This book was number one on my to be read list. I appreciate given the opportunity to read and review this book. Unfortunately, I was not able to get around to reading this. The character sounds very relatable to me. I do have a physical copy of this book and hope to get to it very soon. I apologize I was not able to review it before the release date.

I really enjoyed this story that is outside my normal area of interest or expertise. I am glad to see inclusiveness in YA titles.

“Panic attacks are a lot like being drunk in some ways, you lose self-control. You cry for seemingly no reason. You deal with the hangover long into the next day.”

This was so amazing! I have actual tears in my eyes now when I've just finished it this second ago. It was so amazingly put and written, the way Sara Barnard did her research about BSL (British sign language) before writing the book. The book was well done and kept me turning the pages. Barnard was able to pull me in and make me think about so many issues while reading this and it really opened my eyes in terms of how different people see and experience the world around them in many different ways depending on their circumstances.

"Love isn't always a lightning strike. Sometimes it's the rumbling roll of thunder..."

Overall, I highly recommend this book. 5/5 stars for sure.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the review copy.

Unfortunately I was unable to read this title due to it expiring on my computer before I could read it. If it had been available for kindle download, it wouldn't have been a problem.

This book was extremely interesting! I really enjoyed the story, and I thought it was nice to see a book give representation to some conditions that we don't see represented in literature all that often.

I must be going through this phase where contemporaries just aren't clicking with me. I dnfed this book at 82 pages. It was an okay book but I just didn't feel like it was going fast enough and it wasn't special enough for me to keep reading at that slow of a pace.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon Pulse for the opportunity to read and review A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard. Steffi is a selective mute. Rhys is a new student that’s deaf and the two of them use sign language to speak to one another. They become friends because of the sign language commonality and their relationship eventually becomes more. This coming of age story contains quirkiness, humor, families that do the best they can and all the insecurities of growing up and being a little different. Young adult content shows the reality of sex and all the awkwardness that can go along with it. 5 stars for the lovable, complex characters!

This book had the potential to very good, but it missed the mark for me a bit.

The description of the story caught my attention and made me want to read it. It revolves around Steffi, whose severe anxiety causes her to experience selective mutism. She’s trying to overcome her difficulties in communicating with others, but it’s hard for her to change. Then Steffi is paired up at school with new student Rhys, who is deaf, because she knows some basic sign language. Signing comes easier to her than speaking, and soon she and Rhys have become friends, and then they become more than friends. Her relationship with Rhys forces Steffi out of her comfort zone, and she starts to open up and speak more to people. But with that change, Steffi has to figure out who she is and what she’s capable of as a person.

First, the positives. I didn’t know much about selective mutism before reading this book, and I haven’t read many books with deaf protagonists, either. Learning more about the challenges with interacting with other people that both Steffi and Rhys experience was the most interesting aspect of this book for me. They are both likeable characters, and they are cute together. Their romance is pretty sweet, although not without its problems, which I thought were realistically portrayed.

However, at a certain point, I started to get bored with the novel, and I actually put it down and read other things for a while before finishing it. The story just drags on a bit too long before coming to a resolution. I actually questioned certain things while I was reading, like: Why am I hearing yet again about Steffi’s best friend’s (to me, obviously troubled) relationship with the guy she likes? What does Steffi’s sister having an accident on a swing have to do with anything? Both of those plot points do eventually serve a purpose, but it takes a long time to get there. I think the story could have been tightened up a bit, and shortening the book would have served it well.

So, this was just an OK read for me. I think readers who enjoy YA contemporary romances and don’t mind a slow paced story would like it more than I did, though.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley for review; all opinions expressed are my own.

This book is a joy! Steffi is such a strong character that moves this book forward. I've never heard of selective mute it made this book just a neat read. I haven't related to a characters mental health as much as I did with Steffi. Her anxiety was spot on for me. It's written so well and makes me understand her and her anxiety. The push and pull that flows through, makes it a quick read. But what I love most about this book is that Rhys is deaf and uses sign language. I wasn't sure if that would read right. However, when I was reading I was 'seeing' them doing sign language, not just talking. I know a little ASL and still learning but these characters use BSL so I know some of the signs are different, but I know what it looks like.

