The writing is solid, creating a vivid atmosphere, but the plot is a mix of captivating moments and predictability. Characters are well-developed, though some lack depth. Pacing fluctuates, making it a decent but not outstanding read.

I really enjoyed this book of the net galley bloke gave too much away. Audrey has a child suffered hearing loss and was sometimes considered by her parents to have a better idea for saying what was wrong, what was underlying or what was missing. She solved a local mystery has a young child. As an adult and a crime photographer she gets involved with local detective and has to solve two mysteries at the same time.
I really did enjoy this book. I thought the characters were well presented and quite believable and the story line was very interesting.

I'm torn between giving this book 3 and 4 stars, but am ultimately landing on 3 stars because I just needed so much more. I appreciated that this book was not a standard thriller and I really enjoyed the ending. It just felt incomplete, in my opinion. I want more exposition. I wanted more story line. I want to learn more about the characters. There was a unique humanity to this book when it came to the "victim", and I wanted to see that humanity extended to other characters. I look forward to reading other works by this author!

OK. Not great. I may not be the right reader for this one, since I had trouble staying engaged. I can see the decent writing, and hope others are more excited by it than I.

I really appreciate the free copy for review!!

this was the creepiest book I've read in such a long time!! it kept me up at night and if that's something you're into while reading, then pick this one up as soon as possible!!

The premise was what made me click on this. It was difficult for me to get into unfortunately. Not a bad book at all, just not my cup of tea.

Audrey Markum, an aspiring wedding photographer who also works part-time as a crime scene photographer, finds her past coming back to haunt her when a child killer she helped identify many years ago is released from prison – and he’s got a score to settle.

#SeeingInTheQuiet is the first book from Linda Cotton Jeffries I’ve come across, and it’s a likeable read. It’s efficiently and economically plotted, making it the kind of book which is easy to engage in; I read this in a day, which is unusual for me. Interestingly – and I can’t quite put my finger on why – the novel has the feel of a screenplay, perhaps due to the compact narrative and keen pace, combined with the straightforward plot mechanisms.

A complex, gritty police procedural this isn’t, but it’s none the worse for knowing its place and working within its own framework. The characters are occasionally simplistic in design, but the two main protagonists – Audrey and her police colleague, Detective Rod Rodriguez, are both warm, human and engaging; as is their romance, which gently flourishes against the backdrop of the wider plot.

I read this novel with interest, partly because of my previous career in wedding photography, as I was interested to see how accurate Audrey’s characterization would be. Pleasingly, the book does well to bring her career authentically to life, so clearly is well researched and understood.

A great novel works by creating a world which the reader fully immerses and believes in, no matter how fantastical or improbable. However, I did struggle to fully sign off on the primary mechanic which swings the story into a new gear, namely where the killer identifies Audrey from a photograph in the newspapers, twenty years on, when he only knew her briefly as a child.

You’ll find this an enjoyable read, particularly if you’re looking for something to entertain rather than challenge. Cotton Jeffries has done a good job here, and there’s mileage in these main characters for future outings.
Thanks to #netgalley for the read!

Observant and artistically-inclined Audrey Markum once provided key evidence in a murder investigation when she was a little girl. Now grown up and a professional photographer, she makes part of her living doing crime scene photography, which also allows her to notice important details and help solve cases. While helping on a current case, she navigates a budding romance and also her fears about the imminent release of the murderer who was imprisoned in part because of her testimony 20 years earlier. All of this intrigue on multiple fronts sounds like a good setup for a novel, and this quick read breezes along until the unsatisfactory ending to the main crime story. At some point in a police investigation, we expect a pivotal moment (or important evidence) that leads to a conclusion, but not much reasoning is given for the solution to the whodunit. Instead, it sort of seemed that once the secondary plots were resolved the author was ready for the book to end and just finished it.

Thanks to Netgalley and Sunbury Press for a digital advance review copy.

