This is the first book in the virtue falls series that I have read and boy have I been blown away. Christina Dodd does not disappoint. Her elegant way with words paints a picture that creates a bond between the characters and the reader. Whether you love their antics or hate certain parts of their personality, you are captivated by the characters themselves. As you learn more about them through the journey of the book and watch them change, a part of you also grows and changes with them. The use of light and dark also changed as the characters changed. Dodd was able to beautifully use the dichotomy of light and dark to emphasize both the negative and positive things about her characters. Every character mentioned in this book helps add depth to this book showing that even side characters are needed to enhance the story. The setting for this book is filled with so many details, I kind of wished I had a map of the town with the most frequently visited places because then I could get a sense of how close or far everything was. It seemed to me that the places I thought were far were really close while the opposite is also true. This book, while it can be read as a stand alone, should most likely be read as part of the Virtue Falls series. There are several mentions of other characters that have made their appearance in the other books. If you read this book without reading the other books, there is a high chance that you'll wish you started from the first book in the series. I highly recommend this book who loves Christina Dodd's work as well as those looking for a highly suspenseful book that offers several plot lines all worked into one.

I received an advance copy of this book. Set in Virtue Falls which gives a small town feel where everyone knows everyone but terror lurks there. I enjoyed the story of Merida and really got caught up in the storyline between Stag and Kateri. At one point I thought the book was going to leave me hanging in some of the love story side of things. This was an edge of your seat book with lots of mystery.

The Woman Who Couldn't Scream is part of the Virtual Fall Series by Christina Dodd. I have not had the pleasure of reading the previous books but this one stood well on its own. However, I would like to know more about Sheriff Kateri Kwinault. Her part in this story seems to be a continuing one. It is very fascinating as it is bordering on bizarre.

The Woman Who Couldn't Scream has said mute woman within the story looking for revenge but that is only part of the story. It is a tightly structured complicated plot that seems to go off in several directions but all comes neatly together by the conclusion. This book is part thriller, part mystery, part suspense, part police procedure, part mystical, and part romance. Yep, it has it all, making it a captivating read.

An ARC of the book was given to me by the publisher through Net Galley.

If you get the chance to read The Woman Who Couldn’t Scream, then you're in store for a real thrilling adventure. The plot was compelling, to say the least. This book reminded me of the earlier years of JD Robb’s In Death Series. And if you’re a fan of Robb’s In Death Series, then you know what I am talking about. Being that this is book #4 in the Virtue Falls series, I didn't have any problem following along.

With enjoyable characters and several mysteries to be solved, The Woman Who couldn’t Scream is highly recommended for all readers who enjoy a good mystery suspense that will leave you guessing until the very last page.

Christina Dodd has quite the knack for writing stories that pull the reader in whether they want to be pulled in or not. I am not a fan of thrillers with serial killers, but this book was so good that I wasn't even that freaked out! This is a standalone book but in the Virtue Falls series about a small town in Washington State with a touch of fantasy or paranormal or Indian folklore. This is Kateri’s story and her story actually weaves in and out of all the Virtue Falls book. But if you don't know her back story, Ms. Dodd does a great job incorporating it into this story! Another great read, with wonderful secondary characters and just enough romance to be called a romantic suspense book! I highly recommend this book! And if you haven't read the other books, please give them a try! Virtue Falls is a fascinating place.

The Woman Who Couldn't Scream by Christina Dodd was another suspenseful thrill ride from the first page until the end.

This story invites the readers into Kateri's life so we get a chance to know Kateri from her childhood through her adolescence. It also introduced us to a childhood friend of Kateri's, Merida Falcon. She has a story that is truly dramatic and heartbreaking. However, she is a strong woman and has survived. This books two stories but so tightly interwoven that as the story progressed I was drawn more and more into it. A intricate plot, strong characters, plenty of twists to keep a reader guessing and two HEAs. However, I do have a question for Ms. Dodd - what happened to Uncle Albert and Aunt Rose? I would love to know that justice was served. I also want to thank Ms. Dodd for Rainbow. As much I as loved Kateri, I loved Rainbow more for the unique person that she was in each book.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley. All of the above opinions are my own.

Christina Dodd is a master of the mystery/romance/thriller genre. This is the 4th book in the Virtue Falls series but each can easily be read as a standalone. The references to the other books are all explained without it becoming repetitive.

Sheriff Kateri Kwinault has no idea what is on it's way to Virtue Falls. She's trying to track down a father son duo that have been in a crime spree. The Terrances are drug dealers, prison escapees, & are armed & extremely dangerous. They'd already attempted to kill her in a drive by shooting. Instead the waitress was in the hospital in a coma. While she is hunting these two, they start to find bodies with their hands, face &/or necks cut up. Is there a serial killer around? Is it the work of the Terrances or someone else? During all of this drama, two visitors surprise her - her step sister & her childhood friend. What do they want? Are they involved in everything going on?

