I really enjoyed the story and setting of this one, although I felt at times that the teenage characters spoke like how an adult would write a teenager. The mystery was solid and and I was guessing until the end. I was given this arc for my honest review.

2.5 stars I guess I wasn’t as enthralled with this book as others. For some reason the writing did not work for me. At times, it seemed somewhat juvenile, and at other times, the dialogue felt forced and unrealistic. I also felt like the plot never really soared and was one dimensional. I’d have to agree with others that this is not the type of thriller with twists or turns. The reveals are few and far between and lack the surprise element. It’s more of a slow burn mystery that shows it’s hand midway through the story. There also seemed to be a lot of internal dialogue from characters whose only purpose was to lead the reader by the hand and spoon feed the dilemma. I prefer not to be told but rather come to the conclusions on my own so it sometimes felt repetitive and annoying.

With that said, the book kept my interest during pivotol moments of plot development as I was intrigued to see where the storyline would go. Up until the last third, I had high hopes for a zinger ending. I’d have preferred the ending if it had been written with more shock factor and suspense but folks who enjoy action thrillers may get more out of it than I did. I have also read a number of high caliber psych thrillers of late so it could be that this fell flat compared to those. I guess one can’t love them all and She Was The Quiet One held promise but in the end didn’t deliver for me.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and Michele Campbell for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. Publication date was July 31.

When She Was The Quiet One opens we learn there has been a murder, but we don't know who was killed or why or by who. There are several protagonists. Orphaned teenage fraternal twins, Rose and Bel are now with their wealthy grandmother. She enrolled them at Odell Academy, an exclusive boarding school, which was fine with Rose, but not so much for Bel. Rapidly, their already fragile relationship deteriorates. Sarah and Heath, themselves former students, are teachers at the school who have been made dorm heads. On the surface they appear to be a happy family, but they have baggage. Over time, their lives and that of the twins intertwine with frightening results.

The characters are well defined, some flawed more than others. The story is told in different voices and as a result we get to know the characters quite well. The narrative deals with complex sibling relationships, narcissism, and infidelity. In this precisely crafted and suspenseful novel, lives spiral out of control and the characters find themselves in unforeseen situations . I found this book to be well worth reading. Highly recommended.

4.5-stars! She Was the Quiet One is an Adult Thriller that takes place at a private school for very wealthy kids. Let's get this out of the way real quick - I am absolute TRASH for any story that takes place in a private school or prep school. I went into this book blind and had no idea that this was the type of story this was, so yeah, elated at that.

The plot centers around twins, Bel & Rose Enright, who after losing both parents get sent to Odell Academy, a prestigious New England boarding school (aka. playground for the priviledged) by their wealthy Grandmother. Rose, the more grounded and studious of the two, looks at this as a blessing - a place where she can reach new academic heights and strive toward loftier goals than ever before. Bel, the 'wild one', if you will, devastated by the recent loss of her beloved mother is more of a loose cannon and falls in with a group of 'bad girls' almost immediately.

The story also follows a married couple, Heath and Sarah Donovan, who work at the school as teachers and dorm heads. Their marriage is explored in detail and although perfection on the outside, holds its own troubles, resentments and buried secrets. Heath has lofty goals of his own - dreaming of one day becoming headmaster of the school; Sarah the supportive wife is left on the sidelines a lot of time.

Heath and Sarah's relationship is definitely where the adult element comes from, there are a lot of complicated themes woven into this storyline. The interactions between the students at the school, on their own, could fit in very well in a YA Thriller; it's when the adults and kids begin to mix that things become messy. If you are the type of reader who doesn't enjoy teenage drama, you may find this one tedious, so just know that going in. There is bullying, hazing, general romantic drama but for me, it absolutely worked.

In my opinion, this wasn't wickedly suspenseful - it was more that things began to unravel before our eyes at a steady pace until the final scene. I loved the format of it - which mixes in detective interviews...okay, back up...a crime has been committed, you do not know to who or by who and that is what is revealed throughout the entire story. It was really well done and I applaud the author for keeping the pace steady and engaging the whole way through!

I would recommend this to anyone who loves Adult Thrillers and I also would recommend this to readers who may be looking to transition from more YA books to Adult books, as it has elements of both. I would however say trigger warning for sexual assault, hazing, bullying and unlawful sexual contact. If these are topics that you are sensitive to please be aware before going in.

Thank you so much to St. Martin's Press for providing me the opportunity to read this book and provide my opinions. I had so much fun with it and definitely plan to pick up Michele Campbell's other book, It's Always the Husband.