Seeing In the Quiet is a decent police procedural but was just a tad too simple and predictable for my taste. The premise, that one of the main characters is hearing impaired, was what drew me to the book. And Jeffries does a good job of making the reader feel what that’s like and how it impacts her.
Audrey Markham is a wedding photographer who supplements her income by doing photography of crime scenes for the police. Growing up with a hearing problem, she has developed a real eye for detail. The author makes a point of driving this home, having Audrey pick up clues that the police miss.
The main death being investigated involves a fatal fall down the staircase by a wealthy woman. The woman’s three children are all suspects and their lack of alibis is almost comical. There’s also a romance angle as Audrey and the lead detective, Rod, have just started seeing each other outside of work.
In her youth, Audrey found the body of a neighbor’s son, leading to the father’s arrest. Now, 20 years later, the father is out of prison. It’s not giving anything away, as it’s such a cliche, to say he’s looking for revenge.
The story alternates between the three POVs - Audrey, Rod and Gary. As scenes are sometimes seen from the perspective of more than one character, there’s the occasional repetition. It felt like Jeffries got bored with the book and decided to end it. The ending of the storyline concerning Gary felt rushed, while the murder investigation just sort of faded away.
My thanks to Netgalley and Sunbury Press for an advance copy of this book.

Audrey has experienced hearing loss since she was a young girl. She thinks this helps her see and notice things that others may not. She uses this ability while working as a professional photographer for weddings and as an employee with the police department. Also as a young girl, Audrey found a missing boy in the woods whose father, Gary Adams, was arrested for his murder.

The story follows Audrey 20 years later as a young adult as she helps investigate crimes for the police department. She soon learns that Gary will be released from prison and becomes worried about her safety. In a secondary storyline, Audrey works closely with Detective Rodriguez to help solve a potential murder of an elderly woman.

I really liked the characters of Audrey and Det. Rodriguez but I had a few problems with the format and the storylines. Each chapter was told from a different characters point of view. In some instances, this made the story repetitive. I thought the main action of the story with Audrey and Gary happened too quickly and it was over before it started. The secondary storyline just kind of went no where. Overall it is an enjoyable quick read.

Thanks NetGalley for the book!

The first book in this Audrey Markum #1 crime series..

Audrey Markum is a photographer, her work is mostly with weddings, but she likes to supplement that income where she can by being on call as a police photographer.
The latter often having her called out at all hours of the night, in all kinds of weather.

Being quite severely hearing impaired since early childhood, exacerbated by many childhood ear infections, Audrey needs to wear hearing aides which are sometimes a burden in themselves. She often can’t wait to get home and remove them, just to enjoy the quiet.
But Audrey believes her hearing loss is often an advantage in as much as the silence helps her to focus more intently on the details of things that might otherwise go unnoticed. This has proved to be an asset when working with the police as she can often notice little things which may have been missed otherwise, and record them with her camera for the police to scrutinise later.
This attention to detail has made her a popular choice when police need a photographer, and has even earned her a cute nickname from one of the senior police detectives.

The story starts off with a focus on an incident which happened when Audrey was a schoolchild where she became involved in a murder case, then the story jumps to the present day (in her adulthood) where she becomes embroiled in another crime case.
This time the danger is palpable and Audrey becomes the focus of a lot of attention…not all good unfortunately.

It’s a hard story to review without the risk of spoilers so I will just say that it is a compellingly good read as there are so many implicating factors at play that you find yourself completely drawn in…hoping that certain prevailing conditions don’t adversely affect some difficult situations. It certainly turns up the intrigue.



A really enjoyable crime fiction with lots of promise for a follow on story with the promise of book #2 which I now look forward to reading also.

A great introduction to a promising new police procedural series.

*Love the cover art!*

4⭐️s

Many thanks to NetGalley and Sunbury Press Publishers for my electronic copy to read and review.

Although the novel was relatively easy to fly through AND had such an interesting premise, it was unfortunately predictable and some of the chapters were repetitive. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the quick read regardless.

Thank you to the author and the publisher for this ARC through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sunbury Press for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

Seeing in the Quiet by Linda Jeffries is a crime procedural about a hard-of-hearing photographer getting involved in crime solving, while being haunted by the events of her past.