Merida Falcon has come to Virtue Falls to exact revenge on the man that she thinks stole her life away. She wanted to reconnect with her childhood friend Kateri too. Merida was known as Merry Byrd when Kateri knew her. However, she was involved in a plane explosion & had to get massive plastic surgery. She had to make an unholy alliance in order to afford it & married a man years older who had to control her. She's changed her appearance dramatically from what she looked like when she was married. How are so many people in Virtue Falls that knew her from her former life? And how are they all recognizing her? Why does she feel like someone is stalking her?

This book has a fast paced high intensity plot with a variety of twists & turns. There is a lot going on but it isn't disjointed at all. Everything happens in its time & for a reason. As a reader, every time I felt something had reached its climax, something else happened & you were off & running again. The relationship between Kateri & Stag is going strong & is emotionally intense. This book has everything needed to grip the reader's attention & not let it go until the book is finished.

After a horrible accident Merida gave up everything to be beautiful, even though she remains a mute. She has to do whatever her husband wants but when he passes away she runs and disappears. She goes back to Virtue Falls and catches up with her friend Kater.
Kateri is fighting so many things right now and having a serial killer in her town isn't helping. She has to lean on the one person she doesn't want to
This book has so many twists and turns putting it down is almost impossible.

** i received a copy of this boook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) provided by the Author and Publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an fair and honest review.

The Virtue Falls series books all have captured my attention and have delivered gripping suspense and wonderful romance. In "The Woman Who Couldn't Scream" we got a twofer story that delivers twice the suspense and twice the romance. It takes awhile for everything to develop, but it is well worth the wait.

Beautiful Helen is the trophy wife of a very rich, very egocentric old man. He treats her as if he owns her and in a very real way, he does. Helen is the perfect woman, beautiful, build and silent. A traumatic accident years before left her without the ability to speak. After he dies, Helen reinvents herself yet again. She disappears and remerges as the beautiful, reclusive Merida Falcon in the small coastal town of Virtue Falls, WA. Her plan is to exact revenge on the ones responsible for her life altering accident. Only one problem, too many people know her from her previous life and someone wants her dead.

Kateri Kwinault is the recently elected Sheriff of Virtue Falls and she too knows a lot about life altering accidents. She also knows Merida from a time before . . . Kateri has her own problems with a hunky boyfriend she doesn't quit trust, a revenge seeking crazy, a town that elected her by 2 votes and a slashing serial killer on the loose. A whole lot to handle when your best friend is lying in a coma and you are recovering from a gunshot wound.

The Woman Who Couldn’t Scream by Christina Dodd was excellent. Once again we are in Virtue Falls with Kateri Kwinault, who is the newly elected sheriff of Virtue Falls. She is currently recovering from a gunshot wound and busy chasing down the criminal who did that. The newest character is Merida Falcon, an old friend of the sheriff.

Merida had a mixed up life, once a foster child, later a college graduate, a trophy wife and now finally someone she chooses to be. She has tried to disappear from her old life and reinvent herself only to have an old boyfriend (who tried to kill her) and an old bodyguard (from her trophy wife time) show up and mix up everything. Plus someone is killing women in Virtue Falls and the clues are minimal. Kateri has her hands full with her old friend and the new crimes and her new bo.

I really enjoy Christina Dodd’s books. She is a great writer who really manages to weave real and unreal and great characters together into a book I cannot put down once I start reading!

The Woman Who Couldn’t Scream by Christina Dodd is a great read!

Sometimes farfetched but actually entertaining, this well written thriller has intriguing characters in Merida/Merry/etc. and Kateri. I had not read the earlier books in this series but I don't think that was an issue- I was able to follow along even if the plot periodically went sideways. I imagine Dodd has a wall chart where she tracks what's going to happen and how things are related. It's difficult to write a review without spoilers but suffice it to say that this is a pretty good read. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Not really sure how to review this one. The basic storyline follows the two main females, Merida, whose trying to get closure and Kateri, the new Sheriff of Virtue Falls. There certainly lots of intrigue and somewhat fast paced. There were definitely parts of the story that you had to check your brain at the door. But overall it was an interesting read.
I read this as a stand alone, which didn't really cause any issues. I've read Christina Dodd before so I'm familiar with her style.