This YA Contemporary story has a main role for family within it I like the family part of this book. How she has two different homes, how both her parents are different from each other. I like how we get to see how each parent sees her, how each of them treats her different. I also like the different sibling role as well.

The friendship between Steffi and Tem felt real. Not fake, not push, just what real friendship is like, the ups and downs. There's no stabbing each other but 100% caring and understanding of who each other is.

Sara Barnard writing is great. She's a new to me author, and I will be keeping an eye out for more books by her. Her plot and characters are well balanced. It's a bubbly cute read, while still being a powerful, truthful.

I know we’re only halfway through January, but I have a strong feeling that Sara Barnard’s A Quiet Kind of Thunder has already secured itself a place on my Best of 2018 list. It’s one of the most gorgeous contemporary stories I’ve read in a long time and I don’t know that I’ve ever related to a main character more than I related to Steffi Brons.
Steffi is a high school student who was diagnosed with selective mutism as a young child and who has lived with social anxiety and chronic shyness all her life. What this means for Steffi is that, for most of her life, it has been nearly impossible for her to effectively communicate verbally with pretty much anyone outside of her immediate family. And because there were even times when she had trouble verbally communicating with her family, she and every member of her family learned how to use sign language as a workaround.

About the only non-family member Steffi is able to easily communicate with is her best friend, Tem. Steffi and Tem have known each other since they were toddlers, and in many ways, Tem has acted as somewhat of an interpreter in social settings such as school over the years when Steffi has just not been able to get the words out on her own. Up until this year, that is. Tem ends up transferring to a new school, and Steffi is on her own. With the help of her therapist, however, Steffi begins taking some new medication and also starts making plans to slowly but surely challenge herself to better cope with her anxiety and shyness.

Enter Rhys Gold, the new boy in school. Rhys is deaf and has transferred to Steffi’s school, and since Steffi is the only student at the school who knows sign language, their teachers decide it would be a great idea to pair them up so that Steffi can help Rhys get acclimated to his new environment. Because Rhys can’t hear, it doesn’t matter to him that Steffi usually cannot speak. They find plenty of other ways to communicate that don’t involve speaking and form a fast friendship that quickly turns into something more.

With so many changes going on in her life, Steffi starts to have a lot of questions: Can she ever overcome her anxiety and go out and live a normal life? Can she go off to college and live away from her parents? If there’s an emergency, would she be able to cope with her crippling shyness enough to get help? And then there are the matters of the heart – is she really falling for Rhys or does she think she is because the relationship is easy because no speaking is necessary? And finally, after all of these years of living this way, if Steffi is able to overcome her anxiety, will she even know who she is anymore? Will she recognize herself?

This is one of those books where there’s so much to love. It has wonderfully-drawn, realistic main characters in both Steffi and Rhys. I fell in love with both of them immediately – Steffi, because I could relate to her crippling shyness and social anxiety as those are issues I’ve dealt with all my life as well, and Rhys, because he’s charming and friendly, and I loved that he left his deaf school because he wanted to challenge himself in an environment where everyone around him was not hearing-impaired.

I especially related to Steffi because of her determination to challenge herself a little at a time to better cope with her anxiety. I remember doing similar things when I was in school, challenging myself to raise my hand and answer questions in class, etc. Watching Steffi in many ways was like reliving many of my own school experiences so of course I was cheering her on every step of the way. I don’t think I’ve ever seen myself in a character as much as I see myself in Steffi.

In addition to having these two amazing main characters, I also loved the focus on friendships and family that Barnard presents in A Quiet Kind of Thunder. I absolutely adored the friendship between Steffi and Tem. Tem is a fabulously well-developed character in her own right, but what I loved most about her was that she just “gets” Steffi. She accepts her exactly the way she is and supports her in every way that she can. I loved how realistic the friendship felt, especially when it came to some of their heart-to-heart conversations. Their conversations are honest and intimate and were conversations that I could totally imagine myself having with my best friend when I was that age.

