Keep You Close

A Novel

By: Karen Cleveland

Narrated by: Erin Bennett

Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

A woman must confront her sense of right and wrong when the one person she loves most is accused of an unimaginable crime. From the New York Times best-selling author of Need to Know....

A strange sensation runs through me, a feeling that I don’t know this person in front of me, even though he matters more to me than anyone ever has.

Stephanie Maddox works her dream job policing power and exposing corruption within the FBI. Getting here has taken her nearly two decades of hard work, laser focus, and personal sacrifices - the most important, she fears, being a close relationship with her teenage son, Zachary. A single parent, Steph’s missed a lot of school events, birthdays, and vacations with her boy - but the truth is, she would move heaven and earth for him, including protecting him from an explosive secret in her past. It just never occurred to her that Zachary would keep secrets of his own.

One day while straightening her son’s room, Steph is shaken to discover a gun hidden in his closet. A loaded gun. Then comes a knock at her front door - a colleague on the domestic terrorism squad, who utters three devastating words: “It’s about Zachary.”

So begins a compulsively listenable thriller of deception and betrayal, as Stephanie fights to clear her son’s name, only to expose a shadowy conspiracy that threatens to destroy them both - and bring a country to its knees. Packed with shocking twists and intense family drama, Keep You Close is an electrifying exploration of the shattering consequences of the love that binds - and sometimes blinds - a mother and her child.

“Propulsive.... an adrenaline-fueled narrative that will leave readers wanting more.... Equal parts conspiracy thriller and paranoia tale, Cleveland’s latest exploits the distance between parents and teenagers while exploring the lines a patriot will cross to protect kin.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Cleveland excels at twisting her plots so tightly that the ‘big reveal’ in the end truly is a surprise.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Fast-paced . . . for fans of high-stakes political thrillers.” (Booklist)

©2019 Karen Cleveland (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Propulsive...an adrenaline-fueled narrative that will leave readers wanting more.... Equal parts conspiracy thriller and paranoia tale, Cleveland’s latest exploits the distance between parents and teenagers while exploring the lines a patriot will cross to protect kin.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Cleveland excels at twisting her plots so tightly that the ‘big reveal’ in the end truly is a surprise.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Fast-paced...for fans of high-stakes political thrillers.” (Booklist)

Gripping Page Turner

Like her first novel, Keep You Close intertwines family bonds with national security for a ride that leaves the reader breathless. This book is a companion to her first, but will make sense as a stand alone as well.

interesting

I like how one of the author's previous books tied in to this book.
Central female character seemed naive when it comes to evaluating people/ circumstances she is close too. Looking forward to another novel. Good read... one I wanted to listen to every free minute

lots of moving parts

this author keeps you on the edge of your seat. both of her books are suspenseful from the first word to the last. also the narrator does a superb job of presenting this.

Meh

I had to speed up the playback as the slowly spoken and often repeated questions that the main character always asked herself started to be annoying. Not my favorite of this author’s books.

Excellent

Really enjoy your story telling from a very knowledgeable first hand type of experience. You have a way of bringing the reader into the story.

11 hours of listening to narration of every thought in her head ...

I laughed out loud when I got to “ I should be thinking clearly, but I can’t.” I liked Karen Cleveland’s first book so much that I waited with anticipation for this one to come out. I think she had an interesting concept but the execution was just awful. Maybe they rushed to print? The protagonist made every single dumb move possible, bordered on child neglect, could have avoided death and destruction by using a molecule of common sense ... missed an opportunity for a much better book.

Absolutely Dreadful

What a dreadful story. Completely depressing with a poorly sequenced plot and not one single appealing character. Narrator was quite good but still a Complete waste of my time. Expected Much better quality in every respect after reading the author’s education. Just dreadful.

What??

Enjoyed Karen Cleveland’s prior book, her debut, and had looked forward to this one. It started out well and that start, plus the fact that I had liked her prior book kept me slogging along for ~ ten hours. Wasted hours, though - this is the kind of book where the last chapter is an epilogue, where way too much info has to be crammed in at the last minute to try to tie together the plot. Worse yet, the penultimate chapter ended with the heroine saying she finally knew what she had to do and, despite all the verbiage in the epilogue, there wasn’t a word about either what she had decided or whether she ever did it . It was as if the audible version had skipped a chapter or two, but a quick look at the hard copy confirmed that wasn’t the case.

Cleveland clearly can write; she just needs a coherent, interesting plot .

On the plus side, though, Erin Bennett’s narration was great.