Goldilox and the Three Weres: Review: Lake Silence by Anne Bishop

Lake Silence
(The Others #6)
Anne Bishop
Release: March 6, 2018
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In this thrilling and suspenseful fantasy, set in the world of the New York Times bestselling Others series, Vicki DeVine and her lodger, the shapeshifter Aggie Crowe, stumble onto a dead body . . . and find themselves enmeshed in danger and dark secrets.

Human laws do not apply in the territory controlled by the Others–vampires, shapeshifters, and paranormal beings even more deadly. And this is a fact that humans should never, ever forget . . .

After her divorce, Vicki DeVine took over a rustic resort near Lake Silence, in a human town that is not human controlled. Towns like Vicki’s have no distance from the Others, the dominant predators that rule most of the land and all of the water throughout the world. And when a place has no boundaries, you never really know what’s out there watching you.

Vicki was hoping to find a new career and a new life. But when her lodger, Aggie Crowe–one of the shapeshifting Others–discovers a dead body, Vicki finds trouble instead. The detectives want to pin the man’s death on her, despite the evidence that nothing human could have killed the victim. As Vicki and her friends search for answers, things get dangerous–and it’ll take everything they have to stay alive.

Review:

Lake Silence marks the next story arc in Anne Bishop's The Others series. And while I recommend that you read the first five books in the series, I think you could easily start with this book without getting lost. This book acknowledges that the world of The Others has changed after the first arc, but it doesn’t refer to events in the previous books much other than that.

The story is a bit different this time around. Where the first arc was mostly told from the points-of-view of the Others in the Lakeside Court, Lake Silence deals more with the human side of Thasia and specifically, it's a chance for us to really see the consequences from The Great Predation, especially what it did to the smaller settlements. In addition to focusing more on the human side, we also get a lot more focus placed on the Elders and Elementals, which were more on the sidelines in the first arc. They're still super creepy, in my opinion.

This book introduces us to Vicki DeVine, a human living in the little town of Sproing. She received an old run-down resort known as The Jumble in her divorce settlement and has been fixing it up and getting it ready for guests. Soon after she's completed renovations, a dead body is discovered on the property. The body could possibly be connected to her ex-husband and a plot to reclaim The Jumble. Unfortunately, most of the police are wanting to blame Vicki for the murder. When her friends and neighbors come to her defense and help her investigate, she realizes that she’s been surrounded by more of the Others than she ever thought she was. By claiming The Jumble as her own, she’s become part of their world.

I really liked Vicki! She's a woman who has been through a brutal marriage and still struggles daily to get past the poison her husband ingrained in her throughout the years of their marriage. But she is moving on, albeit slowly. I loved the glimpses we get of her unguarded thoughts that show us how spunky she is. It makes the brutality of what her husband did to her stand out more. She’s so unsure of herself and censors herself because she has been told repeatedly that her place is to be unseen and hidden. I look forward to the series continuing and seeing Vicki break out of that shell she's formed around herself. Also, it looks like we're going to get another great slow burn romance in this arc and I am totally here for it!

Vicki's only paying lodger Aggie, a Crowgard, is also a wonderful addition to this series. She's inquisitive like the Crowgard we met in the first story arc, but she seems to understand the humans a bit more than other terra indigene in this series. That understanding comes through in her investigative skills when she's able to put herself into the mindset of the humans in certain cases. I loved the parts of the story that were told from her point-of-view! I'm interested to see where her character goes from here.

Lake Silence drew me in like all the other books in this series and I can't wait to see where this new story arc goes from here.

ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley