What She Never Said

By: Catharine Riggs

Narrated by: Joyce Bean, Amy Rubinate, Timothy Andrés Pabon

Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

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 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?

©2019 Catharine Elizabeth Manset Morreale (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“In [the] clever second suspense novel set in Santa Barbara, Calif.…Riggs keeps the tension high to the dramatic climax. Readers will look forward to the next installment.” —Publishers Weekly

“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.” —T.R. Ragan, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Lizzy Gardner Series

“Often tense, always page turning, and with well-judged touches of dark humour.” —Ashley Dyer, award-winning author of Splinter in the Blood

I didn’t enjoy it.

It became repetitive at the end. Also it was easy to guess what was going to happen.

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Really enjoyed this book. The publisher’s summary gives more than enough information so I won’t add to the book’s description.
Kind of a devil’s advocate story involving euthanasia vs natural death. It also looks at motivation. Money vs quality of life. There are a few red herrings and some well developed quirky characters.
The narrators worked very well together.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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Thank You.

Serial murder in a senior living community

After reading a review of this suspense novel by Audible listener Shelley (Raleigh, NC) I decided to listen. I'm a Kindle Unlimited member so the audio book was free to borrow. The novel is excellent and the narrating team is outstanding.

What mostly interested me was the fact that the novel is set in a continuing care senior living community (in Santa Barbara CA). It turns out that my wife of 50 years and I moved in to such a community in our NC home town six months ago. These places have waiting lists of one to five years so when our number topped the waiting list at one of the five facilities where we were on waiting lists we decided to downsize selling our much too large house and move now that we are in our mid-70s in order to never be a burden on our three adult children or our grandchildren. We are in reasonably good health, but decided it was time for the move especially since we could get into a newly constructed apartment. In a continuing care community new residents move into the independent living area and there is a promise that if/when greater levels of care are needed the facilities will be available. The greater levels of care are assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing care. So the expectation is that each new resident will eventually die there. This novel indicates people go there to die which is a rather crude way of putting it, but it is not exactly false.

As in the novel there is a one-time upfront fee followed by monthly fees with the anticipation the upfront fee will be large enough to cover all future care costs even if residents become financially unable to pay the regular monthly fees.

In the case of the novel the residents had written contractual guarantees that they would never be kicked out,, but in the real world the guarantees tend to be verbal. In any case these continuing care communities have restaurants, all kinds of recreational facilities, planned activities (optional), and a medical staff (or residents can keep their prior doctors). For independent living there are one to three bedroom apartments or small free standing houses. In our case the facility is in the same town and ZIP code where we lived so we moved a very short distance. Whether the facility is for profit or not the cost structures are similar and the facilities are almost always part of a corporate structure with the corporate offices being located far away. One quickly learns that the local executive director has little real authority because all decisions are made at corporate headquarters. This assure that all locations within the corporation are operated in precisely the same way which helps control costs.

This novel deals mostly the older and sicker residents rather than the healthier ones. Otherwise the novel is realistic (except for the murders). The author understands the business side of senior living communities as well as the issues residents and staff face.

My wife's parents moved into a similar senior living facility near their home town when they were a bit younger than we are now so we were familiar with the process and what to expect.