This was such a good psychological thriller. It follows the lives of orphaned twins Bel and Rose while enrolled in the prestigious Odell Academy boarding school, a school full of privileged kids with big ambitions, lots of secrets, and a whole lot to lose.

The story is told from different POVs of unreliable narrators. The character development in She Was The Quiet One was excellent. They're not exactly what I would consider likable people, but chances are you will find yourself picking sides from pretty early on.

This intense murder mystery develops beautifully and masterfully with twists and turns throughout. The epilogue quite honestly surprised the heck out of me.

The book was compelling and thrilling and impossible to put down. I definitely look forward to reading more from this author.

Twin sisters, a forever bond, and even if there are differences, someone that always has your back in good times and tragedy right? Or not so right.. I thoroughly enjoyed this thriller about Rose and Bel, orphaned and sent to boarding school. Bel, a true bad girl, running with the older bad crowd and Rose, the studious, not as attractive nerd. The story quickly draws the reader into the complex relationship between the girls. Trying to help the girls fit into their new school are Mr. and Mrs. Donovan, teachers, advisors and dorm heads of Moreland Hall, with a bit of conflict within their own relationship. The author did a great job developing the characters with depth so that I cared for them and could feel their emotions coming off the page. The twist at the end was one I did not see coming. I will definitely watch for more books from Michele Campbell.

Thrilling book! I really enjoyed this book. It kept you guessing most times. The ending was a bit drawn out but this is still a great book!

3.5 Stars. Thank you to Netgalley and, St. Martins Press for this copy.

Twin sister Bel and Rose have had a rough go, after their mother passes away they are sent to live with their grandmother. The girls are attending a prestigious boarding school and fall into very different crowds. Bel finds the popular crowd and is quickly accepted in. Rose just wants to make a good impression and study hard, has a harder time finding friends. One of the twins is murdered and everyone is pointing finger at each other, was

I love a good thriller with a lot of drama, scandal, and murder. This was a quick, easy read that had me flipping pages fast to see what was going to happen next, I was able to figure out did it about half way threw, but I really liked the directions it went with the teens, all the rumors, and speculations. I could have done without epilogue.

Twins Bel and Rose start at Odell Academy, a boarding school full of wealth and opportunity, but also temptations and malice. As the sisters choose sides, their relationship, and that of those around them, change for the worse, leading to destruction and tragedy.

This book starts out with a lot of suspense. The first few pages pack a real punch, and had me flipping pages to find out what had really happened.

I also really liked the use of police interview transcripts. I thought this was a really clever way to hint at what had ended up happening.

This book became very predictable for me about 1/3 of the way through. I knew what was going to happen essentially every step of the way, and what did happen seemed very cliched to me.

This book wasn't bad, it was an interesting read, but it was far too predictable and cliched. It felt like a subject that had been done before, and done better.

Sometimes the experiences you have had in life make details in books hard to believe. Such was the case for me in reading She Was The Quiet One by Michele Campbell. This book is about twin sisters Rose and Bel who after the death of their mother gets sent to a boarding school by their grandmother. The sisters are very different, one loves to follow the rules and the other doesn’t. They look different, act differently and view school differently. These differences mean the girls are often fighting and out to get one another, using other people at the school to help them. The novel opens with a murder and then flashes back between different characters and police interviews until you find out who was murdered and by whom.

I attended a boarding school when I was in high school. It was a school for the arts so most of the kids wanted to be there. So maybe that was part of the difference in my experience and the experience of the characters in this book. But I think the thing I had the biggest trouble with in this book was believing how easy it was for the kids to leave their dorms and the freedom they seemed to have in going all over the place. Because boarding schools are filled with underage kids and the school is responsible for those underage schools they make it much harder to break rules then this school seemed to. I didn’t find the ease of breaking rules to be very believeable.

I also didn’t like a single character. Not that I have to like characters to enjoy reading about them. But every single character in this book was so incredible selfish and had such low self esteem that after awhile it got pretty old and it seemed like I was just reading different variations of the same character.

Reading gives me an opportunity to look into lives that are different than my own. The Odell School and being surrounded by such confused and selfish people is not a life I would want to have. I also like books where character raise above the challenges they face and grow and become better. I didn’t get that from this book either.

This book just wasn’t for me but if you did not attend a boarding school as a teenager and like very dysfunctional people then try this novel out.

This book had a lot going on!

At times it read like a ya novel, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and it was very predictable as to who the murder was but perhaps that’s because I read this genre a lot. I would recommend this if you were just staring to get into the thriller genre.
Bit slow paced in the middle however I was keen to see how it all panned out. I enjoyed the flashbacks and the different points of view, it kept me reading until the end. It was an easy read and fairly engaging.
One thing I will say is that I did not think the epilogue added anything.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC.

