People are dying at a luxury retirement community . . . and not from natural causes.Ruth Mosby is the VP of operations at Serenity Acres, where the privileged elite go to die. For a hefty fee, wealthy retirees can live the good life in this posh Santa Barbara community—even after they outlive their money. Ruth thinks this is a fine arrangement, but the savvy new boss has a new rule: if you can’t … rule: if you can’t pay, you can’t stay.
Ruth is deeply disturbed when destitute residents start dying at an alarming rate, as if on cue. Even more troubling, a macabre note accompanies each departed guest. Surviving guests whisper about an “Angel” who assists with suicides. Ruth has another word for it: murder.
Ruth enlists her neighbor, an ex-detective named Zach, to discover the Angel’s secret identity. However, the two have a painful history, and Ruth has dark secrets all her own. To solve the mystery, Ruth must descend from her golden tower—but can she bear the consequences of revealing her own sinister truths?
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I had no problem disliking Ruth Mosby from the beginning of What She Never Said. She’s the judgmental busybody turning in her neighbors for the slightest infraction. She’s the patronizing manager pacifying employees to make her job easier without actually doing anything for them. The stickler for rules holds most of society in contempt for the disorganization and chaos of their lives.
And then chaos pays Ruth a visit.
The upscale retirement facility where she works is purchased by a mega-conglomerate, and Ruth is passed over for the position she’s spent eighteen years working toward. Her new boss is twenty years younger, a corporate guy, and pushing her toward the door. Bodies are piling up as seniors die seemingly from natural causes… until the causes aren’t so natural, and not all the dead are senior citizens.
But it’s “what she never said” that continues to plague Ruth and damage lives. My dad used to say, “You might get over, but you never get away.” Ruth is determined to get away with the lies of two decades ago, despite the cost.
This is a solid read with plenty of unanswered questions and mystery. All the characters are broken dealing with their pain in different… and harmful ways.
I liked Zach and Adam. While their descent into self-abuse and depression came with heavy prices and hurt those around them, that was never their intention.
Ruth is a different story. I understood her but will probably never like her. For over twenty years, she’s put herself in a box of rigid routines and anything that disturbs those routines is at fault and must be dealt with.
Several baits and switches point to different suspects, but I’d figured out who the serial killer was long before the end. To be honest, I don’t feel this author was trying to keep the identity hidden until the end. It felt more to me like additional time to get inside their head and see how they manipulated the other players.
A nervous habit of Ruth’s helps to bring about a good ending, but there is still much healing in the future for the characters in What She Never Said. Especially Ruth.
Enjoy!
Real-life problems, intriguing characters, greed, passion, and dark secrets are all neatly packed into Catharine Riggs’ newest thriller What She Never Said, a compelling read that will keep you awake well into the night.
I received a free copy of this book. This is my honest and thoughtful review.
From the moment I read the synopsis, I knew I had to read this one. The idea of euthanasia has always been an intriguing concept to me, especially in fiction, and having perhaps a serial killer use it as a means to murder the elderly without too much suspicion seemed like a fantastic story to delve into. And I couldn’t have been more correct!
The book is divided into sections titled after one of the seven deadly sins, and opens with brief glimpses from the “Angel’s” perspective. This person truly tows the line between good and evil, believing their assistance is helping another, but their true motivations suggest a desire for ultimate control. Secrets are extracted in exchange for help; however, everyone has secrets, and some people are simply being killed to protect that information. Every character is flawed, and those flaws not only drive the plot, but keep suspicions mounting until the very end. Everyone has a motive, calling into question the confidence of this entire facility, and really any institution charged with caring for the most vulnerable among us.
“How naive I’d been not to have known the truth: there is no escaping the past.”
Spanning a realistic timeline and told in multiple yet seamless perspectives, this is a slow-burning, deeply twisted, and uniquely framed mystery that packs a powerful punch. As the identity of the killer is slowly revealed, readers become privy to the secrets that fester for each character, and unfortunately for all involved, these burdens are not without a price. The story features an array of compelling discussions surrounding ageism and sexism as well as dynamics in relationships following trauma. The author’s deft storytelling created not just an unsettling and suspenseful read, but one that kept me on the edge of my seat and the pages flying! This ended up being the perfect book to get me out of a reading slump because I DID NOT want to put it down!
Although this is the second book in a series, I believe that these books are loosely linked by location and not by characters. I look forward to picking up WHAT SHE GAVE AWAY soon and can’t wait to read what else the author has in store next!
I’ve read two books now by author Catharine Riggs, “What She Gave Away” and her latest, “What She Never Said.” In both novels, she exhibits a real talent for creating characters with deep-seated quirks and foibles, some with serious personality disorders. But it’s what she does with her characters after presenting their flaws that make both books so compelling. By degrees, she reveals events in their pasts that have shaped the way they barge or bumble through life, pasts that hold mistakes and painful events that have marked them for the remainder of their lives.
But wait—even lives mired in regrets can be resurrected. And there lies the real drama.
In “What She Never Said,” the author gives us two very realistic characters who share a past so full of guilt and shame, they can barely speak with each other, which is awkward considering they are still next-door neighbors. It’s when they try to make peace with the past and begin to work together at Serenity Acres that their old wounds are exposed and reexamined, while murder and mayhem tiptoes around them.
On top of fascinating character studies, there is an insidious mystery. The flawless writing swept me along like rapids. I can hardly wait to see what the author has in store in her next novel!
Often tense, always page turning, and with well-judged touches of dark humour.
What She Never Said by Catharine Riggs is a story of Ruth Mosby is the VP of operations at Serenity Acres, a retirement home for the elderly. This is mainly a home for the affluent but they are told that if they run out of money that they can stay until the end. A new company takes over and does not want to carry out that promise.
When the book starts out, to me, Ruth is an unlikable character, kind of snarky but funny at the same time. Not to say that this is a funny story, but there is a bit of humor. Ruth has a next-door neighbor, Zach, an ex-detective, who lost his son and wife, and Ruth’s son Adam was involved when he was a little boy, but they have still remained friends.
There is a person at the retirement home that is the “Angel” who is assisting commit suicide. These people belong to the Goodnight Club. Ruth finds this disturbing and enlists Zach’s assistance by giving him a job so he can assist in her investigation to find out who the “Angel” is.
Ruth has a daughter Alice, that she does not see very often and a son, Adam, who has a history of getting into trouble with the law. To try to keep him out of trouble she gets him a job at the retirement home also. But an employee who is also a drug dealer gets murdered and Adam is involved. Ruth does not believe that her son is a murderer so she is more determined to find out who is the killer.
Some other characters are Kai, who ends up as manager of the home after the new company takes over, Ruth coveted the job and was disappointed that she did not get it. There is Ember, an employee of the home, a free spirit. Also, there is Pastor Sam who admits that she assists in the suicides. But what about the people that can’t pay? Who is killing them?
I enjoyed this story and read it in two days. Even though Ruth is a snarky character, I did like her. Zach, I felt sorry for because of the circumstances of his son’s drowning and the death of his wife. He became a loner and a hoarder. The story is kind of scary as it tells a scenario that could conceivably happen, where people are eliminated because they can no longer pay for their care because their money has run out.
This book is the second in the Santa Barbara Suspense series. I like this one so much I will most likely read the first in the series. Great read!