The family support that we see in A Quiet Kind of Thunder is wonderful too. So many times we see parents that are oblivious to what is going on in their teen’s lives or they are unsupportive. Thankfully, not in this case. Yes, Steffi’s parents are of course concerned about her and are apprehensive about the idea that someday she will move out and go away to college. They’ve known her all her life and have seen firsthand just how crippling the anxiety has been for Steffi. But, that said, they have also done everything parents can possibly do to get her, not only the professional help that she needs to cope with it, but also the support at home. And we see the same kind of support at Rhys’ house, with his parents being on board with the idea of him challenging himself at a mainstream high school, etc. It just made for a nice reading experience to actually like all of the parents that were in the story for a change.

I could probably write for days about everything I loved about this book, but I’ll wrap up by talking a little about the diversity and the portrayal of mental illnesses and disabilities. One of Barnard’s main characters has selective mutism and severe anxiety, while the other is hearing impaired and also happens to be bi-racial. I thought Barnard did a beautiful job of writing a book with a diverse cast of characters without making it feel like she was just checking off boxes.

I also thought she handled the selective mutism, the social anxiety, and the deafness in a well-informed and respectful way. I felt like I learned a lot about all of them, and I loved the book’s positive message that even with any of these conditions, you can still live a productive and meaningful life, and not only that, but yes, you can find love.

Speaking of love, I’ll admit I got a little worried that the book’s message would be that having a boyfriend is somehow a magic cure-all for anxiety. Thankfully, A Quiet Kind of Thunder does nearly the opposite. Steffi clearly acknowledges throughout the story that she is probably doing as well as she is with her anxiety because of the new meds. There never comes a time when she attributes it to having a love life. So no worries at all on that front.

When I first started reading, I thought I was going to have an issue with the romance between Rhys and Steffi because it definitely had an insta-love feel to it at first. I was able to get past that, however, because Barnard takes the time to have her characters explore the same questions I was asking about how they really do feel about each other: Do they like each other because they really feel like they have a connection or do they like each other because it’s convenient? Is Rhys only hanging out with Steffi because she’s the only one at the school who knows sign language? And is Steffi hanging out with Rhys because she can use sign language rather than actually having to speak? As soon as Steffi and Rhys started thinking about their own connection in these terms and started working through their own doubts, I was much more comfortable with their relationship moving forward since it added an extra layer of depth to all of the initial fluffiness.

If you’re looking for a beautifully written coming of age story that also includes a little romance in addition to tackling more serious issues like mental health, I’d highly recommend A Quiet Kind of Thunder. It’s an engaging and moving read that is sure to put a smile on your face.

RATING: 4.5 STARS

This review was really hard to write because A Quiet Kind of Thunder covers a topic that is very familiar and personal to me, and it did so in a way that I so appreciated because it was so real. First, I should start by saying that I don't know much about selective mutism or deafness, so I'll just have to echo other reviewers' thoughts here and say that it seems like the author has done her research on these subjects. What I want to talk about is Sara Barnard's spot-on portrayal of a character who has severe social anxiety. Wow. Just ... wow. I wish this book had been around when I was in high school, back when I didn't know that social anxiety was even a thing and was just drifting from one day to the next feeling so isolated from my peers and like there was some massive defect in my personality. I really hope that this book reaches readers like sixteen-year-old me, who desperately need to see that there are other people like them out there who are going through the same struggles, and that there are things they can do to help themselves not feel so scared and alone.