Synopsis:
Thanks to a childhood riddled with ear infections, Audrey Markum learned to rely on her sight instead of her hearing from a young age. When one of her elementary classmates went missing, her keen eye for detail led to the discovery of his body and the murderer being incarcerated. Now, twenty years later, the murderer is released, and he is looking for revenge.
Maintaining her relationship with crime solving even as an adult, Audrey works as a photographer for the police, while developing her own wedding photography business. When a long respected member of the city's elite is found dead in her home, Audrey is called in to photograph the scene. Working closely with the charming Detective Rod Rodriguez might be her favourite part of this particular job, and when he asks for her assistance, she is happy to use her knack for noticing the little things to help him out. Together they attempt to figure out if the death was an accident or a murder, and maybe Audrey can figure out her attraction to Rod along the way. That is, if her past doesn't hunt her down first.

I picked up this book from NetGalley because I found the cover intriguing and I also love crime procedurals. Unfortunately, I didn't love it as much as I had hoped I would.

This was a read rooted in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, and it maintained a very close connection to the city throughout. I'm guessing the author is a local, and there was a clearly a lot of love and care put into the setting on page.

Audrey was a solid main character. I found her inner dialogue to be fairly engaging, but the switch from her childhood to her adulthood was jarring. Even with the writing issues I had, I cared for her character by the end of the book. Her disability was treated with tact and care, and I appreciated the constant mentions of her hearing aids and the lack of angst surrounding them. They were simply a part of her, the same way her disability was.

I unfortunately didn't enjoy the other two POV characters. Rod’s inner dialogue was fairly flat and uninteresting, and the villain was very one-dimensional. It felt like his point-of-view chapters were unnecessary, especially considering that removing them would have made the rest of the book feel scarier and more intense. As the book is now, with both his and Audrey's POVs, the stakes feel a lot lower than they could be.

The general narration was often repetitive, and there were several scenes (and whole chapters) that could have been cut without impacting the story. The inclusion of every moment of every day from all three narrators got grating after a while, and it made a lot of parts feel like padding and fluff. The writing itself leaned heavily on telling instead of showing, and it made me lose interest as I was reading. Especially with the amount of dialogue that was boiled down to “then they talked about [insert topic here]”. It definitely got frustrating, and it made the romance plotline read as very deadpan and unfeeling.

The procedural elements were not as strong as I had hoped for, and I found a lot of the plot to be predictable and run-of-the-mill. In the end, the concept was interesting, but I found the execution lacking.

“Audrey always seemed to see things better than she heard them, her eyes easily catching and holding onto the smallest details while her ears drifted in and out of the world around her.”

Seeing In The Quiet is the first book in the Audrey Markum series by American author, Linda Cotton Jeffries. With her hearing affected by infections in her youth, Audrey Markum developed an eye for detail at an early age, so her career as a photographer is probably no surprise. Her wedding photography business still in its infancy, she also works part-time as a photographer for the Pittsburgh police, which sometimes requires her to testify during a court case.

Her first-ever visit to a court house came when she was in the third grade. A classmate went missing and Audrey caught sight of the edge of a shoe, the kind Toby Adams wore, poking out of the rain-battered earth, in the woods. Her earlier observation of signs and behaviour that Toby and his mother, Lois unwittingly displayed were enough to put suspicion onto the husband and father, resulting in a prison sentence of twenty years. Gary Adams is about due for release…

When wealthy widow, eighty-two-year-old Margot Pelletier is found at the foot of her slippery marble stairs, it looks like an unfortunate accident, but there are plenty of questions that need to be asked. Audrey diligently snaps the scene, noting tiny details, and Detective Stanley “Rod” Rodriguez values her opinion and insight. He’s also attracted to her and, recently single, makes a tentative approach, which is not rebuffed.

Interviews with each of Margot’s children reveal a dearth of alibis, along with plenty of financial motives for hurrying the old woman to her grave, but both her children and her staff exhibit genuine grief at their loss. Rod revisits the scene a few times and takes Audrey along for her view point. They attend Margot’s funeral together, observing the attendees.