Christina Dodd rocks...these books just keep getting better and better... I read this in less than 2 days...I don't know she has so much going on at all times and yet I'm able to keep up. Kateri loved her from the beginning..and who wouldn't want Stag ?.... Mix in the crazy drug dealer... a serial killer...the half sister..sweet dog Lacey...Rainbow and the rest of Virtue Falls residents...and lets not forget Helen AKA ----, --- the women who couldn't scream... I can't wait for the next book.

As a trophy wife, Merida could do little to escape the hell her husband put her through. After his death, she takes the chance to first disappear, and then to exact revenge on those responsible for her pain and suffering. However, little in Virtue Falls is what it seems and soon Merida will have to fight for her life all over again.

Verdict: I come and go from the Virtue Falls series picking them up as they suit me, and overall, I generally love Christina Dodd books. This one was no exception. There is something to be said with how Dodd sets the pace of the book that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. She also takes the time to weave several stories together all at once making it a much more complex read than it appears. The only drawback I had to this particular book is that I had a hard time connecting to Merida. Often times she felt cold and somewhat one-dimensional. On the flip side, readers have been following Kateri throughout the entire series, and here, she simply popped off the pages. Overall, this was an excellent romantic suspense. I can’t wait for the next.

This is a good book with lots of interesting characters, but I didn't realize it is part of a series so I need to go back and read those books as well. Dodd is an excellent author and I look forward to reading more of her work.

Fourth volume in the Virtue Falls series, we have here a romantic suspense heavier on the suspense side than on the romance side. The synopsis is misleading as there are in reality two heroines to follow and two couples formed at the end, and Merida, who’s featured in the synopsis, isn’t the one who has the most important place in the book.

So on one side we follow Merida, brand new widow, who wants to take revenge on the man who tried to kill her 9 years ago, which led to heavy surgeries and her marriage to her late husband. I didn’t really understand why she took refuge in Virtue Falls as it’s not where her target, Benjamin, lives. He’s only there because he followed her (please note that he doesn’t know who she really is, he’s jus intrigued since he met her before her husband’s death). And she seeks his company once she learns there’s a killer after her on the pretext that Benjamin hasn’t obtained what he wants for her yet and so he’ll protect her until then. Please note also that Merida is mute, but she manages to be understood perfectly especially because lots of people are quite gifted with sign language in this place…

On the other side we have Kateri, recently elected sheriff, who doubly wants to prove her worth because she’s the first female sheriff from a Native American minority, double reason for people not to trust her and to put her abilities down. She’s on the traces of a man who wounded her friend now in a coma, to whom is added a killer slashing women’s faces. There are numerous allusions to facts that happened in the previous volumes or novellas, and at times I was a bit lost by the lack of details even if not so often.
There’s also a story about a frog god, Native American legend which is mentioned and used near the end, and once again I wonder if the fact I didn’t read the previous stories was detrimental to my reading because I thought it was under-exploited.

The investigation about the killer is solved in a satisfying way, and I must say that even if I suspected some points I hadn’t caught everything so I was surprised when I had the whole story. The solution of the hunt of the man who wounded Kateri’s friend was more anecdotal but ends with a quite funny scene with Kateri’s half-sister.
The romance side is rather light in spite of two couples to set even if the one who the more endearing is Kateri and Stag (which isn’t surprising as they are those we see the most).

There’s a lot of hopping from one thing to another, from one plot to the other, who finally prevented me to really connect in the end. I thought the whole lacked rhythm, and at times there are mini cliffhangers when the next chapter goes with the other heroine, which is annoying.

In short I really liked the author’s historical but I’m not convinced by this first RS I read in spite of certain qualities. I’ll have to try another one to make an opinion.

I have not read this series before, but I have read her books in the past. This book was too much! It was well written and any one of the story lines were good, but there were to many in one book! Kateri and Stag, Kateri and Lilith, Kateri and the frog god, Merida and Benedict, the search and capture of John Torrence. THREE assassins. Kateri should have had her own book with everything going on. Who was the book about...Kateri or Merida. The title suggests Merida but I felt that the book might have leaned more towards Kateri. Way too much going on!

This was an intriguing premise, but the middle got kind of monotonous and the end result with the romance portion was rather predictable, The bad "guy" was a lovely surprise. The start of the book had an 80's feel to it - was that intentional on the author's part?

As usual, Christina Dodd gives readers a fast paced, well developed story. While this one didn't hold my interest as much as others, I loved hanging out with the characters from Virtue Falls again - even if I did miss a book or two!

I hadn't pegged the killer(s) and I love that in a story. The multiple relationships and activities going on just added to the depth and enjoyment.

Two well-written stories that don’t belong together

I would like to thank Christina Dodd, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

From the very start of The Woman Who Couldn’t Scream, I was hooked, and I could not bear to stop reading for any reason, because I had to know what happened next. I had to know what was going on. As I was reading, I was utterly enthralled by the intelligent script, the fast pace, and the intriguing suspense. I didn’t have any idea who the culprit was, and it drove me nuts.

