This was an extremely well written novel and well developed characters that I grew so attached to.

The setting was exactly right-the town of Hunts Landing is full of secrets. The main character, Abigail Adams, is a historian and journalist who is assigned to do a story on a 40 year old cold case surrounding the murder of a young woman. As Abby digs deeper into the past, she finds that many things in her quant, quiet town are not as they appear.

The epilogue set in 1969 and told from Rosalie’s perspective was the perfect way to bring this case to a close.

I received a free audiobook copy from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

This was an interesting read. I have a degree in history and I appreciated the attention to detail involved in researching historical events. I found it interesting that Abbie pretty much admits to being an unreliable narrator and investigator, and it keep the reader wondering if she's deliberately misinterpreting clues and interviews.

This is a good book if you like investigative journalism, historical mysteries, multiple viewpoints, and neatly tied up endings!

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for providing me with a free digital copy in exchange for my honest rating and review.

I really enjoyed this mystery. It kept me engaged the whole time. There were some things at the end that really surprised me. Sometimes it was hard to remember who was who since there were so many side characters, but overall it was a good read.

The dual narrators for Abbie and Joss lend some variety to the story. Each brings their own identity to the story. When focused on Joss--the tv personality--the male narrator is bold, confident, and solid; there's not much difference in line delivery. When focused on Abbie, the female narrator reflects Abbie's inner struggles more--there's hesitance, frustration, pacing changes--and more energy is put into the varying characters by adding accents or vocal ranges. Personally, I think Abbie's narrator added more to the story, BUT it was nice to get a different focus from Joss. Listening at 2x speed, I had no issue keeping up with either voice.

Local historian turned journalist Abbie Adams is assigned to investigate a 1960s cold case that rocked her small town. Luckily, Abbie's college friend Joss-a documentarian- comes to visit/investigate his own story and helps her along the way. As Abbie investigates the murder, topics of racism, segregation, loyalties, and coverups become just as relevant modern day as they were all those years ago.

It was nice to see Abbie balancing her job with her home life (and 2 teenagers) and depth was added to her character as the reader learns about her family history and education background. We get snippets of MANY other characters, but the focus remains solidly on Abbie who carries the story well.

My only real "complaint" was the wrap up. The 11th hour full-confession is a personal pet peeve of mine. Someone's been hiding their crime for DECADES, and when they have the chance to take out the one-person that could expose them, they go on a diatribe, divulge every moment of the crime + their motivations, and don't actually eliminate the threat. It always strikes me as lazy and unsatisfying writing.

Overall: 4 stars I'll tell my students about: alcohol, language, racism, death/murder, trauma, stalking, violence

**Thank you to NetGalley and CamCat Books for the free ALC. All opinions expressed are my own.**

I am not good with remembering names, so found parts of this book a little confusing. Times like this when I feel I am better off reading a physical copy . However, the story is good and keeps you on your toes. An extremely sad book about race, class, love and jealousy

Captivating story. At first I thought I wouldn’t enjoy the mystery so much because in general I’m not a fan of cold cases, but this one caught my attention. I think some of the unraveled facts might have been too easy to find after over 40 years, but it was a nice book. I love detective stories and this one did not disappoint.

4 stars.

Thank you Netgalley and publishers for an advanced audiobook copy in exchange for my honest review.

First and foremost, a large thank you to NetGalley, S.K. Waters, and CamCat Books for providing me with a copy of this publication, which allows me to provide you with an unbiased review.

Debut thrillers can be highly exciting, especially if they author puts all their effort into the publication. S.K. Waters appears to have done just that in this mystery, which held my attention all the way through to the closing pages. A great piece that mixes mystery with history and a little personal struggle. Waters peppers the piece with exciting plot lines and provides a strong protagonist to lead the way. An exciting read that has me hoping S.K. Waters has more to offer soon.

Abbie Adams has a been through a great deal in the last number of years. A single mom after her husband’s death, Abbie is left to raise two teenagers on her own. When she is offered the chance to dabble into the world of journalism, this historian leaps at the opportunity to dig a little deeper into a local cold case from 1969. As Abbie starts peeling back the murder of a black woman who was breaking barriers at the local college, she discovers that Frank Wexler it at the heart of it. Wexler has long been on Abbie’s ‘dislike’ list, ever since, as her faculty advisor, he helped ruin her academic career by squashing her PhD thesis defence. The Wexlers are tangentially involved in the victim’s life and using their power to stay mum on the subject.