There were so many times while reading A Quiet Kind of Thunder that I felt like jumping up and down and shouting "Yes! Oh my god, someone else gets this!" Barnard captures perfectly those feelings that I and others with social anxiety have struggled with constantly: the feeling that basic, everyday things like saying hello to someone in the hallway or speaking to a cashier at a store are insurmountable hurdles; the feelings of jealousy when you see "normal" people in social settings interacting with others with what seems like total ease; the feeling like you're not normal, will never be normal, or that there's something inherently wrong with you that can never be fixed. It was so validating to read about a character experiencing those feelings. Equally important were the moments when Barnard showed us Steffi's small victories: those moments of validation when she was able prove to herself that she could do the things that used to seem impossible to her, like answering a question out loud in class, or going to the grocery store by herself, or asking a stranger for help in a dire situation.

The depictions of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and Steffi's treatment process for her anxiety were so realistic, and for that reason, so very important. Meds and therapy, while helpful, aren't magical cure-alls; even with these, Steffi realizes she has to actively take steps to help herself. And even then, there are still going to be days that are a struggle. I really appreciated that Barnard didn't shy away from these hard truths. There's a part in the book where Steffi is having dinner with her family and Rhys, and it's been a good day for her, and she says that if her life were a movie, this is were the movie would end—with everything perfect and happy. But Steffi's story doesn't end there, and Barnard goes on to show Steffi's continued struggles. I think that's important. It's important that Steffi doesn't do a complete 180 by the end of the book and turn into a super talkative, vivacious, charismatic person, because that's not how mental illness works. There's no switch that flips or magical pill that you take that turns you into a different person. Steffi does make improvements, but her anxiety doesn't just go away; it's still something she has to manage, and that's okay.

What I also loved about this book were all Steffi's different relationships: with Rhys, with her parents, and with her best friend, Tem, who all help her handle her anxiety and selective mutism in different ways. Steffi's parents are divorced and both remarried, so it was really interesting (and sometimes heartbreaking) to see the different parenting styles: one side is super supportive, and one, unfortunately, doesn't fully understand or accept that her selective mutism and anxiety truly are things that Steffi cannot fully control. Tem, who has served as Steffi's protector throughout their school years, is mostly understanding, but as they take different paths and begin to drift apart, Tem tends to throw Steffi's problems back in her face or make hurtful jabs. For those reasons, I both loved and was frustrated by Tem (though it's important to note that Steffi isn't a perfect friend either; she sometimes takes her for granted, because she feels that since Tem is outspoken and social, she doesn't need Steffi as much as Steffi needs her). And then there's Rhys. Their relationship was so adorable and one of my favorite parts of the book! Befriending Rhys is what initially gives Steffi the confidence to be bolder, but, importantly, she learns that she can't be totally reliant on him to make her better; after all, Rhys has his own disability and insecurities to deal with. But together they do help each other.

A Quiet Kind of Thunder is a sweet love story, a relatable coming-of-age story, and a truthful depiction of what it's like to live with an anxiety disorder. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I hope that other readers who can relate to Steffi's and Rhys's situations will find it, read it, and hopefully feel less alone because of it.

I was really excited to read this novel. A few years ago I became very interested in learning American Sign Language (ASL) in order to be able to communicate with the deaf community, so novels that include deaf characters are always intriguing to me. Note: This story takes place in the UK, so they use BSL instead of ASL. The main character is also selective mute, which I have been curious about for the past few months, so the overall concept of these two characters' lives connecting was an interesting one for me.

Parts of this really worked for me and others did not. I will outline some of my likes and dislikes below. Although there are certain aspects of this that I don't like, I know that a lot of readers would enjoy this novel.

What I liked

Steffi, our main character's, anxiety was presented really well and overall made her easy to relate to. I found myself able to relate to a lot of her thought processes and fears and appreciated that she had highs and lows as the story progressed.

Rita, Steffi's dog. It was nice to have this grounding for Steffi and to see her at ease with Rita and the other animals she worked with at the shelter.

I also really liked how being deaf, and the deaf community in general, was presented here. Rhys was a believable teenager and his struggles with finding his place in the world were completely understandable.

Some of our side characters were fairly likable as well, particularly Steffi's dad (and her other parents), who, for the most part seemed like real individuals.