The characters were great. I liked Merida, loved that she was mute. That detail made a good character into a fascinating one. I was slow to grow on Benedict, but by the end, he’d proven to be a worthy romantic hero. And Kateri’s an old friend at this point. All three of them had arcs and became better people.

The writing, stylistically, was fantastic. Hands-down five stars. But…

As I sat down to write a synopsis for this review, I realized I wasn’t sure which story to summarize—and that’s a problem. There are two different plots held together by the thinnest of threads. Kateri’s tale was women’s fiction, and Merida and Benedict’s was romantic suspense. While they were both fascinating stories in their own rights, I feel that trying to mash them together was unfair to everyone. Both stories deserved their own books.

I’ve had mixed feelings about the entire Virtue Falls series. I was never sure of what these books were trying to achieve. Romance? Suspense? Fantasy? Police procedural? A continuing storyline for one character? A small-town saga? I enjoyed the stories, but they all seemed to have been tossed together in a disorganized heap.
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All right, I’m heading into spoiler territory. You’ve been warned.
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I freaking loved the idea of Merida Falcon and Benedict Howard’s plot—LOVED it—but its foundation was weak. The conspiracy was brilliant, I didn’t see I coming, but its success hinged on Merida’s easy acceptance of Benedict’s betrayal, and that I don’t buy. She loved him with every fiber of her being, and she had to be blind, deaf, and stupid not to know he loved her in return, or at least cared for her deeply. I mean, she believed he would take care of her when she got out of the hospital, disfigurement and all. Yet as soon as someone else tells her that he’d tried to kill her, she believes it. I don’t understand why she didn’t seek confirmation beyond the pictures, seek it straight from him. Yes, it would have caused her unbelievable heartache to know with certainty that he’d betrayed her, but at least she’d know the truth. She got the heartache anyway, and it was caused by a big, fat lie. Personally, I’d rather grieve the truth than grieve a lie and find out later I’d been a faithless fool. And I don’t recall a good reason why she hadn’t had faith in his love; maybe she’d always harbored a debilitating lack of confidence in their relationship because she was a poor orphan begging for donations and he was a grossly rich business tycoon. I’m not sure.

What I am sure of is that this plot could have been its own full-length novel. Dodd skimmed the surface of their entire story, to the point that a couple of times I felt I’d missed a scene, that something significant had happened while I wasn’t watching. If she fleshed this plot out, filled in gaps, let us get to know the characters more intimately—strengthened the foundation—I’d totally pay for it again. I loved it that much.

The only way I can discern that Merida and Benedict’s story had anything to do with Virtue Falls is that Merida moved there for some reason. Kateri asked her during a conversation, but Merida never answered. I think we’re supposed to believe she moved there because she knew that Kateri, a friend from childhood, lived there and wanted to reconnect with her—which isn’t complete horse doo-doo, but as I said above, it’s a thin thread. If Merida didn’t move there because of Kateri, then I’ve got no idea.

Aside from the childhood friend connection, the only way Merida’s plot impacted the other one, which revolved around Kateri, was that Kateri had to deal with the crime Merida brought with her, when Kateri already had to deal with enough crap to fill a separate full-length novel. And that leads me to…

The second main storyline—the one that took the lion’s share of the book, I’d guestimate 60-70%. It began in the first book of the Virtue Falls series and has continued throughout, which makes me wonder why on earth Kateri has never headlined. The titles and synopses always focus on the other plot. Kateri’s a very strong character, she could have handled the heavy lifting. Anyway, her storyline picks up pretty much where it left off in Because I’m Watching, less than a week after she was elected sheriff and a meth-cooker named Terrance began leading the cops in a not-so-merry chase. She’s a busy lady, juggling five or six subplots, by my count.

I feel that most of the book’s shortcomings stem from the overabundance of plots. Kateri’s step-sister Lilith was rather an over-the-top caricature of a selfish, shallow society princess. Stag Denali, Kateri’s purported criminal boyfriend, was just kind of there. He had the potential to be a great romantic hero if given the opportunity to shine, but there wasn’t time to cast the spotlight on him, and he was as much a mystery at the end as he was at the beginning. We never found out what the deal was with Phoebe Glass and her son Evan. We never see the fall of the Howards’ corporation or how that all turned out. Did that nasty waitress Linda ever get kicked to the curb? And while some readers might like how Benedict and Merida disappeared into the fog, I needed closure. It was cool to imagine, but an epilogue would have been nice.

Overall, Dodd is a masterful writer…but as a storyteller, she needs to give her attention to one story at a time. Please.

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