In a Quiet Town

By: Amber Garza

Narrated by: Marni Penning, Natalie Duke, Andrew Eiden

Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

"Turn[ing] a familiar suburban setting into a deliciously chilling landscape… Garza once again proves she's a master of twisted relationships."—Ashley Winstead, author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

In this chilling new novel, a woman discovers that her estranged daughter is missing, but no one believes her, until she meets a man claiming to be her daughter’s fiancé.

Tatum hasn’t seen her daughter, Adrienne, in years, not since Tatum’s husband—the pastor in their small California town—all but disowned her. When she finally gathers the courage to secretly reconnect with Adrienne, Tatum’s thrilled she’s even willing to talk to her. But then—Adrienne disappears.

Tatum tries desperately to get the police or her husband to take her daughter’s disappearance seriously, but no one will listen, until a mysterious man shows up claiming to be Adrienne’s fiancé. It’s a relief to finally have someone who believes her, someone who’s trying as hard as she is to find out where Adrienne is. But can she trust that this stranger is who he says he is? And can she find her daughter before it’s too late?

©2023 Amber Garza (P)2023 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

A good story

The only criticism I have is regarding the end of the story. It got boring and unnecessarily long with too much inner dialogue, particularly by the young woman. Other than that, it was pretty good.

Mostly good

Too much inner dialogue, especially in the end (scary) scenes. Otherwise, I really enjoyed the story and narration.

Author Not For Me

The 1 an only review on this book was so well written for this daily deal, I took a chance. I did check out two samples of the two lady narrators, which I felt I could get by with. I personally did not care for male narrator but l think it’s because of the dialogue he had to perform. Sadly, The reviewer did a better job on her review than the author did on the book. I felt the dialogue was on an amateur’s scale . The publisher summary was spot on, and the three points of view should have done the job, so it comes down to word choice.
Were my comments of help?

Mother knows best

I love that the mother had such a good intuition about her daughter's personality.

Lost interest

I lost interest after listening for less than hour- too many details that aren’t relevant or thought provoking.

daughter's strength and forgiveness

Mother's constant whiney, pathetic voice. Her regret would have been more believable if she portrayed other characteristics and strengths.

Great book

A book about Control, abuse, and murder.

This is a buck you cannot put down.
I definite must read

Well….I finished

The mother narrator is just hard to listen to. My husband gave up. I finished but cringed whenever she spoke. The story needed editing but was okay.

A bunch of unlikable characters

Decent story. But with very unlikeable characters. Very hard to get through. Just didn’t want to finish.

Predictable

This book felt like the author was pushing too hard to make a so so idea for a novel into something great. Predictable with stereotypical characters. The end with the full circle back to God felt like she was working hard not to alienate the religious fiction readers.