While she has been busy piecing things together, Abbie’s college friend, Joss, arrives in Alabama in search of a new idea to pitch for a history program. Joss is working in the Civil War era, but stumbles upon something that could help Abbie with her own investigative work. Just as Abbie appears to be making some headway, witnesses who remember the event begin being killed, as if someone is trying to silence them and keep the murder from ever seeing the light of day.

With strong Southern themes pulsing through the mystery, Abbie will have to work all the angles to see if Frank Wexler, a young college student in 1969, might be holding onto a secret and how that could turn the tides for all involved. With a new cop in town trying to prove himself and bodies piling up, Abbie Adams will have to use her intuition to stay one step ahead of the killer and push through the muck of historical norms to get to the truth and help solve the case. Waters proves she has what it takes with this gripping debut novel.

To say that this book pulled me in would be an understatement. I have long enjoyed novels that mix mystery with history and S.K. Waters did that with such ease. Her ability to construct a strong foundation helped push the story along, adding just the right amount of history to a story that is rich with so many themes. The characters prove well-founded and provide insight into this small Alabama community and all the secrets it has been harbouring for decades. The subtle banter between Abbie and Joss begs more exploration, as does Joss’ own journey. Plot twists abound in a piece that seeks not only to present a mystery, but also push societal norms of the time as the civil rights movement was at its boiling point. Waters kept me wondering and I wanted more, which I hope will come in the form of a second series novel or a new standalone. Now, to wait (im)patiently until then!

Kudos, Madam Waters, for a great novel and a story that kept me up well into the evening to read!

✨Netgalley ARC review ✨

The Dead Won’t Tell by S.K. Waters ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Publication Date: September 20th, 2023.

I listened to the audio book, but it will also be available in physical book form. Mark your calendars! ~ Preorder available now 💀

I love a good crime book with a mystery and this book gave me just that! 🔍

A journalist named Abbie Adams finds she has bitten off more than she can chew by accepting a cold case from the 60’s. While researching, Abbie realizes a very powerful man in town is involved but he refuses to give any answers. She then finds some of the witnesses she’d been interviewing are coming up dead. Abbie must fight to keep herself alive and to figure out what is going on.

I was engaged from start to finish because it was action packed from the start. The mystery aspect also kept me engaged throughout and I really enjoyed the different character personalities. I highly recommend this book if you enjoy mysteries!

#thedeadwonttell #skwaters #honestreview #bookstagram #goodreads #netgalleywonders #netgalley #netgalleyreads #reviewer

This took me longer to finish than I usually take for a book. The narrators were great. I just spent most of the book hooked on Rosalies case and found the other storyline to be mostly unrelated and uninteresting till they wrapped it up nicely with the connection between the 2. I would have been just as happy with just the murder mystery and I didnt NOT expect the outcome!

This is everything you can ever hope to want from a cold case, historical crime fiction, small town crime, or southern crime novel. The twists and turns going through two separate but slightly overlapping historical mysteries will keep you guessing. I will be keeping an eye out for S. K. Waters as I would love to read more of these characters.

This was okay … sort of a cozy mystery / cold-case / small town / historical-fiction mashup.
Overall, it was rather slow-paced and I had to force myself to pay attention, even re-starting at times because it just didn’t grip me.
That isn’t to say it’s bad by any means—just not gripping.

What I loved:
Small town vibes.
House full of kids / teens, & often extras.
Great home environment.
Creepy stalker.


<b>Overall: 3 stars.</b>

Based on this, would I read more from this author?
I’m not sure, I’d be open to it, I think.

<u>Audio:</u>
The narrators:
Female narrator did well, using different accents, and choosing to perform rather than just dictate, robot-style.
The male though, sounded like AI, choosing to just dictate the words, emotionlessly.
Overall sound quality was good, but there were long pauses at the end of some of the chapters … to the point that I thought there was an issue and went looking through my device to find it, before the next chapter would finally start.