What I didn't like

At times characters were introduced purely as plot devices, which I didn't like. This was mostly true of Rhys' friend Meg.

While Steffi and Rhys had a mostly cute relationship, I didn't like how it seemed to quickly devolve to almost an entirely physical attraction. In the beginning they were getting to know each other and it was cute, but that didn't seem to last long.

The overly clean ending was one of the more frustrating aspects of the novel. The conclusion was rather sudden and didn't have a lot of conflict. Steffi had just done things that she thought would bother her parents, she and Rhys had a somewhat negative experience together, and Tem, her best friend, was angry with her for various reasons. All of that was thrown at you there in the last 10-15% of the novel and the resolution happened within pages. It didn't make you think that everything was going to be perfect, but it also didn't give satisfactory resolution to the conflict.

So overall this wasn't terrible, but I found myself being frustrated and annoyed rather than actually enjoying the story. The writing was also a little choppy for me. This started out well, but as I read it lost some of that initial spark and toward the end I just wanted to be finished.

There were things that I liked, but overall this was not a favorite for me.

This was a really adorable but impactful book that discusses some important topics such anxiety. It's a book about finding your voice and finding yourself and maybe even falling in love for the first time. I loved the sweet relationship between Steffi and Rhys in this book. I cannot speak to the repersentation of the hearing impaired so I wont even try. I throughly enjoyed this book.
I recieved an arc of this novel via Natgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'd like to preface this review by stating that I am not hearing impaired, deaf, or living with the same mental health issues that the characters in this book do. As such, I cannot speak to the representation in the book, but it is my belief that it was handled fantastically. Again, that's from my scope and should never outweigh those in the communities represented.

That said, this book was beautiful, truly and wonderfully written. This book follows Steffi who is a selective mute with severe anxiety that makes it difficult for her to speak about her peers, strangers, or in large social situations. She mainly speaks only to her best friend Tem and her family but she's working to overcome her anxiety and start speaking more. It also follows Rhys who is deaf and new to Steffi's school. The two are paired up because Steffi knows BLS (British Sign Language -as the book is set in the UK).

The two form a friendship that leads to first love and discovering how they fit into the world around them and one another's lives. This book is raw and real and discusses a ton of important topics for teens and young adults. The displacement you feel going to University, the ups and downs of friendships, navigating your first relationship, sex, dating, love, and so much more. The family dynamics are messy and loving and Steffi herself-man is she a force. She's in therapy, she's trying medicines for the first time, she's strong and fierce, and the love interest doesn't "fix" her.

I thought every aspect of this book was handled BEAUTIFULLY. Have I mentioned I think this book is beautiful? It's a recommended read for everyone I know. Honestly, pick it up!

Thank you; however, this book was a DNF. The story moved slowly along.

I struggled to get into this book for some reason. It had great potential but it just fell a bit flat for me.

I think the synopsis is pretty good at giving an overview of what this book is about, as is its purpose. It's just not as vague as some are. In this book, there is quite a bit of rep - for sure, anxiety, selective mutism, and deaf rep. If I'm interpreting the story correctly, Steffi's best friend is a POC and Rhys is biracial. The story also involves a child of divorce and touches on grief. Just a heads up, it also contains cursing, romantic situations, and alcohol consumption. It is slightly different with some characters being 18 and of age to consume alcohol in the UK, but still a fair warning because an underage character does drink at one point.


I absolutely adored this story. I felt the characters were all pretty fleshed out and you do see a lot of growth from the whole cast. I liked that the story touched on Steffi using SSRI medication, but wish it had been touched on a little bit more. I felt very connected with Steffi and her anxiety, even though I cannot speak as far as her selective mutism goes. The story was enough fluffy contemporary mixed with real life issues that resulted in a wonderful story. There were times I was just smiling because I was so happy for Steffi. Also Rheffi....my new favorite book couple!

::Reviews will go live on Dec 9::

Thank you for approving me for this ARC. As it is not available for Kindle, I will not be able to read it.