Such a Quiet Place by Megan Miranda (2021) Review

Such a Quiet Place is Megan Miranda’s new book coming out on July 13. I’m so thankful to Megan Miranda, Simon & Schuster Canada and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

I couldn’t wait to read this book since reading the synopsis: Picture the perfect neighbourhood – a true community where neighbours know each other, are friends and celebrate everything together. Now picture that two of you are dead, no not just dead, murdered by one of your own.

Ruby has been convicted, mainly due to testimonials of other residents, of the Truett’s murder. The neighbourhood never recovered and now, 1.5 years later, Ruby returns as her conviction was overturned based on new found evidence. Pot stirred, check!

Harper, whose house Ruby lives in, starts to receive threatening notes which makes her question the verity of all events. Is Ruby the killer? If not who is? I couldn’t wait to find out. After reading the book, I think you should pre-order this must have summer read.

This is why: Miranda description of the time and place is outstanding. I honestly felt like I was part of that neighbourhood, feeling the summer heat, the tension and fearing for my safety. I have mentioned before and will mention many more times – If an author will focus on a location (in this case the isolated American neighborhood) and time (Summer), I enjoy it when they make it relevant to the plot and/or almost like a character, in the sense that you develop it as carefully. Megan Miranda achieved both in Such a Quiet Place. I am just happy we don’t celebrate 4th of July in Canada.

You can tell that Miranda considers her plot and her plotting carefully. I really enjoyed how fair she played and how original (to me) the whole concept of the book was. Megan’s characters were mostly strong and she really shined with the development of Harper, Mac, Tate and the Truetts (though we never met them directly, you feel like you knew them). I was just slightly confused in the beginning and took me a while to distinguish between some of the side characters, I also wanted Ruby to be more developed.

If I were to nitpick just a bit, I loved how Miranda used mixed media with the introduction of closed group community posts, and how she made it relevant to the plot. I would, however, liked to see more of it.

if it wasn’t clear already, I highly recommend Such a Quiet Place.

#SuchaQuietPlace, #NetGalley

My total rating: 4.58