Review: Some Quiet Place – Kelsey Sutton

Some Quiet Place by Kelsey Sutton
Published by Flux on 1 June 2013
Genres: Paranormal Romance
Pages: 366
Source: Netgalley
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Elizabeth cannot feel emotions, but she sees the emotions that surround all the people around her - and she can talk to them. She would like to be able to feel as well, and she tries to figure out the mystery of her own numbness when she has the same dream over and over, making her paint her dream and try to see what the meaning of it all is.

*I received a free ARC of Some Quiet Place from Flux via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review*

Some Quiet Place is the kind of book I thought I would really love, and I wanted to love it too. Unfortunately, though, I just couldn’t. The premise is great, the blurb is very mysterious, and the main character appears to be a girl who can ‘see’ emotions.

Very quickly after starting Some Quiet Place, though, I found it to be quite predictable, I realized fairly quickly what was going on, and there weren’t really any surprises for me at all. That the feelings Elizabeth can see are described as some kind of paranormal creature – it isn’t that she can see colors or auras based on what the people around her are feeling, no, she can see the actual feeling itself – and that feeling looks like a person.

There isn’t really much of a plot, Elizabeth has more or less the same dream quite often, and she paints what she sees – her paintings are almost always of a girl and a boy, where the boy is dead, and the girl is screaming a silent scream. Inside of Elizabeth’s head is Some Quiet Place, where there are no feelings or emotions, only cold logic. Even with all the logic in the world, and help from Fear, she cannot depict what her paintings mean, though, and she thinks it is really important that she does.

I think trying to write a character who can’t feel is really too hard – because Elizabeth certainly feels pain when her father hits her, and she more or less feels shame when one of her classmates, the mean girl, is teasing her. And she kind of feels butterflies in her tummy when that certain guy is looking at her with hope. So this means she isn’t as cut off from feelings as she thinks, even if she can talk to feelings nobody else can see.

Also, Some Quiet Place could have been a lot shorter and still told the readers all they needed to know – there is a lot of telling, too, and I prefer to just sit down and be shown what is going on, even if that means I might interpret things differently than the author wanted. With this book, there isn’t much room for personal interpretations, and because I guessed in the first few chapters what was up with Elizabeth, it was difficult to continue to read on. On top of that – in a story where the main character can’t feel, there is a love triangle anyway! How is that possible, you ask me? Well, I’m still not sure – since Elizabeth isn’t supposed to be able to fall in love at all.

Me not giving more than two stars to Some Quiet Place is really based on my personal preferences in books I read – I’m sure other readers might appreciate both the mystery, the way Elizabeth goes about finding out the things she needs to know, and the triangle. To me, though, it was just too much.

There’s something missing in the girl I see in the mirror compared to the one in those pictures: a sort of soul.

I don’t know what it is to feel. I can’t experience the freedom of grief, the abandon of ecstasy, the release of fury.

Oblivious to my plights, the millions of drops fall t the earth with a symphony of wet sounds. I shove my blankets to the floor. Hot, too hot in here. I lie back again and invite sleep to return.

If I had a sense of humor, the sight before me would be comical.

 

 

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