Despite the rave reviews on this novel, I didn't like it much at all. To the point where I didn't finish reading it. I got several chapters in and gave up. The dialog is lacking so much that it was not entertaining at all. Kids don't speak the way that Campbell writes, and it was off-putting.

I enjoyed this mystery very much. Boarding school relationships are always ripe for a myriad of conflicts. I would recommend this book and thank you for letting me read it,

I had heard good things about this book and was excited to get an ARC from NetGalley. However, I was very disappointed once I started reading it. The writing was very simplistic and the characters were one dimensional stereotypes. I figured how who did it pretty easily and there weren't really any surprising twists in the book.

This was my first read by Michele Campbell and I really enjoyed it. I was hooked from the beginning. I was a little worried at first that this was a YA novel, but quickly realized it was just set at an upscale boarding school. It was definitely not a YA novel in my opinion. You meet two sisters, Bel and Rose, after losing their mother. Their father had passed away years before this and now the girls were going to live with their Grandmother. Bel and Rose couldn't be more different. Most of the book is the struggles between the girls and what different lives they lead. Bad friend decisions, affairs, SnapChat incidents, and so much more lead to the demise of one of the sisters. Over all, this book is a very good read. I would and will be recommending it to others. I also plan to check out Campbell's other book. Special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

#SheWasTheQuietOne #NetGalley

This book was a quick read with a twisted plot and while the ending was somewhat predictable there was a nice surprise twist. The book starts off with a murder and an identified suspect and then flips back and forth from the current investigation to what led up to the murder, which was very enjoyable. Well written and I would highly recommend!

This book wasn’t for me. Instead of posting a negative review, it is my policy not to review the book on my site or label it as DNF (did not finish) on Goodreads/Amazon.

As is the case with most thriller/suspense novels that I read, my review will be relatively short, since I believe it’s always best to go into these types of books knowing as little as possible. I will admit that I was a little put off at first from reading this book, as I read in the summary that the story revolves around a murder mystery at a boarding school and quite honestly, this past year, I had already read more than 1 book with this same setup. However, I decided to give it a go and am glad I did, as this one turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Most books with this type of theme usually have a narrative that focuses primarily on the students at the school and the various trouble they get into, with the teachers and/or faculty usually only briefly mentioned as side characters -- this one was different in that two of the central characters the narrative revolved around were actually teachers at the school and their roles in advancing the plot were equally as important as the students. With that said though, I didn’t particularly like any of the characters and actually found myself getting increasingly frustrated with some of them as the story moved along, but that didn’t prevent me from enjoying the overall story, which was quite compellingly written. The narrative format, alternating between the viewpoints of various characters interspersed with witness testimony from the police interrogation, actually worked really well in this instance – I liked that the testimony was worked cleverly into the plot in a way that helped build up suspense but without giving anything away.

Overall, I enjoyed this one, as the story was engaging and kept me turning the pages, despite the fact that I had already figured out most of the “mystery” early on. Perhaps I am getting better at figuring these things out now, but I felt that, while it definitely had its suspenseful moments, this was not the type of story that was filled with so many twists and turns that it ended up feeling like a roller coaster ride. The only real twist was in the Epilogue, which I thought was cleverly done in that it was unexpected, though not necessarily shocking. My only real complaint is the ending, which felt a bit rushed to me and was also a little too predictable, to the point of feeling anti-climactic, but luckily it didn’t detract too much from the rest of the story, at least not for me.

She Was the Quiet One is the second suspense / thriller attempt by new author Michele Campbell. I haven’t yet read her first book It’s Always the Husband, which came out last year, but I have that one on my TBR and do intend to read it one of these days. While I can’t comment on how Campbell’s sophomore effort measures up to her first, I will say that this one was encouraging enough to get me interested in reading more from this author.

Received ARC from St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley

This was a great, suspenseful book. The character development was fantastic, and I loved the ending ;) I will definitely be reading more of Michele Campbell in the future--you have a devoted fan!

She Was the Quiet One is the first book I’ve read by Michele Campbell. I honestly wasn’t sure if I was going to like it or not. I found myself rolling my eyes during conversations between the teenage characters. They just seemed unbelievable, like teenagers don’t talk to each other that way. But to be fair, I don’t know how teens at a boarding school speak. 🤣 I enjoyed Campbell’s writing style besides that small point.
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I did end up enjoying it. Consider reading this one if you don’t need a lot of twists in your thrillers and if you don’t mind reading about inappropriate relationships. A lot of reviews I’ve read suggest that She Was The Quiet One reads more like a YA book and I’d have to agree!
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Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an egalley in exchange for an honest review.