Becky's View: Some Quiet Place by Kelsey Sutton

Some Quiet Place by Kelsey Sutton
♦publisher: Flux
♦release date: July 8th, 2013
♦paperback, 334 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦stand-alone
♦source: from publisher for honest review

Elizabeth Caldwell doesn’t feel emotions . . . she sees them. Longing, Shame, and Courage materialize around her classmates. Fury and Resentment appear in her dysfunctional home. They’ve all given up on Elizabeth because she doesn’t succumb to their touch. All, that is, save one—Fear. He’s intrigued by her, as desperate to understand the accident that changed Elizabeth’s life as she is herself.

Elizabeth and Fear both sense that the key to her past is hidden in the dream paintings she hides in the family barn. But a shadowy menace has begun to stalk her, and try as she might, Elizabeth can barely avoid the brutality of her life long enough to uncover the truth about herself. When it matters most, will she be able to rely on Fear to save her?

Review: Simply put, there is nothing quite like Some Quiet Place.

How does one even begin to write a character that is so completely devoid of all emotion?  How does one begin to imagine what Fear would look like if you could literally face him?  What first drew me to this book was the incredibly unique concept and exactly how author Kelsey Sutton would pull such a thing off.  Well, pull it off she did, and beautifully.  While main character Elizabeth goes through her daily tasks with no emotion at all, I doubt any reader will read her story with the same indifference.

This story got my thoughts churning.  It had me asking myself what it would be like to really face a dramatic situation with no emotional reaction to it---how you could think something through with such incredible, harsh clarity without things getting muddled and clouded with feelings.  And would that truly be a power…or a curse?

Even though Elizabeth feels nothing, my heart broke several times over for her---in the abuse she faced at her father’s hands, in the daily torment she experiences at school, and watching the closest person she’d ever known as a friend waste away.  There’s an odd little love triangle here, but with one of the most unusual love interests I’ve ever come across.  Fear is always seeking her out, he is desperate to find out why she is the way she is, but in years of coming to her in frustration and testing her immunity in the most disturbing ways, he has also grown to care for her.  The first time he begged her to fight back against her father, my heart nearly melted right out of my chest.

The writing is fluid and lyrical, it still astounds me that this was Kelsey Sutton’s debut. The story unfolds with not even a hint of how it might end, and the explanation was something I never could have guessed.  I found myself unable to put this one down as Elizabeth finds herself facing scarier things that fear. This book had me being visited by many of the emotions it personifies: sadness, curiosity, wonder, and definitely fear.  I loved every minute of it.

  Find Kelsey Sutton online: Website  •  Twitter 

Purchase Some Quiet Place:  Amazon  •  BookDepository  •  Indiebound