<b>Female narrator: 4 stars.
Male narrator: 1 star.
Overall production: 4 stars.</b>

3.5 stars
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to review this book. As an ABD PhD student in history who had a similar experience with a toxic older male supervisor, I was immediately sold on reading this book! I absolutely adore Christine Lakin’s narration so that was another huge check mark! However, the male narrator did not work for me. And I also felt the complete lack of acknowledgment for the forces of racism in Alabama in the late 60s (as well as the current day) to be way beyond the pale. What self-respecting student of history (regardless of if it was largely during the revolutionary years— fyi, slavery was definitely a thing then!) wouldn’t look at the murder of a black female student on a barely integrated college campus through the cultural lens of the time?! The mystery itself was compelling and the investigative reporting was well handled. For a first book, there was a lot of promise there. I’ll read their next book!
*Thanks to CamCat books and NetGalley for this audiobook copy for review.

The Dead Won’t Tell, by S.K. Waters, tells the story of Abbie Adams, a journalist who has the chance to have her own byline. The Times, where she works, is wanting to look into the cold-case death of Rosalie DuFreyne. Rosalie was killed in July of 1969, the same month as the NASA space flight and lunar landing. At the same time, Abbie is joined by her college friend Joss, who is a historian and documentarian looking for his next subject matter. I really liked the character development in this story, as well as all that I was able to learn about this time in history. I also enjoyed seeing the friendships develop between the characters, and appreciated that the Epilogue really brought the book together. Thank you to NetGalley for providing me a copy of this audiobook for my review.

The Dead Won't Tell by S. K. Waters
Narrated by Christine Lakin and Will Collyer

Abbie Adams has had some very hard knocks in life. She's a widow and hasn't been able to let go of her late husband despite his being gone for many years now. Her parents were killed in a car wreck several years ago, leaving her house poor. And the man she trusted as her mentor rejected her thesis, slamming the door on a career as a historian, closing off that earning potential when she sorely needed to support herself and two young children as a single mom.

Now working as a journalist, Abbie has been handed her first byline assignment of digging into the cold case of a black woman killed in Hunt's Landing on a very important night in 1969. Frank Wexler, the man who shot down her thesis, could be involved in this woman's murder and Abbie isn't sure she can let her hatred for the man go long enough to see the facts clearly.

What Abbie does have is a wealth of interesting friends who can open doors for her investigation into the murder and everything going on at the university the night of the murder. With all the people assisting her in finding out the facts and many people trying to block her way to finding out the facts, plus two very busy school aged kids, Abbie's home is a revolving door of visitors. This is especially true when her college friend, Joss, arrives at her home to stay with her as he looks for a long lost treasure pitch for the next TV program he wants to host.

This is a very busy household and story and Abbie and Joss's goals intermingle at times. There is a lot of local history here, much resentment among many of the characters concerning past events and relationships and even some Civil War tidbits that are part of Joss's search for treasure. With both Abbie and Joss having tight deadlines and so much going on my mind was whirling with all we learn. Thank goodness Abbie has a white board up in what she calls her war room so I didn't have to rely on the faulty white board I keep in my head. The characters are very interesting and I would love to see Abbie, Joss, and all their friends again in a future story. The narration is great with two multi talented narrators giving the story extra flair.

Thank you to CamCat Books, Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), and NetGalley for this ARC.

4⭐️

I had the audiobook of this mystery read by Christine Lakin and Will Collyer who do a good job with the narration.

Abbie a single mom whose husband died in Iraq is a historian turned journalist given the cold case of a murder in 1969 to investigate. She finds a connection with her former tutor Frank Wrexler.
It has a separate less covered thread of Abbie’s friend Joss looking into a story about Civil war hidden treasure. It’s set in the South.

I enjoyed listening to this, I especially enjoyed the historical threads which added flavour to a mystery storyline.

The characters are likeable well fledged making them interesting. I especially liked Sirus (a minor character)

It looks like there’s some art work in the book that we don’t get in the audiobook version, but it’s not detrimental at all.

It’s a slow burn in the first half, but then the suspense increases as there are a lot of revelations. It’s an impressive debut. It has potential to be a series.

Thanks to CamCat Audio, NetGalley, and S. K. Waters for the chance to listen to this great mystery audiobook. Filled with a cold case from 1969 the night man walked on the moon, as well as hidden secrets in a small town in Alabama then flash forward to current day as a single mom tackles the case as her first byline journalism assignment. Add in her old college friend who comes to town to look for buried treasure for his history show and see how much trouble they can stir up bringing the past into the light of day. Loads of fun and love the characters in this book.