Meanwhile, as she follows her daily routine and goes on photographic assignments, Audrey feels like she’s being watched, and also catches glimpses of someone who looks like Gary Adams. Her building’s security is not very good, even if she is personally very diligent. And then, confirmation that Adams is stalking her…

This is an excellent police procedural with the unique perspective of a hearing-impaired protagonist. Jeffries gives the reader a tightly-plotted tale that features appealing characters and includes a nail-biting climax in which Audrey proves to be a gutsy heroine. Rod’s case has a realistic resolution, and more of this cast is most welcome.

This is a gripping addition to the mystery/crime/romance genre. The eye-catching cover design might attract readers, but it’s the well-written contents that will have them seeking out the second instalment, Picturing The Dark.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Milford House Press

As a child, Audrey Markum’s keen eye for detail led to the discovery of a child’s body and the identity of his killer. Now an adult, that early skill has led her to open her own wedding photography business. But even struggling entrepreneurs have to pay the bills, so Audrey also works as a photographer for the Pittsburgh police department. The fact that she has a hearing loss does nothing to slow her down. She might even describe it as an asset.

When Margot Pelletier, a long-respected member of the city’s elite is found dead at the bottom of her home’s sweeping staircase, Audrey is called in to photograph the confusing scene. With millions on the line and a set of siblings definitely down on their luck, there are multiple lines of inquiry to pursue and her friend, Detective Rod Rodriguez finds himself tasked with answering the key question. Did she fall or was she pushed? Audrey is eager to help, for personal and professional reasons.

However, Audrey’s attention is pulled away from the case when she realizes that the child’s killer has been released from prison and invaded her quiet neighborhood. Suddenly, Audrey finds herself fighting for her life as he attempts to settle the old score. Suspense and romance team up in this fast-paced novel that will have the reader rooting for Audrey and perhaps, sharpening their own focus while tuning out all the noise!

Fast paced and well written. Really enjoyed this story. Will recommend to others.

I found Audrey’s keen eye for detail and her job with the police department very interesting. The story was somewhat predictable and some chapters were repetitive, but I liked it anyway. Audrey and Rod were both good characters. Some of the others seemed random. Gary Adams is certainly the worst of the worst. It seemed like the author could have taken some of the storylines deeper, but it still worked.
Reader copy courtesy of the publishers at NetGalley for review.

The author effectively paints the picture for a hearing impaired individual in our world. I found the plot to be interesting, although I wanted more from the secondary storyline about the wealthy family. It was a bit unclear as to the purpose of the ongoing exploration of that crime other than to set a place for two of the main characters to meet. The writing style was easy to breeze through, and I finished this book in two quick sittings. Would recommend to fans of quick thrillers.

Received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

I enjoyed that Audrey's hearing loss wasn't a weakness for her, she was a great main character and I enjoyed getting to know her in this book. Linda Jeffries has a great writing style and I enjoyed the way the plot was written. The mystery worked well and it had a tense atmosphere, the rest of the cast worked well. There were moments of heart in this book and everything felt realistic. I can't wait to read more from Linda Jeffries.

“No, you didn’t do anything wrong. Come here, Pumpkin.” Audrey climbed into her father’s lap, and his arms came around her. She could smell the soap he used and spied a few whiskers he’d missed with his razor. Her mother came back into the room and knelt beside her father’s chair as he spoke quietly and carefully. “Toby had been hurt, badly, before he died. Someone choked him until he couldn’t breathe anymore. Then they buried him in the woods. We looked all over the woods when he was first lost, but it wasn’t until . . .” “The rain, it was the rain, wasn’t it?” Audrey asked, and her father nodded."

Great book! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book! I was invested from page one! This book had a bit of everything! It had suspense, intrigue, a crazy murderer, mystery, and a few crazy twists and turns! The storyline was very interesting and kept me glued to my Kindle! I definitely recommend reading this book as it was well worth reading! Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!