedural, part mystery, and part paranormal horror, this book is sure to hook readers right from the start, pulling them deeper and deeper as things progress.

I had a blast reading this. I loved it so much it gave me quite the book hangover!

Readers that enjoy tales that slowly unravel while the action picks up are going to love this.

This is a gripping character driven horror that provides the reader with a lot of dialogue and intrigue into the mystery element of this supernatural horror novel. Thoroughly enjoyable to read.

I was on the edge of my seat for the entirety of the book. Intrigue, horror, mystery... it is definitely a book I will commit to memory. Definitely a must read for any fans of Laurel Hightower.

A former detective, an ex-Russian spy, and a veterinarian walk into a bar... just kidding. They are being haunted by a missing ghost submarine and must solve a series of mysteries to save themselves.

Silent Key was a really fresh and fun mashup of genres. It takes principles associated with real-world crime solving and applies them to the paranormal. Sprinkle in some Russian characters and a missing submarine, and you have a book that's equal parts detective novel, spy novel, and ghost story.

The real strength of the novel were the characters, particularly the relationships between characters. These are funny people, with strong personalities, who have been through a lot. Each character has a backstory riddled with trauma. Yet, they persevere, build each other up, and love, trust, and support one another through some really freaky stuff.

The downside of this book for me was the pacing and length. This was A LOT packed into 300 pages. Sometimes I'd zone out for one sentence, and a whole plot point would be lost to me. I spent a lot of time being confused and backtracking to find what I missed. For that reason, I think it needed to be either shorter or longer. If made shorter, it could be pared down to feel less muddled. If longer, some of the plot points that felt confusing could be explained more thoroughly.

Even though parts of this were a miss for me, I appreciate the author taking a chance on something different. It had funny characters, some genuinely spooky moments, and a decent mystery.